Political SATIRE, scathing MOCKERY to RIDICULE and bring POWER down
Channel: Interpreting Tradition
Date: 2024-02-02

InTrad/15/24. What is satire? "It is a powerful art-form which has the ability to point out the deficiencies in
certain human behaviours and the social issues which result from them in such a way that
they become absurd, even hilarious, which is therefore entertaining and reaches a wide
audience. Satire also has the ability to protect its creator from culpability for criticism,
because it is implied rather than overtly stated; in this way, it becomes a powerful tool for
dissenters in difficult or oppressive political and social periods". 
"The Power of Ridicule" An Analysis of Satire, Megan LeBoeuf, Faculty Sponsor: Walter von Reinhart, April 27, 2007

Here is satirist author Juvenal (1stc AD): "Ah, well, Farewell, Rome!  I leave you to your sanitary engineers and municipal architects! To men who, by swearing that black is white, land all your juicy profit-making contracts"

"I'd rather have power over the wealthy than wealth myself"

"And to men with 'rouge, eyebrow pencils, mascara and powdered faces': "Those faces so powdered...makes you wonder what's underneath: a face or a boil". 
Utterly fed up with politicians' talk: "I want to escape Northwards, to the end of the world, Lapland, the frozen Polar-cap, anywhere! That is where I long to escape when I hear all those high-flown moral discourses from that pervert clique in Rome, affecting their "ancestral peasant values" as a front for their lechery.  Aren't we lucky to have them caring for our morals! But then (having screamed in favor of war, any war, all wars) they turn round and speak to their companion: Do, tell me, darling, where did you buy that divine perfume I can smell on your beastly neck?  Come, come, don't be ashamed to tell me the name of the shop".

Ridicule and satire as effective means to 'speak truth to power' now that the official press has become the means for the powerful to speak their truths.  I'm drawing on Juvenal's Satires (1st century AD) about the decadence of those in power in Rome, and Lucan's Pharsalia (also 1st century AD).  I mention also the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus (also 1st century AD) about the decadence in Jerusalem.
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