Today’s discussion got me thinking about this very topic. Namely, what is the place for comedic writing/satire (I wish there was a catch-all term for this) in the classroom? I apologize ahead of time for the amount of times I may bring up this topic; it’s not only a personal interest of mine, it’s also something that I do (which gives this post the benefit of being self-serving as well).
Here’s the problem: most students are going to walk into composition classes with preconceived notions of writing. And since reading is not the number one entertainment choice for 18 and 19 year-olds today, we can assume that their take on writing (and the reading of said writing) is that – for the most part – it’s a formal, serious and studious past-time. But if students look at contemporary examples of comedic writing and satire (which I will provide below), they should be able to see the different roles and purposes of writing. These works can also convince students that they can make intelligent, well-written arguments in a voices not far removed from their own. And, shockingly, the work they produce may actually be entertaining!
Satire is another one of my interests, and is a subject that I don’t think enough emphasis is placed upon in education. If you look at popular entertainment, most comedic shows have some kind of satirical element. South Park, though the messages the show delivers may be handled poorly at times, operates almost entirely at a satirical and allegorical level that stands in opposition to the potty humor the series is famous for. The Colbert Report, another show on Comedy Central, is a satirical onion with many layers: Stephen Colbert plays a character named Stephen Colbert who is a parody of Bill O’ Reilly. You have to walk into the show with some sort of knowledge of satire, or face total confusion. Students can obviously parse the messages of these programs, but are often dumbfounded when they face satire in writing. As a writer of satire, I find myself having to explain my position often to those who just don’t get it.
I think a satire-writing exercise would be a good and challenging project. It’s kind of like writing an argument backwards: you look up the opposing points and present them as your own in an attempt to discredit them. Though this may seem daunting to many, students are more than familiar with satire through their entertainment. I think they just need to get to know the mechanics.
Comedic writing and satire are fun for me because I can make arguments that are wildly expressive and funny, but still intelligent. I think breaking the wall of formality most students are stuck behind (sorry for the bad metaphor) will get them to be more expressive and get them to develop their voices as writers. This approach can even get students to work through their problems with the class or with anything through criticism; as one of the teachers in Durst’s examples stated to a student, “You may not like this, but I challenge you to tell me why.”
Here are some good examples of comedic writing and satire that can be used in the classroom. I have many more examples, but here are the best ones:
America: The Book - Pure, brilliant satire.
The Areas of My Expertise - High-concept comedic writing.
Mike Nelson's Mind Over Matters - Great comedic essays.
Barrel Fever - Fantastic satire by David Sedaris (which he has sadly dropped for autobiographical essays).
Your Movie Sucks - Scathing, hilarious and intelligent movie reviews by Roger Ebert.
The Onion - A given, and a great example of parody and satire.
Something Awful - A great, subversive, high-concept comedy website. I happen to write for them, which is where the self-promotion comes in.
Any comments or feedback may justify all the time I spent writing this post.
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6 comments:
i love satire too! Although i cannot say that i actually am a writer of it (sigh..maybe one day), but i think it def. should have a place in the classroom for the very reasons that you mentioned AND because it will help students learn about "voice" and different genres of writing.
I think teachers should have a satirical/humorous/smart-assey assignment in class because it will work on many different levels. The first, i can think of, is it would help students recognize voice and help them figure out what voice is. If a student cannot figure what the difference between formal and informal voices are then satire writing will help them to figure it out. I also like the idea that a student will realize that the teacher is "with it" and the teacher recognizes that not all students like to write or even speak "properly." This will be Huge in the class room because you will no longer be the dud (what was the name of teachers in that one article???) but instead, you will be a teacher that knows what is going on in popular-culture. I think that this argument of mine may have strayed from conventional convincing techniques but i think everyone gets my drift...i agree with Bob about satire writing in the classroom :)
Sounds to me like you have a potential theme for a writing course. It would work well on lots of theoretical levels, I think: it's something you bviously are involved in/know about/are excited about (this goes a long way toward getting students engaged, too); it has relevant and significant rhetorical components (audience awareness, genre, & voice); it has relevance and connection to student's lives (I saw a report that more college aged students get their news from Jon Stewart than any other news outlet). Plus - not least of all - it could be fun. I agree with you that there's not enough laughter in classrooms (well, you both suggest this implicitly in your posts).
also ... such a theme course lends itself well to texts broadly construed:
written texts (from the predominantly print linguistic - Swift - to the multigenre print text - America)
music (lots of satirical songs are available)
television shows
movies (and Ebert's writing)
web sites
newspapers
comics
well ... you get the idea.
pam
there's definitely a point to bring in satire (or any kind of humor) to the classroom in regards of text. since the texts are usually multileveled (funny on the surface with some other meaning behind the humorous cover), they are more likely to engage readers and the readers are more likely to respond to them without the teacher having to pull teeth.
this would also facilitate the dialogic form of communication in the classroom, which was hit upon by Nystrand. Comedy/satire isn't really a topic that a teacher can stand and deliver to the class, as in most students will always want to bring up aspects of what they read to class, if only on the superficial level ("I thought this part was really funny...). The teacher couls then guide the discussion to deeper levels which the students may have missed. the point is that personally, I would find it difficult to lecture for fifty minutes without asking the students specifically what they got out of the text.
Later in undergraduate studies, we looked at texts from writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and John Kennedy Toole. It was an interesting exercise to examine what you laughed at and why you thought it was funny. The same idea can be brought to film (for exapmle, why does everyone laugh when Marvin gets shot in Pulp Fiction? You don't want to laugh, but can't help it). Asking these type of gut-level questions are sure to get a group of reticent undergrads to speak up.
As an aside, I also get most of my news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. At least you know what side of the political spectrum they are coming from.
For the most part, I'm trying to expose as many people as possible to the genres that I mentioned above. I had a brief, low-paying stint at The Stater this summer which didn't end well (I quit) when the higher-ups at the paper didn't understand the intent of my writing -- and since it took so long for them to complain, I can only assume that they weren't actually reading my articles for a while. Losing the job wasn't a big deal (at a whopping $15 per article, I took it out of boredom more than anything else), but it depressed me a little by reinforcing my belief that modern audiences need some enlightenment. My goal is marginally self-serving, but the topic is something that I'm comfortable with and enthusiastic about.
I love the idea of a themed comedy writing/satire English class! Brilliant. Can I audit?
I agree with Bob--this is a genre that's often left unexplored in academic circles--and sadly so, because there is the potential to learn so much! They say if you teach something, you learn it twice. Well I think if you parodize (word?) something, you learn it at least twice--maybe thrice.
In the classroom, students could hone their research, writing, and general creativity skills through such an assignment. And holding up South Park and Colbert as examples would probably get them excited to do such an assignment.
Which brings up another issue ... the power in learning from things we don't like. I opened the floor up in my own classroom a few weeks ago to talk about a book we'd recently read. I asked if they liked it, didn't like it, etc. General comments, you know, but no one was contributed anything negative. So I went off on why I didn't think the chapter was that strong, and how she should've started with this and this and this. Etc. As I was doing so, I saw heads nodding and a few people raised their hands. I think they were scared to say anything bad about the book--possibly because it was reputable, because it was published, because I had chosen it.
I had a teacher in grad school who wanted to teach a poetry course called "Poetry I Hate." We laughed about this, but her idea was/is a good one. We totally can learn from things (texts, movies, whatever) we don't like. Good criticism takes a lot of analysis.
re: mel's post about the prof who wanted to teach "poetry i hate" - i've actually had mostly the opposite experience in the grad classroom - where i've had to encourage people to read generously and to focus on what is good in a work, what can be built on, what we can learn. i've had to actively discourage students (especially grad students) to not be overly negative - i've often felt that by the time people get to grad school, they're very strongly trained in how to rip scholarship (and collaterally, the scholar herself) apart (you know, critique being highly valued and all) but not very well trained in how to think constructively and build productively and graciously on previous work.
pam
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