Issue 3 // October 2019
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
The Importance of Satire Elly Callaghan
Satire seems to be an inherent part of a democratic society - how else can we pass the time and criticise the government between elections? In the rising (and ongoing) calamity that is Brexit, Theresa May was subjected to scathing newspaper articles and memes (particularly centered around her dancing). Satire has a darker side, where those exercising their right to freedom of speech have been attacked. In recent years, the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in 2015 drew significant attention for its relationship with freedom of speech. The satirical French newspaper had published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed, which most orthodox Muslims consider to be blasphemous. As a result, gunmen belonging to the extremist Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda stormed the Charlie Hebdo headquarters and murdered 12 people. This raised questions about how far, exactly, satire could go before offending too many people. Thousands of people around the world marched in protest for freedom of speech and the right to make light of anything and everything. Michelle Wolfe, the American comedian who gave a satirical speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2018, also received widespread criticism for what Sean Spicer (is he still in office?) called a ‘disgusting’ performance. In it, she satirised not only the mainstream media outlets but also President Trump and his aides. In her opening address, she said, ‘I have no agenda, I’m not trying to get anything accomplished. So everyone that’s here from Congress, you should feel right at home.’ This sets the tone for the entire speech. Having watched it numerous times, there are certainly some moments of nervous laughter, like when she begins her pretty damning attack on Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, the only
member of the Trump administration who had bothered to show up. She compared her to Aunt Lydia from The Handmaid’s Tale, a matriarchal figure who collaborates with the authoritarian theocracy to force younger women in state-sanctioned rape. The White House Press Association have since decided to stop having a comedian give speeches at the event, presumably in an attempt to appease this administration who have such a problem with being criticised by the left-wing media. What’s crucial to understand about this is that the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, has shown he wishes to censor freedom of speech. For a man who tries so hard to protect the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms) he is doing far less for the First. Finally, to bring the censorship of satire closer to home, we must look to our own school. In 2017, Upper Sixth leaders found on their last day that the yearbook they had produced had been somewhat edited by Senior Management. Obviously all curse words were asterisked (who knew eighteen-year-olds swore?), but the double-page spread of East Town’s yearbook page had been manually cut out, for reasons that must be censored. The irony is, it didn’t matter. The Upper Sixth East Town boys proudly printed out hundreds of their yearbook pages and handed them out on the last day all the same. In fact, there must have been multitudes left behind all over the parapet. What was the school’s attempt to censor resulted in even more people seeing it. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself - JK Rowling.