Chapter 14 A Thematic Case Study
Humor and Satire
It is the writer’s privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.
Let’s get serious: although some austere readers may assume that humor and satire require a rationale or apology, a reading life without laughter would be dull. Wit, irony, exaggeration, understatement, caricature, parody, and any number of other methods through which a writer opens our eyes to the complexities of human experience illuminate what high seriousness sometimes demands is no laughing matter. Flannery O’Connor’s fiction, for example, is heavily freighted with pain, perversity, and tragic attempts at religious salvation, but a responsive reader will also find that her stories include startling humor, despite the presence of murder, a stolen artificial leg, and some lunatic characters (see her three stories in Chapter 10, “A Study of Flannery O’Connor”). Even James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” — a serious story about a family that has undergone more than its share of trauma — is leavened with humor as Sonny pokes fun at his brother for being so uptight. Sometimes a dark vision almost begs for comic relief. To test this idea, try reading the very brief story that begins this chapter, Annie Proulx’s “55 Miles to the Gas Pump.”
Of course people don’t always agree about what’s amusing, owing to their personal sensibilities and experiences. “That’s not funny” is a sentiment that commonly measures the difference in varying responses. Humor can open people’s eyes, but it can also cause people to shut them if they feel offended by it. A passionate animal rights advocate might argue that the topic of a family pet’s death wholly removes any possibilities for humor in Ron Hansen’s “My Kid’s Dog.” As Mark Twain makes surprisingly clear in “The Story of the Good Little Boy,” even Sunday school can be unexpectedly funny, because humor often asserts that nothing is sacred. It wears social restraints lightly and refuses to sit still, preferring that others grapple with discomfort. Part of what makes a story funny is the way it can take a familiar situation and exaggerate its possibilities. In George Saunders’s “I Can Speak™” we encounter a cliché of customer service etiquette, namely “the customer is always right.” Okay, but those of us who have worked those jobs know that the customer deserves a little pushback when he or she is acting entitled.
Satire is a form of humor with a special intent: to expose the weaknesses in the components of human society — the institutions, cultural artifacts, personality types — with the intent of getting us to think about how they may be reformed. The Simpsons has been one of the most potent vehicles for satire in America for more than a quarter century. Each episode is chock full of references to current events or cultural trends, but even more pointedly, The Simpsons often satirizes its own medium — television — for its excesses, its use of human suffering as entertainment, and its tendency to replace all other family activities. (Note how the Simpson family sits down on the couch at the beginning of each episode only to be manipulated and distorted before our eyes: isn’t that what’s happening to us, too?) The most persistent object of satire in this brilliant show is the history of every family-based sitcom that preceded it. From Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best in the 1950s through Full House in the 1980s and 1990s, television families have been syrupy, idealized versions of harmonious middle-class domesticity with a wise patriarch at their center. Watch any one episode of The Simpsons and you’ll quickly see what it is doing to that model.
Satire is as old as literature itself: ancient Greek and Roman works like Aristophanes’s play Lysistrata or Horace’s poetic Satires reveal its origins. We tend to remember the tragedies of old and to regard them as the finest literature has to offer, but satire in particular and humor in general are equally important, and sometimes more surprising. Funny stories sometimes let us in on the joke and sometimes make us feel we are the butt of it. Humor can spread across a spectrum, from pure aggression to the recognition of the need for lightness. The humor in the stories composing this chapter will keep you on your toes and will also help you to keep your balance.