Satrical Cartoons about Police Brutality

Satire has always been an interesting topic of discussion for me. I personally love satirical cartoons or videos. Satire is literacy/ mediated work that diminishes or derogates a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scum or indignities. Satire is usually witty and often very funny. The purpose of satire is to criticize in or order to shame someone or something. Within satire their are 3 different kinds of satire in which are Horatian, Juvenalian, and Indirect.

There are also many ways that you can go about using satire. There are 4 specific techniques of using satire. Those ways are Exaggeration, Incongnity, Reversal, and Parody.

Exaggeration is enlarging/ increasing or represent something beyond normal bounds so that it becomes ridiculous and its facts can be seen. Incongnity is to resent things that are out of place or are absurd in relation to their surrounding. Reversal is to resent the opposite of the normal order of events hierarchal order Parody is to imitate the techniques.

The first form of satire is Horatian Satire. This type of satire is when it is gentle, urbane, and kind of makes you want to smile. It is like a wink and a nod. This satire types aims to correct through gentle sympathetic laughter. An example of this would be:
 This is gentle because it is still displaying that sometimes the things that we see on TV are manipulated in some way to send off the wrong message and we have this ongoing conflict. In this photo, it is clear that the man said "Down with Police Brutality" But it is showing the news reporter with scissors and the word brutality on the floor so it just says "Down with Police" This is gentle because if you watch Fox News you know that they often exploit a lot of the things before they broadcast to the world. This is kind of doing the wink and nod that we know how Fox News is, and how they make stuff seem more different than what they are. I would say that is satire is effective by what people will decide to watch for News if they are being accused of not portraying the right news it can, bring there views down due to credibility issues. The technique that is used here is parody because they are imitating what Fox News does.






The second form of satire is Juvenalian Satire. This satire is more biting, bitter and angry contempt, and moral indignation. An example of this would be the photo that is on left. In this photo a man that looks like he identifies as African American (Black) is in the doctors office saying "I'd like to have this birthmark removed.." The birthmark looks just like a "target" that you hit. This is implying that he is tired of being a target. This is more biting because in history African Americans have been know to be a target in many different areas such as police brutality, and racism mostly. This is biting because it is not just a wink and nod and something that you laugh at. This is something that someone made because it is how they see the word and/ or themselves and they are tired of being the target for everything. This is important because it is making a statement saying that this is happening, and it needs to be changed. Many claim that we live in a post-racial society but we still have marginalized people feeling as if they are still a target. I think that this was very effective because it can make people think about what is really going on and let people know that certain groups are still being seen as a target. The technique used for this satirical cartoon is exaggeration. It is something that they enlarged to show the faults.

The last form of satire is Indirect satire. This is expressed through narrative. Characters and/ or groups who are the focus of the satire are ridiculed not by what is said about them but by what they themselves say and do. An example of this could be the movie Clueless.