The Sunflower

I recognize that this is an opinion piece, but I used this piece in one of my classes last semester to showcase how well-intentioned undergrads can misunderstand irony and misplace social justice applications.

In the early 1980s a satirist wrote an essay on abortion that paralleled Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” The purpose of that piece was to suggest, in his opinion, the barbaric nature of abortion by exaggerating and caricaturing both the “perpetrators” and the process. Of course, many an evangelical took up arms in a tone-deaf tilting at windmills to express their moralistic disapproval of the opinion piece. The irony went right over their heads.

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The writers of the Office did not intend to approve of Michael’s Scott’s actions. They didn’t intend to glamorize his behavior. That’s the whole point. His character was laughably oblivious. His staff, and the audience, were all in on the joke. They were all unnerved by his over-the-top insensitivity. In the words of John Bullitt (1820) “Satire can become a vital form of literature only when there is a fairly widespread agreement about what man ought to be. The satirist needs the convictions that fixed intellectual ideas or norms can give him, and the assurance that he will receive understanding from his readers…. Satire is best able to develop from a basis of general agreement on moral and intellectual standards.” With full acknowledgement that the following words may sound harsh, the above opinion piece is proof that our education system is, in the words of one of my former colleagues at Oxford, “in full need of a liberal arts revival.” It seems the author is lacking in her understanding of basic literary techniques that, until recently, was a basic standard of learning in any English 101 or English 102 course at a local community college.

If you’re looking for some tried and true examples of good satire, I would highly recommend you check out ANYTHING by Aristophanes. For an explanation of the value of political satire and comical polemics, I would recommend Dustin Griffin’s “Satire: A Critical Reintroduction.” Using comedy to poke fun at the bad guys is literally as old as the western canon. In recent time, well-intentioned (but misguided) critics think they are saving the world from bad guys (e.g., racists, the patriarchy, homophobia) by denouncing works that use it in any way. The use of a bad word or an insult is not bad. It’s how it is done. It’s sad when even Fundamentalist Christians have a stronger grasp of the harm in censorship of objectionable elements than the rest of us (see https://www.bjupress.com/resources/articles/objectionable-elements.php).

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