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True satire can’t be silenced
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The atrocity that saw the murder of eight journalists and cartoonists,
a visitor, a caretaker and two police officers at French satirical
magazine Charlie Hebdo this week — and the hunt for the killers which
at time of writing appeared to be approaching a bloody denouement
yesterday — has rightly dominated the global news agenda.
It is shocking in this day and age that journalists and satirists
should be gunned down merely for the act of poking fun at a concept,
albeit one dear to many millions around the world.
The use of satire to skewer bloated egos and lance suppurating cankers
of hypocrisy on the body politic is, ironically, a great literary and
journalistic institution in and of itself.
The Oxford dictionary defines satire thus: “Noun: satire: The use of
humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticise
people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of
wears no clothes but appears to have a particularly nasty rash.
Satire is by its very nature savage, scurrilous and iconoclastic — at
least if it’s any good. There would be no point otherwise.
The term “a gentle satire” gets bandied around quite frequently but
what it really means is that it is rubbish and not really funny.
with Dave Allen — or pretty much anyone else for that matter.
True satire grabs you by the throat and shakes you until you collapse
either in paroxysms of mirth or convulsed with fury — it doesn’t coyly
tickle you with a feather and run away.
There are those of course who deride satire as mean-spirited and
puerile. Curiously these tend to be the very people being satirised, or
those who have had a total sense of humour bypass.
As with any medium, quality varies wildly and much of what passes for
satire these days does not truly live up to the name.
But even a cursory examination of the history of the form throws up
and Gillray.
Satire is the principle weapon of the powerless against the powerful
and as such must be cherished and preserved for as long as pomposity,
arrogance and the abuse of authority exist.
The satirist traditionally ploughs a lonely furrow and the role is
fraught with perils, but losing your life for expressing an opinion,
however controversial, should not be one of them.
What those behind the callous murders this week have failed to
comprehend is that satire is synonymous with rebellion and resistance
to authority.
“Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of
censorship.”
Paddy McGuffin charlie hebdo satire
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