What is satire? Let me teach you a thing or two about humor, mockery, and irony. Satire is often a signal of crisis and the potential to share and devour it is a sign of a free society. Many citizens do not “get” satire, or its larger purpose, and criticize it for being, at best, entertainment, and, at worst, mockery and ridicule, according to the researchers. The purpose of exact satire is now not to mock, but to generate debate and conversation about subjects.
For example, the world of sexualities and genders is a sore point in today’s society due to the archaic beliefs of the past generations behind religion and the modern beliefs of the new era of open-minded youths. No one can joke around with genders or misgender another person in this day and age without harsh repercussions. God forbid you say, “That’s so gay,” or, “I’m feeling gay today.” You will become a pariah faster than you can say gay rights. Satire is supposed to prick people's consciences and project the powerful - but is that possible in a society where no one can agree based on right and wrong?
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For example, like Kevin Harte and Eddie Murphy, back in the nineties a plethora of Murphy’s jokes were a reflection of society’s viewpoints of gay rights and homosexuality. For the 2019 generation, platforms like Twitter, users were able to call the comedian out for his past-decade-old jokes. The comedian apologized for the material spat ten years back. As for Kevin Hart, when it was announced that he was to host this year’s Oscars, Twitter vehemently reposted his tweets from 2008, concerning derogatory, harmful comments about homosexuality. Due to the backlash the comedian issued a public apology and stepped down from the position as host. The symmetry between those two incidents is that in the world of 1991 and 2008, society was still not able to embrace LGBTQ+ identities and openness compared to 2019’s acceptance.
As we see with those two examples, jokes can be taken with extreme sensitivity and ire, causing society’s beautiful curtain of extreme emotional delicate response geared towards the source. When taking into account, that the revolving door of society’s ever-changing moods towards what’s okay, what’s disgusting, what’s normal, and what’s abnormal is exhausting to keep up with. For satire, with everyone’s opinions and social justice attitudes involved, the message can be manipulated into a terrorist threat against “certain” people’s way of life.
What we need to look at is the LGBTQ+’s response to these factors. When looking celebrities' fan bases like the “Barbies” for Nicki Minaj, and the “Beehive” for Beyoncé have a big voice from the LGBTQ community, which in the past has contributed to nasty, misogynist, and career-ending incidents. An up-and-coming small-act artist Keri Hilson or the “pretty girl don’t get a career no more rock” was violently attacked by the “bees” and viciously ripped apart from tweet to shining tweet. Her bullies asserted themselves to become Beyoncé are unasked for champions, cornering the poor girl into obscurity. When their favorites are “threatened” the community bands together like they’re protesting Prop 8’s proposal which in this case Prop 8 is a woman on the rise.
For these examples explained in context, the community demands a certain level of respect, when in regards to jokes and satirical viewpoints are deemed offensive and all around Hiroshima level of disaster. Whenever there’s a joke to be said at the expense of the LGBTQ community, it’s regarded as horrifying like Kennedy’s assassination, but for the reverse, we treat the fascist response as fabulous rhetoric. In the end, as humans, we do need to be reined in and called out for our insensitive and crude behavior. And satire's purpose achieves just that. Satire holds a comedic mirror to what society deems unacceptable.
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