POLITICAL SATIRE

Sometimes all you can do is laugh. Then again, maybe laughing at the bastards is the first step in keeping them honest. From the time of Aristophanes to Horace and Juvenal, to Swift, and right up to The Simpsons and South Park, or closer to home The Chaser’s War on Everything and the inspired barbs of John Clarke, satirists have been taking the piss, knowing that humour is a form of power that operates effectively from the bottom up.

This strand demonstrates the variety of ways that taking a cheap laugh at the expense of the powerful has been both an important part of film history and, increasingly, of the way political processes operate. Classic works by Chaplin and Kubrick demonstrate the tough-mindedness needed to laugh at the madness of the twentieth century, while Michel Hazanivicius’s award-winning secret agent satire suggests a strong continental European tradition of satire.

Michael Moore has undoubtedly changed the landscape of popular political discourse in the U.S. and our documentary on Al Franken is an exploration of the role played by satire in contemporary American politics. See also Mike Reiss’s forum on The Simpsons Family Values (in the Animation section) for an insider’s view on how animators take the mickey.