My view of satire prior to this week’s classes, wasn’t too dissimilar to what I learnt. The main thing that I learnt was that primarily, satire aims to highlight or make a commentary on social conventions, comparative to parody, which highlights aesthetic ones. The two get mistaken for one-another a lot, primarily due to their similar nature of mocking and commentary. However, particularly in the point of satire, it’s distinction comes from its criticism or commentary on issues, which are often not directly expressed. Parody makes fun of itself and the conventions it highlights, satire uses those conventions to talk about something else entirely.
We were pretty eager to try and follow the conventions of finance programs (like those on Fox News with Jim Cramer as an example) to be able to highlight more the absurdity and culture of cryptocurrency and not detract from that. Following the conventions means the focus is primarily on the satire, and less parody (although some parodic elements did end up coming in the green screen to highlight comedic effect). More specifically, we wanted to highlight the hypebeast-esque culture of following a personality rather than following any level of financial understanding, the absurdity of constant new currencies, and to some extent, the deregulated mess of crypto as a whole.
I learnt it is fairly difficult to skirt between parody and satire without in some ways crossing over at parts, but satire is a lot more nuanced in the way it can make its commentary and can be quite powerful. Not to say parody isn’t, but it is perhaps less impactful in certain aspects due to its focus on aesthetics, not primarily social issues.
It also is important to discern conventions and stereotypes with satire. I think we did a good job to find the right balance with this, as satire can feel hypocritical at best and offensive at worst when it is taking pot shots at people or issues that have no relevance or impact on the creator. It’s important to decipher whether you want to just highlight an issue, or make a statement on it; and if you are going to make a statement on it, what are you trying to say?