Abstract
Despite several claims on the political inconsequence and moral ambivalence of humor and satire, I contend that satire can be employed to raise environmental awareness, which requires ethical and political responsibility, and foreground environmental concerns among people and policy makers. South Park is investigated to illustrate how an alliance between satire and environmentalism can further environmental causes. The show’s environmental satire happens at three levels: direct environmental satire aiming to promote environmental ethics and encourage change; satire directed against environmentalists; and satire linking environmental issues with other adjacent concerns including politics, economy, culture, race, ethnicity, science and religion.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, B. C. (2005). South Park conservatives: The revolt against liberal media bias. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing.
Arp, R. (Ed.). (2007). South Park and philosophy: You know, I learned something today. Malden: Blackwell.
Arp, R., & Decker, K. S. (Eds.). (2013). The ultimate South Park and philosophy: Respect my philosophah!. Malden: Wiley Blackwell.
Bakhtin, M. (1984). Rabelais and his world (H. Iswolsky, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Billig, M. (2005). Laughter and ridicule: Towards a social critique of humour. London: Sage Publications.
Bogel, F. V. (2001). The difference satire makes. London: Cornell University Press.
Branch, M. P. (2014). Are you serious? A modest proposal for environmental humor. In G. Garrard (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of ecocriticism (pp. 378–391). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cogan, B. (2012). Deconstructing South Park: Critical examinations of animated transgression. Plymouth: Lexington Books.
DiCaglio, J. (2015). Ironic ecology. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 22(3), 447–465.
Frim, D. J. (2014). Pseudo-satire and evasion of ideological meaning in South Park. Popular Culture, 36(2), 149–171.
Geybels, H., & Van Herck, W. (Eds.). (2011). Humour and religion: Challenges and ambiguities. London and New York: Continuum.
Gilhus, I. S. (2004). Laughing gods, weeping virgins: Laughter in the history of religion. London: Routledge.
Green, V. (2011). Critique, counternarratives, and ironic intervention in South Park and Stephen Colbert. In T. Gournelos & V. Green (Eds.), A decade of dark humor: How comedy, irony, and satire shaped post-9/11 America (pp. 119–136). Jackson: University of Mississippi.
Halsall, A. (2008). “Bigger longer & uncut”: South Park and the carnivalesque. In J. A. Weinstock (Ed.), Taking South Park seriously (pp. 23–37). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Hazlitt, W. (1987). Lectures on the English comic writers. In J. Morreall (Ed.), The philosophy of humor and laughter (pp. 65–82). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Marshall, A. (2013). The practice of satire in England, 1658–1770. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Morreall, J. (1983). Taking laughter seriously. Albany: State University of New York.
Morreall, J. (1999). Comedy, tragedy, and religion. Albany: State University of New York.
Morreall, J. (2008). Philosophy and religion. In V. Raskin (Ed.), The primer of humor research (pp. 211–242). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
New Yorker Cartoons—Environment Art. https://condenaststore.com/collections/new+yorker+cartoons/environment.
Parker, T. & Stone, M. (1997–2017). South Park.
Peiffer, K. S. (2000). Coyote at large: Humor in American nature writing. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press.
Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
Sienkiewicz, M., & Marx, N. (2009). Beyond a cutout world: Ethnic humor and discursive integration in South Park. Journal of Film and Video, 61(2), 5–18.
The Bible: King James version. Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf Editions.
Thompson, E. (2009). Good demo, bad taste: South Park as carnivalesque satire. In J. Gray, J. P. Jones, & E. Thompson (Eds.), Satire TV: Politics and comedy in the post-network era (pp. 213–232). New York: New York University Press.
Topitsch, E. (1959). World interpretation and self-interpretation: Some basic patterns. Daedalus, 88(2), 312–325.
Weinstock, J. A. (2008). Taking South Park seriously. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Zekavat, M. (2014). A discursive model of satire. JESELL (Jena Electronic Studies in English Language and Literature). http://zs.thulb.uni-jena.de/receive/jportal_jparticle_00324293. Accessed December 20, 2018.
Zekavat, M. (2017). Satire, humor and construction of identities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor Scott Slovic and Professor Brennan Thomas for their helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zekavat, M. Satire, humor and ecological thought. Neohelicon 46, 369–386 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-018-00471-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-018-00471-0