Satire – An Effective Tool To Fight Hatred & Political Hypocrisy!
By Lukman Harees –July 31, 2016
Lukman Harees
‘Satire is traditionally the weapon of the Powerless against the Powerful’ –Molly Ivins
Satire is a technique employed by writers to expose and criticize foolishness and corruption of an individual or a society by using humour, irony, exaggeration or ridicule. Political satire is ridicule dedicated to exposing the difference between appearance and reality in public life. The justification for this mockery, going back to Aristotle, is that by holding bad behavior up to ridicule we might, as it were, “laugh folly out of existence.” . Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. Satire is nowadays found in many artistic forms of expression, including literature, plays, commentary, television shows, and media such as song lyrics.
In the Western world, satire is being put to effective use in exposing political hypocrisy, stupidity and corruption and it works. In Sri Lanka too satire plays a similar role through medias such as theatre dramas, newspaper columns, cartoons and songs to highlight many social evils, but comparatively in lesser blatant ways perhaps for reasons of fear of reprisals. Ranjini Obeysekere in her book ‘Sri Lankan Theatre in a time of terror: Political Satire in a permitted space’ says : In Sri Lanka, satirical performances were not traditionally considered to be politically disruptive. Rather, they were read as comic interludes in ritual performances… Sinhala performers have always been able to express satire, ridicule, lampooning, by means of ritual…Theatre in modern day Sri Lanka satirizes contemporary politicians who behave like despotic kings of the past. Theatre people gets a reprieve that is denied to other activists working outside the theatre..’
In current times, making fun of those wielding power in newspaper columns can however be especially dangerous when big egos are bruised or vested interests feel threatened. Precise the reason why very few of our satirists directly take on the incumbent head of state, whoever is holding office! Political cartoonists venture a bit further, while however observing self-imposed limits. Never mind the notorious MR regime when political satire was really hazardous due to white van syndrome and other caveats, even after Yahapalanaya came to power , despite many improvements it was awful to see PM Ranil warning the journalists about what they should and should not write.
