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Examines 102 issues (published in 1985 and 1986) of the "Eulenspiegel," the only magazine in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) devoted to humor and satire. Focuses on the "Eulenspiegel's" treatment of the United States to determine the nature of that satire, its purposes, and its effectiveness. (MM)

The differential satire effects across domestic and foreign audiences are largely unknown; yet, this is of growing relevance as political satire increasingly reaches international audiences. A two-country experiment was conducted in which satirical stimuli from the Netherlands with either a one-sided (only targeting the United States) or two-sided humorous message (targeting both the U.S. and the Netherlands) was presented to a domestic (in-group) or foreign (out-group) audience. Specifically, this study examines political satire's differential emotional and attitudinal impact on audiences located in the country-of-production (Netherlands) or abroad (U.S.). Results show that satire sidedness uniformly influenced hedonic enjoyment: compared to two-sided satire, one-sided satire elicited negative emotions and decreased positive emotions for both the in-group (Dutch) and the out-group (U.S.) audience. Yet, satire differentially affected patriotic attitudes. This effect was moderated by country and age: younger U.S. citizens became less patriotic after exposure to the one-sided satire that targeted their country and decreased their positive emotions; older U.S. citizens, in contrast, became more patriotic after exposure to this one-sided satire that particularly increased their negative emotions. The Dutch audience's level of patriotism remained stable irrespective of satire sidedness. Altogether, this study demonstrates how humor type, country-of-reception, and age matter for satire effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from social epidemiology literature on structural racism, and rooted in critical race theory and critical theory related to narrative power, this paper uses satire and humor as commentary on mainstream U.S. public health discourse related to the role of "race" (properly understood, racism) in shaping inequities observed via COVID-19. Taking the form of a "RACISM-20" fact sheet, this paper transposes structural racism and COVID-19. In doing so, it accentuates how individualist, ahistoric, and pathologizing "downstream" frames of health risks/solutions curtail productive dialogue and action to advance racial and health equity. In the spirit of "racial emancipatory humor", this work represents a potential pedagogical tool to discuss and critique dominant frames of racial(ized) risks, "vulnerability", and responsibility – both in the context of COVID-19 and within broader discourse of racial health inequities, including as related to racialized police violence. In this capacity, this "fact sheet" serves as an example health promotion product of critical resistance and counternarrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a great deal of research, much about the effects of political comedy programming on its viewers remains uncertain. One promising line of work has focused on increased internal political efficacy—the sense that one is competent to engage with politics—as an outcome of exposure to political comedy programs. This may explain results showing that viewers are more likely to participate in politics. We extend this approach by considering the role of political comedy's "gateway" effect in encouraging political media consumption, which can promote additional increases in efficacy and participation. This study provides a theoretical synthesis of prior research and a rigorous empirical test using a representative panel survey of adults in the United States, providing evidence of a relationship between political comedy and participation with both news use and internal efficacy serving as mediators. Furthermore, we find that only political satire, not late-night talk shows, appear to produce these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding nonliteral language requires inferencing ability and is an important but complex aspect of social interaction, involving cognitive (e.g., theory of mind, executive function) as well as language skill, areas in which many deaf individuals struggle. This study examined comprehension of metaphor and sarcasm, assessing the contributions of hearing status, inferencing ability, executive function (verbal short-term/working memory capacity), and deaf individuals' communication skills (spoken versus signed language, cochlear implant use). Deaf and hearing college students completed a multiple-choice metaphor comprehension task and inferencing tasks that included both social-emotional (i.e., theory of mind) and neutral inferences, as well as short-term memory span and working memory tasks. Results indicated the hearing students to have better comprehension of nonliteral language and the ability to make social-emotional inferences, as well as greater memory capacity. Deaf students evidenced strong relationships among inferential comprehension, communication skills, and memory capacity, with substantial proportions of the variance in understanding of metaphor and sarcasm accounted for by these variables. The results of this study enhance understanding of the language and cognitive skills underlying figurative language comprehension and theory of mind and have implications for the social functioning of deaf individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shirley Jackson's essays in popular women's magazines negotiate the gendered tensions and commercial contradictions of postwar print culture. This essay shows how the women in Jackson's essays are figures of the fraught convergence of women's public affiliation and the restrained politics of gender critique. These female figures are also representative of broader issues in US print culture after the Second World War. In particular, Jackson's essays represent how a certain strain of feminist writing—sometimes known as "domestic humor"—was absorbed within the market forces of print capitalism. To explain this absorption, I draw on mid-century theories of market segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost immediately after the end of the Second World War (WW II) and the declaration of the Iron Curtain policy, the Cold War broke out between the socialist and capitalist countries: the so-called opposition between the Eastern and Western bloc. The most acute confrontation between the USSR and the USA was manifested in such areas as the arms race, space exploration, struggle to expand spheres of influence. In 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world was on the brink of nuclear war. After the occupation in 1940, Latvia was part of the Soviet system, and therefore was exposed to the Soviet ideology and propaganda. Most of the inhabitants of Latvia (like of the whole USSR) had practically no opportunity either to visit the USA or to obtain reliable information. Periodicals of the USSR imposed on the Soviet reader their image of America and the Western world in general; a huge role in creating this image was assigned to satirical publications. The article reveals the principles of representation of the USA image in the magazine ìDadzisî [The Thistle] and ìDad'a kalend,rsî [The Thistle Almanac] using imagological and cultural-historical approaches. The research focuses on the textual and visual representations of the phenomenon under study both in feuilletons and caricatures created by Latvian and foreign authors and published in the 1960s Latvian satire. The study reveals that the static image of the USA consisting of a certain ìsetî of stereotypes was implanted in the Latvian society of the above-mentioned period and later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First modern comic book works have been published in the early 20th century in America. Then spread to other countries in a short time and this new genre becomes so popular. The first works of modern comics in Kurdish literature emerged 100 years later. One of the first examples of comics in Kurdish is Ali Husen Kerim's Mirina Jaro. In this regard, we think that this work is worth to study. For this purpose, we have searched Kurdish newspaper, magazine and other works by using source search method. Firstly, we gave information about the history and formation of comics. Then, according to three Kurdish dialects (Kurmancî, Soranî, Zazakî), we briefly examined the drawing, drawing art and cartoon samples in Kurdish literature and press. At the end, we analysed the Mirina Jaro in terms of comic book features; how the its plot is, how can it be evaluated in terms of features of comic book, its similarities with other comic books and what are the differences from them, how language, space and time were used. We have found that the basic elements of comic theory were not used in Mirina Jaro. So it's more like an illustration or a picture book for children than a comic book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Satire is a subtle type of figurative discourse and is still relatively under-studied from the perspective of figurative language researchers. The purpose of this study is to investigate cognitive, demographic, and pragmatic factors previously suggested to influence satire processing and comprehension but which have yet to be studied using behavioral methods. Specifically, this study examines Need for Cognition (NFC; the desire to engage in cognitively difficult tasks), general knowledge, demographic measures such as language background, and affective perceptions of humor, sincerity, and positivity. Sixty-one participants (32 non-native English speakers) read satirical and non-satirical news reports taken from The Onion and Science Daily , respectively, both published in the United States. Perceptions of sincerity, humor, and positivity, reading times, and written interpretations of the intended meaning for each text were recorded. Results from statistical analyses suggested NFC significantly influenced satirical text reading times. Moreover, language background and perceptions of sincerity significantly influenced satire comprehension. These results highlight an interplay between individual differences during satire processing and comprehension, and work to validate some, but not all, theoretical predictions for satire processing and comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored whether satire (an emotional blend of humor/indignation) can minimize the emotional tradeoffs researchers have documented for humorous appeals about climate change. Using a sample of U.S. young adults, we conducted a 2 (humor: present/absent) × 2 (indignation: present/absent) + 1 (control) experiment in which we manipulated a climate change segment from Jimmy Kimmel Live! Our evidence suggests that it is possible for a late-night host to affect young adults' climate change risk perception and behavioral intentions under certain conditions. Moderation analyses indicated that avoiding humor helped close the partisan gap in risk perception between Republicans and Democrats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bill Cosby's immorality has raised intriguing aesthetic and ethical issues. Do the crimes that he has been convicted of lessen the aesthetic value of his stand-up and, even if we can enjoy it, should we? This article first discusses the intimate relationship between the comedian and audience. The art form itself is structurally intimate, and at the same time the comedian claims to express an authentic self on stage. After drawing an analogy between the question of the moral character of comedians and the aesthetic value of their stand-up and the debate over the ethical criticism of art, this article argues that it is reasonable to find a comedian's performance less funny, because stand-up's artistic success relies on this intimacy. It contrasts the comedy of Bill Cosby with that of Louis C.K. whose moral flaws are much more present in his comedy, and it is therefore more difficult to find him funny. Last, it is ethically permissible to enjoy their comedy, if no harm to others results, both because it does not corrupt the audience's character and because amusement is valuable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1866, America's most widely circulating newspaper the New York Herald published an extended satire directed at Henry Bergh and his newly established American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the first animal protection organization to be established in the United States. This article takes the Herald authors' decision to satirize the animal protection movement by framing it in terms of animal 'rights' as an opportunity to consider the challenges associated with that frame. Weighing the ease with which the movement could be ridiculed through the concept of rights and the broader discursive landscape connected to the rights of blacks and of women in the wake of the Civil War, it argues that animal rights was far more useful as a framing strategy to the critics of the animal protection movement than it was to its proponents. In turn, the article suggests that the challenges associated with the concept of animal rights that are revealed in this satire help to explain the dominance for much of the movement's history of the animal welfare frame over that of animal rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking its cue from the observation that forms of aggressive humor directed against the political figure Donald Trump are not an ephemeral aspect of contemporary American politics but have been firmly embedded in American cultural discourse for more than two years, this article will explore the ways in which comedians, journalists and other contemporary observers have described and commented on the role and functions of humor and comedy with regard to the Trump phenomenon in the context of the 2016 presidential elections and its aftermath. Drawing on a selection of material from established online news resources the essay will document how popular media outlets have presented the nation's most prominent late-night comedy as an arena in which the format's popular hosts deploy humor in an attempt to undermine Trump's status and ultimately to end his foray onto America's highest political sphere. The article will then trace the popularity of the idea that political humor is subversive in the tradition of the country's intellectual history and check it against a selection of empirical studies devoted to the topic. In this context it will become apparent that the belief in the corrective power of humor is deeply ingrained in the American popular imagination and is being perpetuated by contemporary reports and comments in important segments of the media landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2016 campaign for the U.S. Presidency revealed, and confirmed, the new turn that the role of emotions play in the present political landscape across the globe. The big happening wasn't so much the relation between emotions and politics but more the scale and overwhelming strategic use of negative emotions in the political debate. Understanding emotions as underlying the rationality process, involves cognitive and strategic consequences and, to the limit, their influence in decision-making. Politics always operated in this ambivalence and political campaign strategists are particularly concerned with the timing where these operators must be more effi- ciently communicated. This has been a well-known recipe used in mild doses and with the focus on a balanced performance. The political campaign for the U.S. Presidency in 2016 seems to follow this general rule but also introduces a particular novelty: the extensive use of negativity in the debate. In the impossibility of covering all the contours of the problem at hand we will focus on the Trump campaign, since it was one of transgression, which made use of aggressive tactics regarding common sense ideas, political correctness and taboo issues. Regarding Trump´s campaign as one of management of the provocateur factor, we will try to present the two main emotional ingredients that supported a campaign established in an efficient use of timing, media and boredom. The first emotion in analysis will be fear. This implies exploiting one of the most powerful tools in the political emotion pallet. The main derivatives could be aggression, violence, hate and resentment. The second emotion in focus will be contempt. This means the discussion of ad hominem attacks and the power of humor through scorn and mockery. In general, our goal will be to map the negative up rise in political emotionality and its strategic use in the campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the vernacular, parodic response to one example of fake news, the "Bowling Green Massacre." Much of this was posted on the internet, including photo-based memes, tweets, songs, and faux survivor interviews. Although such internet folklore is often seen as unrelated to place, in this case, there were many place-based references, and the response in Bowling Green, Kentucky, also included community celebrations. These responses form a complex web of counter-narratives that claim agency in the face of "fake" narratives emanating from the Trump administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the cultural politics of 21st century satire, particularly as used in U.S. politics. Topics discussed include the factors behind the emergence of U.S. politics-focused satire or humor, the reasons why Australia and New Zealand are appreciative of the humor and comic elements underpinning 21st century U.S. popular culture despite remaining outside the U.S. political context and the ways in which the use of satire may result in failure in getting political ideas across.

Given the discourse surrounding immigration in the 2016 presidential election, this article inquires how Jesus's teachings regarding nonresistance to evil and love of enemies (Matthew 5:38-48) may look from a Christian immigrant perspective. The article suggests that there are several possibilities. First, the article investigates peace church perspectives on the Sermon. Second, taking a cue from the Sermon's hyperbolic speech, the article explores reading the Sermon as satire. Finally, the article explores this passage as a "text of terror" and concludes that each of these paradigms offer both strengths and drawbacks given the diversity of immigrant experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss the career of U.S. satirist and lecturer Artemus Ward and his program on the Mormons. They mention Ward's visit to Utah and interactions with Mormons, there, his subsequent lecture series in the U.S. and Great Britain on the Mormons, and how the lectures influenced the opinion of Mormons.

Critical scholarship on pro-environmental and dark green religious themes in popular culture must engage more directly with that culture's means of production. To make this argument, I first draw on Bron Taylor's theory of 'dark green religion' as a foundation for articulating the sacredness underlying the call to deep ecological ethics. Reflecting on the means of mass mediating that message provides us with an opportunity to critically evaluate the challenges of ecological ethics in late capitalist society. Second, through analyzing two of the most popular sitcoms of the last twenty years--The Simpsons and South Park--I contend that the task of articulating dark green ethics through mass media is inherently challenged by the capitalist modes of production that make opposition to them possible. While other scholars have been hopeful about these programs' ecological statements, I argue that the programs are inherently hampered by their reliance on consumer capitalism and its modes of production. In conclusion, I provide a warning for those who would perform ecological ethics in the contemporary media sphere and offer a way to build towards potential alternative paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, anticipated many aspects of Donald J. Trump's 2016 campaign and election in his 1935 satirical dystopia,It Can't Happen Here. It was his most popular novel to date and is still satisfying, thought-provoking political theater. Lewis was influenced by growing totalitarianism in Europe, reported on by his second wife, foreign correspondent, Dorothy Thompson. Noting the power of Father Coughlin and Huey Long, among others, to mobilize a public still suffering from the Great Depression, Lewis feared a fascist takeover of the American government by democratic means. Lewis's fictional nightmare features a loutish, ignorant demagogue, who is manipulated by a sinister ghostwriter adviser. With support from a resentful League of Forgotten Men, the demagogue is elected President and quickly establishes a military, racist, and anti-Semitic dictatorship.It Can't Happen Heredramatizes the dire consequences of this takeover, which is not taken seriously at first by Lewis's newspaper editor protagonist, but then is increasingly resisted. Lewis is a social satirist in the Mark Twain tradition, and his novel is worth reading today for its suggestive parallels with current history and its good-hearted humor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author discusses the work of Cuban cartoonist Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo. He presents a series of political cartoons drawn by Hernandez while he was in a U.S. prison, mentions Hernandez' role in Cuban espionage in the U.S., and describes his life since being released from prison and returned to Cuba.

The author was drawn to visit the mid-western American conurbation of Minneapolis-St Paul by the long-running radio variety programme, A Prairie Home Companion (1974 - present), which gently satirises small-town rural culture. In a fine example of serendipity, he came across Mickey's Diner, a traditional fast-food outlet that has operated in the same location continuously for almost 78 years. This became a springboard for examining the history of a uniquely American institution and its relevance to today's cuisine and culture. It was also the chance to look at a city with a population only slightly less than that of Melbourne in a state proud of its rural and Scandinavian heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyzes Stephen Colbert’s 2012 “out-of-the-box” prank in which he created and operated a legally recognized Super PAC during the 2012 election cycle. Contextualized by the Supreme and District Courts’ decisions to allow unlimited contributions to Super PACs from corporate entities, Colbert’s prank took advantage of a loophole in campaign finance law to extend his character’s parody into the most sacred realm of American politics—the elections themselves. Drawing on Kenneth Burke’s notion of the comic frame and rhetorical conceptualizations of citizenship, I argue that Colbert’s Super PAC antics permitted his character to perform citizenship. The resulting performance constitutes a model, the citizen-fool, as a potential comic corrective for overly tragic manifestations of democratic political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The current research assessed whether political satire viewing could indirectly promote interpersonal talk about politics by eliciting emotions. The theoretical model was tested utilizing both experimental and survey designs. The findings indicated good agreement, demonstrating that negative emotions significantly mediate and reinforce the effect of political satire viewing on interpersonal talk. Conversely, the process wherein traditional news sources motivate interpersonal talk is mostly direct, with little development of affective responses. The results suggest that political satire can help to paint a sanguine picture of a healthy deliberative democracy mainly through an affective rather than cognitive route. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comic journal Vanity Fair (1859–63) derived much of its early success from the work of a small but talented group of artists and writers with active ties to New York’s Bohemian community. One of the journal’s earliest and most sustained targets was the much maligned figure of the counter jumper, a male sales clerk in a dry goods establishment and a new urban type. In the first six months of its existence, Vanity Fair produced nearly two dozen essays, poems, drawings, and cartoons satirizing the social, sexual, and economic vulnerabilities of the counter jumper. Within the complex web of associations that clustered around the stereotype of the counter jumper, Vanity Fair took particular aim at issues of identity, effeminacy, and social injustice. The journal’s verbal and visual thrusts knowingly targeted a figure whose marginalized position mirrored, in a surprising number of ways, the marginalized existence and often subversive behavior of members of their own Bohemian community. Through an artful combination of humor, condescension, and self-mockery, Vanity Fair marshaled a vigorous and wide-ranging campaign that ensnared in its web the writer Fitz-James O’Brien, author of several of the satires, and Walt Whitman, a comrade in arms within the city’s Bohemian community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the political satire of Nova Scotian writer and politician Thomas Chandler Haliburton through the lens of early nineteenth-century transatlantic debates over reform and the best form of government. Haliburton’s Sam Slick sketches, featuring a charismatic Yankee commenting on global political affairs, were immensely popular at the time, being published and read in Britain, Canada, and the US. The following pages argue that Haliburton’s portrayal of American culture is informed by his negative views on popular democracy and on its relationship with the nascent industrial capitalism transforming North America. Haliburton’s political satire was meant to persuade colonial readers that the introduction of American-style elective institutions in Nova Scotia had the potential to radically alter British North American culture, and push the colonies out of the orbit of the Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses the American political activist group Veterans of Future Wars, established in 1936 by a group of Princeton University college students led by Lewis Jefferson Gorin Jr. The group used satire in their manifesto published in the periodical "Daily Princetonian" to promote the payment of a bonus to men eligible for the draft, who would eventually be called for future military service in Europe and should be allowed to enjoy veteran benefits before their military service rendered them disabled or dead. The student activists gained in popularity across the U.S. and became a leading antiwar organization for a few brief months before disintegrating.

Satire is recognized by scholars as having an essential function in a free society. In the 1960s, political and social satire broadcast on over-the-air on radio stations in the United States was a popular and vibrant public mode of cultural subversion. Scholarship has focused mainly on TV, print, and online satire but has yet to examine the form and function of historic radio satire. This exploratory study attempts to bridge this paucity of scholarship with regard to the factors that produced the Golden Age of Radio Satire, and what role satire might play in broadcast radio's uncertain future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This project examined comedic representations of US Vice President Joe Biden to analyze persona rhetoric in a media environment filled with circulating personae, or the many roles both created by and attributed to such figures. While sometimes supportive of the politician's intended roles, we found that circulating personae can disrupt the first persona, complicate the invitations and control exerted over the second persona, propel strategic and non-strategic authorships deflecting or silencing a third persona, and provide an undertow of multiple meanings supplementing a fourth persona. Several implications are drawn, including how circulating personae may neuter roles important to political rhetoric and public culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores the popularity and significance of the 1871 novel "The Coming Race" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Topics discussed include the novel's satiric treatment of American democracy and feminist ideas and its optimistically reimagination of the structure of Great Britain's white settler empire. It is suggested that the novel deals with a concern about the relation between international politics and the structure of the British Empire.

An essay is presented that offers literary criticism of the seven-volume novel "Modern Chivalry," by Hugh Henry Brackenridge, in relation to the role of fiction in the public sphere of the early American Republic. Topics include the views of philosopher Jürgen Habermas on the distinction between the literary public sphere and the political public sphere, the roles of fictionality and satire in the novel, and the critique of journalism in the novel.