one decade ago
eternal 2014 etc
Satire does not work. It just reinforces the thing it’s satirising because it is literally the content that its fans want to see.
It sells, because people on one side are entertained by the satire and the people on the other side get the exact content they want reinforcing their beliefs anyway.
I am anti-satire.
Interestingly the hogs in the UK hate this. Daily Mail comments section can be summed up with “This sets women back decades, it’s like we’re in the 60s/70s again”.
Also, I don’t see how this is satire.
Sabrina is pretty openly horny and makes horny music, often about how she likes being in subby roles with men. I think she may just like giving head while getting her hair tugged and wrote some music about it.
The biggest problem with satire is that people don’t know what satire is. “Satire” sucks now because it isn’t satirical. Words no longer have meanings, everything is just vibes.
Making an allusion to a concept without any statement at all on that concept? fuck it, that’s satire.
You mean something figuratively? fuck it, say literally.
Even prescriptivism is useless, because reading comprehension and media literacy are non-existent.
Lyrics seem tame but I suppose this is mainstream music? I know some uhh… Less tame stuff.
100% I don’t think this is satire it’s just hot
It’s what bad modern day satire has turned into which is just “look at me I’m doing the thing”
Okay but that still suggests some satirical intent. I don’t think she’s gone that far even, I think she just likes the thing and is doing it.
deleted by creator
This is my least favorite recurring Hexbear take tbh. Not all things dubbed “satire” are the same and didacticism is not the only way.
Do you have examples of useful satire?
I am willing to debate this and reconsider my view but I never see anyone materially demonstrate its usefulness.
did “hey let’s eat irish babies” do anything over there or is swift’s only legacy being used as a school lesson? they skipped the part where they should’ve told us if it made a difference.
Honestly have no idea, not one I’m an expert on. Perhaps? I wonder if the efficacy of this style of critique changes depending on society and media literacy rate. Probably? This would also be different historically I assume.
yeah there are several sibling chains about riding the line of subtlety and i think that’s mostly a literacy issue.
The name “Vanessa” comes from a poem of his, but I don’t think that’s too relevant to his satire.
i also forgot about a bunch of stuff from gulliver’s travels, but byte-order conventions are probably not relevant either
Blazing Saddles single handedly killed an entire (racist as fuck) film genre
Do you have examples of useful satire
can’t believe we’re forgetting shrek
Some… BODY!!!
Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed
She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb In the shape of an “L” on her forehead
Well, the years start comin’ and they don’t stop comin’
Fed to the rules and I hit the ground runnin’
I just watched a crash analysis video of Air France flight 447 and right before it slams into the ocean the first officer says “This can’t be true!”
That’s how this post makes me feel
Pixar’s Sodas.
Dogcatcher Inataro?
Not sure what this means?
Aamon Animations’ stuff.
Is this satire? Or full on lampooning? Depicting the other side as giant fucking alien biblical monsters doesn’t seem satirical but a rather direct and clear attack.
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
Right ok but that’s not really the kind of satire we’re talking about is it? I mean, we can get technical about word definitions or we can talk about what we’re actually criticising which is a specific strain of content that depicts something that is only understood to be humour/critique when looking at the subtext of the content using some sort of media literacy.
My point here is that if you don’t need to analyse or read subtext to understand it’s satire, it’s not what we’re talking about when we say satire doesn’t work.
This is not an example of satire, it’s surrealism.
I don’t think I even like the initial premise that it’s art’s job to be “materially useful”
That’s fair. But art still falls into politically useful, politically useless, and politically harmful categories. I’m going to prefer the useful and I’m going to tell people to make more of the useful and less of the useless, while actively trying to prevent the harmful.
With that said. I’m not going to say something useless but entirely unrelated to politics should stop. Just that people making political art could do so in a different and more useful way.
L’art pour l’art arose out of 19th century France when the French bourgeoisie finally controlled the entirety of French society. Art being done for its own sake or being done as a form of self expression arose out of capitalist society. This was 100% not true in feudal society where artists weren’t expected to even credit themselves. Various socialist art movements like socialist realism also eschews l’art pour l’art for its literal bourgeois origins.
The idea of some dirt-poor artist channeling their mental illness to produce sublime art is just some stereotype that arose out of capitalist society.
I thought this instrumental funk album I put on was neat, dismayed to learn it’s actually bourgeois decadence.
So we’re not allowed to do art for art’s sake?
When I make paintings that nobody but me will see or write poems that nobody will read because I enjoy the process and creating art, I’m doing a liberalism? Lol
I think there are many ways to approach art, but “art for art’s sake” shouldn’t be seen as a model. If anything, it should be treated somewhat dismissively.
I think satire is only subversive when shared within a subversive subculture. Once satire escapes into the mainstream it stops being subversive and just becomes the thing it is satirizing.
It’s just the process of detournament and recouperation, and satire flows both ways.
the way I see it, the problem with satire is that good satire straddles a very very thin line: if you’re too subtle, the satirical aspect is lost on the target audience that you’re making fun of, but if you’re not subtle enough, it’s no longer identifiable as a plausible representation of the thing in question, and then it becomes pointless
but see almost anything but outright clownish representation ends up as too subtle unless something else about the work makes it so inapproachable that the only people who bother to consume it are able to pick up on it.
what I find lame about this “satire”, as someone who has jokes, is that it is obviously banking heavy on the controversy and titillation of the audience that enjoys overt misogynistic expression anyway. it’s lazily doing the thing while claiming it is against the thing. that’s not clever. might as well blast the N-word to get everyone’s immediate attention and then expect them to recognize the subtext of one’s far-less-obvious body of work in anti-racism and begin applauding.
good satire makes the thing it satirized unpalatable to the people it lampoons with shame. it scorns them such that they would not want it shared or seen.
good satire makes the thing it satirized unpalatable to the people it lampoons with shame
that’s a very good point, but then I think it begs the question: shameful to whom?
I say that because I think Starship Troopers (the discourse, I know) for example is great satire, but a fascist wouldn’t be ashamed of liking it unironically among other fascists who also don’t get that they’re being made fun of
in the case of this album cover, is it successful satire if horny guys who sexualize women look at it and share it with other horny guys who do the same thing? she’s an attractive woman in a very sexual scenario, so it would absolutely be very palatable to this audience
I’m not really arguing any points, just thinking out loud here because I think that’s legit an interesting debate and I don’t really have a solid take on it
I think it’s hard to find satire in commercial products, because it needs to be sold to make back it’s investment… so it veers into parody and entertainment, because those are more pleasant to experience.
I respect verhoeven’s politics, and I have no doubt he set out to make a movie that would revolt anyone with a critical eye. even as a dumbass teenager I felt upset by Starship Troopers’ for reasons I couldn’t articulate. and, at the time, I felt like I must be weird, because while it revolted me but made my chuddy friends very excited and happy. so, unfortunately for art, but fortunately for the studios, the cinema-attending masses are incurious and uncritical in the US. that’s the needle verhoeven threaded, erring on the side of careerism. no shade, we all gotta eat.
I think good satire, as I define it, is something fringe and often dismissed as preachy or too “dark” for the general public… because the public perhaps has limited interest in transgressive art/expression except in times of crisis.
maybe something that complicates our experience is that so much of the creative expressions we are invited to engage in the US are explicitly commercial, rather than actual public art.
so when we comb the landscape of our culture, looking for something authentic and truly revealing of our social problems, we are only ever searching through the garbage can of ideology. we think of entertainment products by default, instead of preachy street graffiti or other cracks in the facade where subversive thoughts make their home.
good satire makes the thing it satirized unpalatable to the people it lampoons with shame. it scorns them such that they would not want it shared or seen.
I have never seen good satire.
Shrek?
See, I haven’t seen that since I was a kid and have no clue what it is supposed to be satirizing.
It was a prank bro
True, but then do you really have an audience, in the first place? Does satire even need to have an audience? Does a satirical product need to be a product in and of itself?
Let’s imagine a piece of satire, I dunno, let’s say, a fake poster for an Azov battalion documentary that’s full of nazi symbols. Make it really outlandish so that nobody could take it seriously. Is that good satire?
But what if you actually make a satirical mockumentary about Azov that’s outrageously nazi, to an absurd degree. Well then, you might just end up being liked by the nazis who are also fans of Azov, so did you really do satire, or did you just do a nazi film?
Like I said in the other comment, I’m just spitballing here, trying to figure this out as I go along, because I’m interested in the debate lol
But what if you actually make a satirical mockumentary about Azov that’s outrageously nazi, to an absurd degree. Well then, you might just end up being liked by the nazis who are also fans of Azov, so did you really do satire, or did you just do a nazi film?
I mean, depends on the portrayal. outrageously Nazi to an absurd degree may be satire but absurdity by itself is not in itself necessary satirical. When I said clownish I wasn’t necessarily meaning merely outlandish either but more so the satirical work almost needs to portray the subject of its ridicule in a way a clown portrays themself. Not necessarily just outlandish but with universally understood cultural references that indicate intentional stupidity.
If someone does stupid stuff dressed normally, we may assume mistakes, incompetence etc. If they do the same dress as a clown, there tends to be an assumption of intent due to the clown dress being a thematic explanation. From my understanding, the boys moved to this type of storytelling in season 4 and it made a bunch of people realize it was making fun of them.
There is also the route of outright statements after every bit where you explain you are portraying something you ridicule.
In essence, I think if your concern is a group you’re portraying needs to be ridiculed in a way where they don’t embrace it via your work you need something along the lines of Garth Marenghi’s philosophy.
From my understanding, the boys moved to this type of storytelling in season 4 and it made a bunch of people realize it was making fun of them.
And in order to do that, they ended up making the show absolute hot garbage for everyone. Now the people being satirized will not watch it, and the people laughing at the people being satirized don’t want to watch it anymore.
I think the point is that satire is incredibly hard to pull off while telling a compelling story, and the more compelling it is, the more likely it’s just going to be a cultural artifact through which a group of people can laugh at another group. Maybe the point of satire is catharsis, rather than changing minds.
Oh, I fully believe the point of satire is catharsis. I was more playing with the idea presented here:
If you’re too subtle, the satirical aspect is lost on the target audience that you’re making fun of
If that is a requirement for good satire, you’re likely not seeing it outside of clownish representations as just about anything short will likely have support from the group in question. i.e. Starship Troopers as you mentioned or the earlier seasons of The Boys.
I do think you can do a form of clownish representation that is compelling as well narratively, but you likely have to start from that point as well as have an extremely strong pen.
Satire requires textual clarity. Like it can’t just be “bad thing that’s silly in some way, extra silly edition” it has to be self-defeating and ideally include its own refutation in explicit terms. It’s like how “I’m doing bad thing, but and here’s the twist, I disagree with bad thing, huh? huh? pretty clever right?” is generally a bad format outside of in-group contexts where stilted presentation and an established reputation ensure that it comes across as mockery instead of just doing the bad thing but in a funny voice.
And even then satire isn’t a converting argument, it’s not something you win people over with, it’s entertainment for people who agree with it. Its use as propaganda is more in reinforcing a position rather than spreading it, it’s a “point and laugh at the bad thing” at its shallowest or an exploration of why bad thing is bad at its deepest.
Harsh cold take imo
This is true, but what’s the solution? Make shittier art because we need to make sure the absolute dumbest motherfuckers in the world get the message?
Why are you assuming that non-satirical art is inferior? Wouldnt you prefer art tackle issues directly instead of abstracting them into meaninglessness?
Because tackling issues directly and in a way that dumb dumbs can absorb by definition must be bereft of subtlety, nuance or contradiction. All of which are a part of the human experience that good art is able to express. Not all art absolutely must have indirect qualities to be good or even to have depth, but art as a whole would be way less rewarding without them.
Directness necessitates subtlety and nuance. You are making big claims about “good art” and what it entails, but I don’t see how something must be satire or indirect to accomplish this. I don’t even think satire is inherently bad, but I think it’s pretty clear what purpose it serves in the modern world since it’s massive proliferation in the 20th century.
Also, people don’t misunderstand art because they are “dumb.”
This is accurate. People misunderstand art because it requires cultural literacy, and most people are partially to completely culturally illiterate, because we live in a time of the massive fracturing of mass market culture.
This includes myself. Perhaps it is satirical, perhaps it is sincere, perhaps it is good art, perhaps it is bad art. I wouldn’t know, I am not the targeted demographic.
Hell, having been a Charlie xcx fan for years since her collaborations with the PC Music label (RIP) I thought ‘brat’ on release as mostly just a very well produced semi-self aware pop party album, a decent in-between of her best (imo) and most experimental pop album ‘How I’m Feeling Now’ (which was also one of her worst selling) and her more return to form of ‘Crash’ but then she went and attempted to turn it into a feminist political vehicle, and now she is attempting to keep pressing on the whole ‘brat’ concept and even going so far as to rebrand many of her previous albums in that light, which is hella weird and a bad move imo, because none of her earlier albums exhibit those characteristics. If I can’t even be truly media literate in the messaging of an artist I have been following for years, I have absolutely no chance with someone like Sabrina Carpenter.
never even heard of this person before today, so i guess her marketing team figured out how to get people talking.
She’s absolutely massive. About in the level of Chappel Roan and Charli.
Charli is nowhere near as big as those two, she just has a much more dedicated fan base to boost her
You think? Brat was a cultural event in a way that I can’t remember any full album being in a long time.
She’s one of the biggest pop artists currently and little girls love her music.
Are we sure that there’s mass controversy on this, and it’s not just two people on Twitter mildly criticizing it, some people replying in agreement and then moving on with their day, and the media blowing it out of proportion?
Monocle-popping outrage about risqué album covers!
This just in: An artist has released |media| that is |controversial|, sexual style
Please, click and share this controversy
Less cynically, good for her. I don’t care about her or her music (I’m very picky with my musical tastes), but like, get that bread
The cover in question.
She just dropped a new single called “Manchild”. The video is cool.
IDK. I don’t have a real dog in this race, BUT, I did enjoy “Short n’ Sweet”. The track “Please, Please, Please” is entertaining. Something like two thirds of the songs are her bashing on dummies she’s dating, and her lyrics suggest she’s at least self-aware about dating dummies.
Okay I see this album cover and immediately go “Oh it’s a kink thing”
“Is women being open about their sexuality bad for feminism?” is a wild take
the album is titled “Man’s Best Friend”
trvthnvke
as always this controversy is just latent transphobia about puppygirls
super trvthnova
“man’s best friend” probably isn’t “feminist”.
Short n Sweet’s other theme was basically “I like them hot and dumb, and I’m DTF”. Bed Chem is just a song about fucking:
And now the next thing I know, I'm like Manifest that you're oversized I digress, got me scrollin' like Out of breath, got me going like (ooh) Who's the cute boy with the white jacket and the thick accent? Like (ooh, ah) Maybe it's all in my head But I bet we'd have really good bed chem How you pick me up, pull 'em down, turn me 'round Oh, it just makes sense How you talk so sweet when you're doing bad things That's bed chem How you're looking at me, yeah, I know what that means And I'm obsessed Are you free next week? I bet we'd have really good Come right on me, I mean camaraderie Said you're not in my time zone, but you wanna be Where art thou? Why not uponeth me? See it my mind, let's fulfill the prophecy (ooh)
Two thoughts on this
“What’s wrong with being sexy?”
“There’s such a fine line between clever and stupid”
I almost wonder if the spinal tap homage is intentional
You talking about the “Smell the glove” cover?
Because that was my first thought too. I’ve seen “people” complaining on tiktok about “appealing to the make gaze”. I mean, sure I guess, but there is something funny about doing that and then writing pop songs about how stupid boys are.
I don’t have a real dog in this race…
I see what you did there.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Glasgow Women’s Aid, a Scotland-based advocacy organization for women experiencing domestic abuse, slammed Carpenter in a post on Instagram on Thursday calling the album cover “regressive,” and stating it evokes “tired tropes that reduce women to pets, props, and possessions and promote an element of violence and control.” A column in The Telegraph Thursday complained in a headline that Carpenter’s “over-sexed, degrading new album cover has gone too far,” and the writer Poppie Platt noted Carpenter has many young fans and said her marketing is “troubling,” comparing it to TikTok trends like the “trad-wife” aesthetic that promote subservience to men. Some of the most-liked comments on Carpenter’s Instagram post of the album cover were critical. “Is this a humiliation ritual? WTH is this cover,” one comment, which garnered 8,000 likes says, while another commenter stated: “Explain to me again how this isn’t centering men? How this isn’t catering to the male gaze?”
I know next to nothing about Sabrina Carpenter, but why can’t the artist express whatever she wants? It would be cool if she did champion a cause and fight the good fight, but if she’s a slop merchant then why stop her from making slop?
but why can’t the artist express whatever she wants?
Ugh this may ignite a struggle session, but, I feel like this is a weird sentiment to expression on an ML dominated site? We reject the liberal notion of “freedom of expression” and believe all actions done in the public sphere have an effect on broader society and are worthy of scrutiny. Also we regularly sing the praises of socialist state that have pretty strict regulations on public media, often specifically in regards to sexualized presentations of women.
Now I don’t personally have a problem with Sabrina (actually I kinda dig her music), but I think it’s Lib to just hand wave this discourse with what basically amounts to
Record label: has their employee do something misogynistic
Leftists: “why are you policing a woman’s sexuality?”
I would point out, we don’t really know how much agency Sabrina has here. She may be a record company slave, she may have a lot of creative control and is actually designing a lot of this stuff herself cuz she likes it.
I’ve seen interviews with her where she comes off as someone who does just enjoy being over the top and exhibitionist, but that could be acting, I can’t prove anything either way.
The way that material analysis is just so easily thrown out the window when we talk about certain subjects infuriates me to no end. I think it’s pretty clear why people are upset about this and hand waving it away as people being puritan or her just expressing her sexuality is just so fucking stupid. It makes my head cave in.
Perhaps my response was too inflammatory. Especially conflating critique with “stopping her.” There’s nothing wrong with the critique of media. I myself am a video essay enjoyer. I guess I was reacting to phrases like “over-sexed, degrading, and troubling.” It read to me like moral scrutiny more than artistic scrutiny. Like over-sexed compared to what? Let her sex herself as she sees fit. Or if the critique is “Explain to me again how this isn’t centering men? How this isn’t catering to the male gaze?” Then I’d say that she can center men if she is so inclined. If the critique was more like “She claims to not like sexing herself and this seems counter to that message.” or “She advertised this new album as very men-off-centering so this is disappointing” that comes to me as a more salient critique. Because to my cursory glance this is self-expression that she is doing of her own volition. And even if it’s “an ML dominated site” I’d be shocked to see the presence of justice and peace if she can’t swag out if she damn well pleases.
I’d be shocked to see the presence of justice and peace if she can’t swag out if she damn well pleases.
I think the difference is she’s someone with a lot of cultural capital and a massive platform, not some rando just doing this stuff in private, or heck even just a mildly famous social media star. So when she endorses certain behaviors publicly, even if she’s genuine in her endorsement, she will likely influence others to embrace those behaviors. Then the debate becomes if that’s harmful or not.
It’s been argued our hyper sexualized society is basically having the reverse effect of prudishness where now people are being pressured into being more sexual than they truly wish to be rather than less.
Now personally, I don’t fully agree, at least not with Sabrina’s work. Yeah she’s horny but I don’t think she’s really advocating for anything truly harmful, nothing wrong with being a little slutty. But I at least understand the logic of her critics.
I don’t know anything about her either, but I think this has to do with her being very popular atm, and so many people watching what she does. The cover itself is nothing special, I’ve seen worse in recent years so I guess it’s mostly sensationalism.
From what I have observed, a lot of people saw her as a reclamation of boy-crazed sexuality; thus a sense of betrayal has been formed.
Sounds plausible to me.
To me the cover looks like it was designed to provoke and be “controversial” and I guess it’s working. She’s got an album to sell and people are talking about her, so put a point in her (and her corporate backers’) column.
Iran before the revolution
The picture combined with the title is a good bit actually. This will not set feminism back by a decade, not even a single day. Very br*tish thing to complain about
Short and sweet is my favorite album from last year and I am not impartialwhy are famous named after lies, tailor swift isn’t a tailor nor fast, ishowspeed never showed any sense of speed, bill clinton isn’t a dollar he’s a guy, and this girl is not even a carpenter she can’t even do a pushup right in that cover image???
WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?
WHY IS EVERYTHING JUST LIES IS THAT HOW YOU GET MONEY??? THROUGH DECEIT??? FOR RECEIPT YOU MUST DECEIT??? RECEIPTS JUST TELL YOU WHAT YOU USED MONEY ON I DON’T UNDERSTAND I FEEL COLD
Only good comment on this post.
why do i feel like this
what is this
where am i
i have a thing 2 say but i cannot, just get close t-to me, cant’ talk loud no mre
in-joke cw for meat. i know the thing and even if in this humoristic i am not me, i don't want to risk it
why is kevin bacon not strips of bacon
Have people seen albumn covers?
It’s the perfect cover because it can be both simultaneously to different audiences, creates controversy and engagement which drives publicity, and sells. Companies have been doing this since the invention of the picture record sleeve.
Preemptive
So I do have a question did left wing 3rd wonders influence the prudishness of Gen Z left wingers or is it trumps politics destroying libs brain
I would argue that YOUNG american right wingers don’t care about woman being super explicit and sensual ,older ones hate that
That wasn’t the case 20 years ago
It really does seem like gamergate and trump changed the views of right wingers in America to be really non Christian
i would argue that it’s kind of fucked up to frame feminists being upset at a sexist objectifying portrayal of a woman as “prudish”. it’s nothing new either, feminists were also upset about playboy and half naked photos of starlets and britney spears dancing in school girl outfits 20 years ago. i have noticed some general anti-sex shit in other zoomers (“antis”) etc, but this isn’t that.
no one (well, no leftists) would have a problem if it were some ripped dude in a speedo making himself out to be an easily taken advantage of himbo; it’s not about sex, it’s about patterns of misogyny.
Idk what the equivalent word is habibi so I’m using prude as a substitute,I mean to say modest
I know about Britney
And I actually agree with the criticism , I just find it fascinating how times have changed
