Colbert and Satire

I don't it's directly relevant to The Wolf of Wall Street, but I thought a lot about the coverage of #CancelColbert after our discussion on satire. Prior to the outbreak of #CancelColbert, someone on The Colbert Report's media team tweeted: "I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever." In response, activist and writer Suey Park to tweeted, "The Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals has decided to call for #CancelColbert. Trend it," which ignited an uproar in the Twittersphere.

Anyway, I found two articles that critiqued the satire of The Colbert Report, both of them analyzing the discomfort and possible dangers–if that's the right word– of satire. Below are some relevant quotes.

Jay Caspian Kang writes:

"If I were to predict which minority group the writers of a show like “The Colbert Report” would choose for an edgy, epithet-laden parody, I’d grimace and prepare myself for some joke about rice, karate, or broken English. The resulting discomfort has nothing to do with the intentions of the joke or the political views of the people laughing at it. Even when you want to be in on the joke—and you understand, intellectually, that you are not the one being ridiculed—it’s hard not to wonder why these jokes always come at the expense of those least likely to protest."

In her piece, Michelle Medina contends:

"While its often noted that comedy is a vehicle for change; it also works to facilitate stagnation.  Humor acts as a catharsis for many people’s internalized prejudices that can’t be freely expressed in ‘polite society’ but can be expressed in the socially acceptable medium of laughter (‘because we didn’t mean it’)."