Satire utilizes digital, visual, and linguistic forms of rhetoric. The writers of the satire analyze the word choice which is both most comedic and impactful through the medium. Humour is something we can utilize in the crisis and time we are in. Sometimes when laughter seems inappropriate is when it is needed the most. To be comedic in a rhetorical sense means that you can both analyze and persuade the audience (Greene 2012). The goal is to persuade not for a great cause but to see the situation in a simplified easier to absorb way (Nordquist 2019).
People attempt to use comedy on social media in order to gain the adoration of others. In the context of Facebook and other outlets, to be comedic is to also be digitally literate. You are able to elicit reactions from an audience by using rhetorical and digital techniques, you are appealing to both emotion and intellect. Often times comedy can be connected to images online. Still, with the usage of the internet, we often forget that the original screen we were drawn to was the television. One of the original twentieth-century applications requiring the use of more than one sense to enjoy a specific medium.
The idea of a representative image being a connection between ourselves and the public is a practice used by both animators and media influencers. By maintaining a distance between the avatar and the audience, the audience is able to project and observe in a way that would not be easy if it were expressed in a conversation between two people. A social media influencer would portray a highly edited version of themselves for their audience members to digest and understand. This distance between author and audience can be utilized in satire when persuading the public to think about an issue. The same distance that allows people to project and fall in love with celebrities is the same tactic used to cause an audience to think about an issue that may not be a dinner-time conversation. If we see an image touching upon a topic, it enables the audience to talk about it by having to acknowledge what they are seeing.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker have perfected the usage of the avatar, rhetorical distance, and the projection of a message. What the creators of South Park have achieved is the use of crude construction paper cutouts as symbols for the events happening over a twenty-three year period. If you’ve ever watched the documentary 6 Days to Air it shows the development and what I would call digital literacy that has developed as their satire and writing methods have progressed. The two went from creating one episode in a three month period to creating them in less than a week. This allowed them to become more topical and intelligent as the years have moved forward (They became fast learners). The creators have often commented that they have identified with different characters that they have created. This can be seen as two of the main characters were based on them and act as their avatars for how they see and experience the world (Comedy Central).
When I was thirteen, my best friend showed South Park for the first time, it mocked the fad of Jersey Shore (Late 2010). I noticed at the time the persona of the reality show appealed to a lot of kids my age (I was really confused as to why, but that is beside the point). South Park accurately parodied the behavior I saw in my peers at the time and kicked it up by ten notches. I remember laughing as I saw a parodied version of Snooki from Jersey Shore. South Park criticized the behavior from the Jersey Shore as being both ridiculous and repulsive to a point. This was not as much persuasion but validation to what I had already felt as a young teenager. Their purpose was to communicate the vapidness and the appeal of the worst part of human nature that is displayed on a screen and appealed to a lot of people at the time.
The use of an image or avatar to express or convey a message in a medium is an expression of both visual and digital literacy. Satirical images and TV shows use the distance between the audience and the work to imply a purpose. The message would be received much differently if it were looked at with actual people involved in the situation, and may even receive a different type of empathy from the audience. The rhetorical strategy of satire is one that implies both linguistic, digital, and visual aspects of rhetoric.
Literature Cited
Did You Know The South Park Characters Are Based On Real People?: News. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.comedycentral.co.uk/news/did-you-know-the-south-park-characters-are-based-on-real-people
Greene, G. C. 2012. Rhetoric in Comedy: How Comedians Use Persuasion and How Society Uses Comedians. The Corinthian, 13(11), 134–154.
Nordquist, R. 2019. What Is a Rhetorical Situation? Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/rhetorical-situation-1692061
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