Satire
Vol. 5, No. 3, 1985
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Satire
Heresies Vol. 5, No. 2, 1985
The Issue 19 Collective
Editorial Collective: Emma Amos, Day Gleeson, Avis Lang, Ellen Lanyon
Design/Production: Day Gleeson, Kathie Brown
From the Issue 19 Collective
Satire, like caricature, must above all be intelligent, insolent, precise, and funny. It must be merciless, unrepentant, probing, and distressing to its targets. It's not sledgehammer slapstick, it’s not sheer insult, and it’s not gags. Satire is eminently sociological; without a point of view or an analysis, one cannot produce it. Caricature takes aim at an individual, occasionally resulting in lawsuits when the revelation of character is too accurate and too unmistakable, but satire takes aim at a chunk of the social or cultural order, and at its most effective, it may even (in certain times and places) be an aid to elimination, an enema in the polluted channels of the Establishment. Satire, like feminism, envisions change. Always, however, there must be wit as well as incisiveness—a rare combiñation, and one we encountered infrequently during our work on this issue.
Brevity being considered the soul of one-half the aforementioned combination, we will burden you neither with ponderous taxonomies of humor nor elaborate apologies for what is not present in our allotment of 32 pages and why. We wish you some good laughs over what is present, and hope that next time some fool gives vent within earshot to the pronouncement that feminists are all grim and humorless, you will have a suitable rejoinder ready to hurl.