Concept in Definition ABC

Satire is a literary or written subgenre in which someone or something is ridiculed, through sharp, spicy, ironic sayings and also through some cartoon that is done on the targets.

It usually has different objectives, be it moralizing, playful, or just teasing someone or something.

It can be written both in prose as in verse , or failing that, present a mix between these two forms.

Main features and applications

The satire, then, will be taken mainly from the collective or individual defects or vices, of madness, abuse, among others and will show them through the ridicule, farce, irony, among the most used and popular methods.

Although satire is intended to amuse, this is not its primary objective at all, but quite the contrary, the motivation it will be to attack that reality that bothers and disapproves of the author of the satire.

In satire, we usually find a bit of everything, a bit of sarcasm, a bit of irony, parody, mockery, exaggeration, almost always on the basis of reality. Humor and wit are the allies that satire always has.

The origin of this literary genre is identified in Greece firstly, being used to criticize people and events from a point of view moral, even if its full development was carried out later in Rome.

While the resources can be the most varied and there is no universality in this regard, some of the most frequent are usually: reductionism of something or question in order to highlight its defects, the exaggeration of something to the point of making it ridiculous, the cartoon, for example, uses this resource a lot, the comparison of absolutely opposite questions how old age can be with youth and parody, in such a way that something or someone certainly looks ridiculous.

The cartoon one of the most popular resources of satire

The resource of the cartoon is undoubtedly one of the most popular and exploited by satire.
It consists of a He drew of satirical overtones that it is proposed to portray a model deforming his features and ridiculing some salient aspect.
In other words, it is a distorted portrait that will exaggerate features and create a resemblance that can be easily recognized with a distinctly humorous tone.

Normally it focuses on facial features, manners, behaviors, ways of dressing, and generating from them a grotesque that makes it visible to the viewer's eyes
The graphic media, magazines, newspapers, and now also new technologies such as the internet use caricatures a lot as a tool for political humor, putting it at the service of this field but also that of others, such as extraordinary situations of public impact that occur in the social, religious, among others.
Among the advantages that we can recognize from the cartoon as a resource to satirize people or situations we can mention the visual impact it generates, the effectiveness when removing the veil from certain characters and when interpreting realities. Also, being a drawing, it is easy to interpret by any intellectual level.

Use in political humor

The political humor of yesterday, today and always uses satire as its main ally when expressing its disagreement with the reality that exists in a certain place.
Many times it is more bearable and less hurtful to say or convey things through a humorous satire, since it allows a few more licenses than it would allow if it was reported or formally commented on in a newscast television.

At present, general journalism and also that of investigation are cultists of satire, they have found in it a more lax way when it comes to presenting some themes that could be heavy for readers, listeners or viewers if they are not impressed with that quota of irony or scathing criticism that precisely allows satire.

They also use it because in addition to making some hard information more bearable, it entertains and amuses, and then, in that search for entertainment, the public tends to get hooked on what is presented in a funny way, even if they are certainly outrageous cases such as corruption or negligence politics.