This analysis on why cartoons make great satire is indeed excellent but also very wordy and tends to go into a lot of ideas that can be easily simplified. In life there are ideals that people like to live by and the reality that they HAVE to live with. The space between them that acts as a kind of transition from one to the other is where satire resides, and what satire is, technically, can be explained by stating that it’s a way to make fun of just about every facet of life, which would include the idealism and the reality of what people go through on a daily basis.
Satire is basically the result of an effort to make fun of everyday existence in a way that might make people laugh and forget the hustle and bustle of the daily grind that they must go through. The reason why cartoons are such great satire is that they still straddle the line between idealism and reality but they’re far more adaptable in terms of how they’re used to provide said satire. Cartoons have few if any real boundaries as they’re not real in the sense that a live-action sitcom would be considered as real and they can as a result go far beyond the bounds of reality than anything else.
A good accounting of satire in live-action would be Married…With Children. The show was a wonderful blend of the hopelessness that the Bundy’s lived with as a family below the poverty level and the comedy that came from their realization of this fact. While the show was denounced by many people and almost taken off the air a couple of times before its final season it still provided a lot of laughs by pushing the envelope and going over the top. Some of the things that happened in the show would best be classified as cartoon satire within a live-action setting since in real life many of the actions that were performed would kill a real person.
That’s why cartoons are the preferred medium for satire, because their limits can be extended without having to worry over whether the audience will believe what happens. Family Guy, American Dad!, The Boondocks, South Park, and yes, Rick and Morty, are all good examples of satire. They continually push every possible boundary and yet people continue to watch them because cartoons are expected to be outlandish and somehow unbelievable. It’s one of the many premises that any good cartoon will follow if they desire a fan base.
Children are also a useful tool in satire since in cartoons they are often seen as innocent or even just valuable as a means of passing along a message in a way that is seen as non-threatening and even preferable to anything an adult character might do. Kids are allowed to break the rules due to their youthful ignorance and are even allowed to challenge the status quo since they are still young and don’t know the way of the world just yet. More or less, satire is about challenging the way the world works in a fun and engaging way.
Follow Us
