5 Precise Ways to Reach Your Audience - Satires

Part 4: Satires Provoke

Satires make us uncomfortable. That is their purpose. They are not meant to lull us or inspire us into change—it’s more like a slap—a wake-up call. Satires may still use humor (or horror, in the case of a Dark Satire), but it is more pointed and even painful. Perhaps a person who writes a Satire has tried other Kinds of stories, and still seeing the lack of needed action, becomes jaded or emboldened to write something harder to ignore. That’s one thing you can say about Satires—they get attention. Satires are sneaky too. They are full of hidden agendas and purposes. They will offer you one thing, but then surprise you with something else altogether. They make their point with a sucker punch.

There are two ways to create change. One is through slow and steady work from within the system. The other is more revolutionary—burn the system to the ground and rebuild. Satires tend to be in the second camp.

Use a Satire to wake up your audience—
to agitate them into action.

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room."
~President Merkin Muffley, Dr. Strangelove

“Only the meek get pinched. The bold survive.”
Ferris Bueller, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

“When you get a different vantage point, it changes your perspective...
It allows us to see things that maybe we should have seen a long time ago.”
~Neil Armstrong, First Man

“How do we even talk to each other? What’ve we done to ourselves? How do we fix it?”
~Randall Mindy, Don’t Look Up