I’ve always had a problem with satire. For a mind like mine, made of fundamentals and principles, satire was ever too blurry, hard to pinpoint.
If something like body shaming in universally wrong, why it is generally widely accepted as satire? Even historically, but also in modern times? Maybe you do remember all the controversies about Charlie Hebdo. Where is the line drawn?
There are certain groups of people that are sensible to certain topics. In general you make sure to avoid bringing them up, with a specific audience. But in the case of the internet a message doesn’t simply reach its intended target, it has the potential to reach everyone. So does this mean we avoid everything that can potentially offend someone out there, since everyone is potentially present? Of course not, it’s not even practical.
Something similar happens with “pronouns.” It’s absolutely okay to misgender someone by mistake. But if you then get corrected and refuse to acknowledge it, then you immediately are at fault. This becomes an attack, a deliberate offense that needs a strong response. Not so many people agree here. For some, the content of something said can already be at fault, universally wrong and to be condemned. But for me instead the distinct dividing line is on intent. Intentional, deliberate offense or not.
But intent does not solve satire, where the intent is often to explicitly INSULT. And yet we say it’s fine.
Well, all this until I figured out what satire actually is. It’s now a solved problem.
The way I understand it now, is that satire is not a problem of content. Whether what is being said is allowed or not. Because again, if that was the case you’d end up with too much ambiguity. Ambiguity that instead goes completely away when you realize what satire TRULY is: a contextual message.
That’s why body shaming, that would be unambiguously wrong as content, becomes totally accepted in the context of satire (not fully, it still retains moral implications, but lets say it stays lawful). This because satire doesn’t define a content, but a context. The relationship between who says something, and who’s the target.
Satire defines a message that ALWAYS has a “bottom up” trajectory. This is the line of distinction. It always origins from someone (or a group of people) who are vulnerable, toward someone who holds the power. That’s why, as a society, we accept it. Because it is a category outside judgement, regulated as a form of universal balance: even if a person is attacked, mocked, insulted… maybe even hurt, it will always be someone in a position of greater power. If money defines not happiness but a multiplication of possibilities (if you get ill you can die even if you’re rich, but being rich multiplies your chances of survival), then the satirical power is a power of destabilization for more stability. And if positions get reversed, then even application of rules get reversed.
A thing REVERSIBLE in application, but UNMOVABLE in its principle. It’s specifically one of those absolute “weak makes right” rules.
This is also why a member of the parliament cannot mock and insult another member of the parliament. For satire to apply you need a contextual imbalance of power, it doesn’t work between equals.
That’s why powerful men hate satire, it’s something they cannot control because it is defined outside their reach. Unless relying on active censorship.