Historical Advice for the Hesitant 21c. Autocrat
Advisor: Christian Brady
Internship Location: The Onion
Onsite Mentor: Hannah Wolansky
The 1900s was an insane time for people. Most individuals lived through a World War, saw their country split up by foreign nations, and sat through immense cultural and technological change. Authoritarian regimes rose out of this tumult, with leaders like Mussolini in Italy, Idi Amin in Uganda, and Raphael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic all taking power in the mid-1900s. With the advent of international humanitarian organizations and the United Nations, however, democracy seemed to reign supreme again by the turn of the century. This is once again changing, though. Putin’s Russia, for example, is balancing eerily on the precipice between “informational autocracy” and becoming an overtly violent dictatorship. That’s why, for my senior project, I will be examining infamous leaders and events from the 20th c. and writing about the uncanny similarities they share with many contemporary politicians. My writing will largely be satirical, as not everyone is a history nerd, so gilding my research in humor will hopefully be more palatable. My work is intended to educate people on history so they can make more informed political decisions in the modern day.
Project Blog
Week 1: A Final Overview Before the Fun Starts
Happy time of day to you all! Welcome to my blog and have a lovely read :-)
As mentioned in my description, my project will involve writing satirical articles on political leaders and key situations from the 20th century till today. Hopefully, with the knowledge of past political successes and failures, individuals will be more equipped to parse through all the sensationalist news rife in contemporary media. Because, as much as you’re tired of hearing your grandparents regale you stories from ‘back in the day’, they did wonderful or regrettable stuff in the 1950s just so you could make more informed political decisions in the modern day.
The Comedy Bit
After a long day, whether that’s from working 12 hours or scrolling through instagram on your part time job, people like to decompress with some light entertainment. So, to grasp what little energy people have to spend on academic topics, I’ll be imbuing as much humour in my writing as possible. A lot of inspiration for my project came from reading immense amounts of Onion articles from their 2001 omnibus “Dispatches From the Tenth Circle”. In it, there's a funny article where Clinton approves of a new tiered citizenship scheme (much like airplane seats); It’s amusing, but does provide legitimate commentary on the “second class” treatment some citizens are given because of their socioeconomic status, race etc.
I haven’t decided what exact tone my project will take (E.G. Horatian, Juvenalian) but my aim is to explore as many types as possible in the next few months and find what gels with me the most. My next post will list more comedians/satirical works that I find acceptably amusing.
The Historical Bit
My two main aims for the historical research part of my project are to: 1) be as international as possible and 2) reduce my bias as much as possible. So far, I have used YouTube and Wikipedia as initial sources of intrigue. I don’t just want to stick to the eurocentric dictators I have already learned about, and it’s much easier to find info on relatively unknown political leaders on those sites rather than in libraries. YouTube and Wikipedia are obviously not the most reliable sources, so once I have a name/event I turn to places like JSTOR for all my future research.
Some overarching concepts I’ll explore include:
How autocracies came to be
How dictators use media and/or violence to perpetuate their power
How different nations have overthrown their leaders.
It’s hard to be completely bias-free, but for all the people/events I research, I will only write about them if I find documentation from multiple sources and the context surrounding it. For example, just last week, I was researching the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its core leader, Jose Maria Sison. I started drafting a piece that satirized the CPP for killing many of its own members, because they feared spies, but neglected to note that the CPP was not in power at the time. The Philippines was governed then by a military dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, who was brutal, and caused a lot of trouble for the CPP- likely making the CPP more fearful than usual. The setting where someone acts means a lot, and I will try my best to discover that in my research.
Closing Thoughts
If you just had a long, busy day at work and want to de-stress by reading some dense historical literature, then I highly recommend these (all taken from the research I conducted last week):
*Informational Autocrats (Sergei Guriev & Daniel Treisman)*
*Regime Change Without Military Force: Lessons from Overthrowing Milosevic (Gregory Schulte)*
*The Military and The Fragile Democracy of the Philippines (Viberto Selochan)*
*Trump's Speech at CPAC 2024*
Have a lovely day everyone 8-)
Post 2: Funny Things by Funny People
Happy 8:20AM everyone!
As mentioned in my intro post, my project is all about exploring comedy, so I have compiled a completely non-exhaustive list of satirical works I have enjoyed. All of the following works made me laugh (Excluding “A Modest Proposal”. Slaughtering/canning children is something, I am proud to say, I do not find funny) and had solid critiques of society within them.
I have provided links where I can, but for some of these you may have to finally surrender yourself to the relentless deluge of NordVPN ads and sign up for a free trial.
The List
Mocks sensationalist/incompetent media corps. Lots of amusing cliches get poked fun at :)!
Yes Minister "The Whiskey Priest"
Mocks politicians and self-centred bureaucracy. My poor guy Minister Hacker gets more and more broken down each episode.
A Modest Proposal- Jonathan Swift
Points out the complete lack of empathy of the rich in Ireland/Britain. The first half is so serious you almost believe Swift’s words
Jokes about cultural conceptions about age and maturity.
How to Grift the Super Rich pt.1- Jonny and the Baptists
Mocks elitist, consumer culture and is wonderfully absurd.
Cultural Observations: People That Read Books in Public- Meditations from the Anxious Mind
Gently mocks people who commit to hobbies for attention→ those that take the video seriously.
Week 2: Having Fun Writing for Myself but, Haha, External Rules Still Apply
Salutations, and happy 90th birthday to Yuri Gagarin.
TL;DR
1. Violence + Information used to control people
2. First satire piece (news article about Trump taking Math classes because he can’t get his facts straight) is complete!
3. Couldn’t submit it anywhere because it was a news satire piece :(
4. Figuring out new styles of satire that fit into what comedy sites accept more frequently
What I Found
Some journals I looked at:
>>Chp 5: Smashing the Enemies: The organization of violence in Democratic Kampuchea
>>Russian and African Media: Exercising Soft Power
>>The Rise of the Stalin Personality Cult
>>A Veil of Legality- Trujillo Dictatorship
Central Themes:
Leaders with total power can either use their control over the dissemination/content of information or over the military to perpetuate their position. E.G. You either trick someone into thinking you are doing what’s right for the country or you bully them into not saying anything . More information for nerds at the end of the post.
**Side Note**
Although not mentioned in my list, I did spend a lot of time scrolling through current news (AP, Reuters, BBC) especially focusing on Russia, Ukraine, and Eritrea. Russia and Eritrea rule in disturbingly authoritarian ways similar to the likes of Idi Amin, Pol Pot, and Stalin…
What I Created
I finished my first satire piece!
I am still deciding how I am going to share them to the world (concerns of anonymity, publishing etc.), but I can say what it’s about :) ! It's styled as a news article that's covering the story of how Trump is being forced into after school math classes to remediate his math skills- as his constant “mixing up” of numbers is getting him in trouble with some of his big party donors.
It was inspired by the fact checking that I did last week about everything Trump said in his CPAC speech. Out of the few facts he did manage to say, most of them were completely false or largely inaccurate. It’s wild how desensitized the individuals/the media have become to Trump outright lying so I made my piece dedicated to that. The tone is understated throughout, and the individuals quoted in the article frame trump's consistent lies as accidental rather than purposeful.
Issues
The list of comedy sites that take unsolicited satire submissions:
* The Belladonna
* Points in Case
* Mcsweeneys
* Feathertale
The list of comedy sites that take unsolicited ‘NEWS SATIRE’ submissions:
* …
As you can see that was a bit of a problem. Apparently all of the sites I mentioned are too in awe of The Onion and Reductress to be willing to accept news satire pieces. McSweeney’s, under “Some Reasons We Might Dislike your Submission”, even humbly said, “Your submission was formatted like a news article. (There is another website that does this sort of thing much better than we ever could)”. So after a quick angst-filled moment where I raged at this horrific injustice, I started rewriting some of my other drafts to be in style that most of the aforementioned sites accept.
Here are a couple of my rough ideas:
>>Putin turns corporate- written as an email acceptance letter, describes how what Putin has done to control the spread of information
>> Advertising convention- posthumously awards to dictators for their contributions to further the field of ((propaganda)) marketing
>>Rose Colored glasses by Oakley- mocks the "good old days' rhetoric that modern and antiquated leaders use to spread dissatisfaction among people
Extra Summaries of Dictator Exploits
Raphael Trujillo
Trujillo (who I researched more wk 1 too) was fascinating because he managed to rewrite the whole history of Haitian-Dominican race relations. He hated the limited power he had over the local governors in the Dominican Republic; The local governors refused to abide by Trujillo’s demands to arrest and deport/force Haitians to work on sugar plantations, as they rightly believed it to be unconstitutional. Rural Dominicans and Haitians got along relatively well due to the natural intermingling that occurred along the unenforced Dom-Haiti border. Trujillo’s soldiers killed 10-20 thousand Haitians and people of Haitian descent in the Dajabon region to scare local leaders into complying with his anti-Haitian policies. To justify his actions, he encouraged many of the already anti-Haitian urban, Dominican intellectuals to rewrite the natural and peaceful diffusion of semi-nomadic Haitian farmers along the Dominican border as a persistent attack on Dominican freedoms.
Khmer Rouge
Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) had a long history of violence as well. The Khmer Rouge rose to power after Cambodia had been severely weakened by US bombings during the Vietnam war (although Cambodia was unaligned, the US bombed their border with Thailand) and began an incredibly oppressive regime. There was a tiered prison system, where depending on your crime (opposing the regime, being a teacher, wearing glasses) you would be sent to reeducation camps or the ultimate S21 prison. 2 million people died during the Khmer Rouge’s reign from starvation and execution. And even after Vietnam invaded and installed their own puppet Marxist party, former members of the Khmer Rouge still stayed in government.
Post 4: Practice and Publishing
Happy not quite Spring everyone!
I have finally gotten around to publishing my first satirical work! As mentioned in last week's post, there was a painful moment where I realized that no comedy websites take unsolicited news satire. I was disappointed but this turned out for the better- it means I was able to publish it on my own blog (using medium).
[Sidenote: Most online writing sites do not accept works that have been previously shown to the internet. They like to be the only place where people can go to find your piece, which is fair enough... ]
I had a couple of concerns I had to parse through before I created my own blog:
1. Privacy
2. I couldn't double submit
3. HTML it or use blogging sites
Privacy
I was mainly concerned about this because I'm writing topical, political satire. Disagreements about politics is natural, but people on the internet are feral, and there is a possibility of someone taking my personal info or being pretty awful. I didn't put my full name on my blog, and I am going to limit the places I share it too as to leave as little a trail as possible. My profile just has my initials and I turned off email replies. But, unfortunately, there's no way for me to completely eliminate all risk.
This is the best I can do for now, but I will keep looking for ways to be even safer!
Double Submissions
I have a few pieces in the works right now that aren't news satire which I will be sending off to comedy sites soon. If/when those pieces get rejected I will then upload onto my Medium page. I quite enjoyed writing in a news satirical style, so I intend to keep making a few, and I will upload those all directly to my blog.
HTML
I really love design and doodling, so my original (ambitious) plan was to create a Neocities website for all my work and posts. My big dream was to style it like a newspaper with 'Current Events', 'History', and 'Eclectic' sections and add some of my drawings to them. I am still working my way through SuperSimpleDev's 6hr HTML/CSS course (because it's pretty fun :) ) but I'm not at the level yet where I feel like my HTML skills match my website design dreams...
Please check out my Medium page to read my first foray into satire!
Week 3: Success with Some Stories!
Many salutations to you all.
Week 3 was pretty successful! Here’s a quick TL;DR of what i did:
1. Completed a 2nd satire piece (in short story format)
2. Completed a 3rd satire piece (in ad format)
3. Published my 1st piece on Medium
Articles of the week
Tracking the Trump Criminal Cases
Ethnic Nationalismi/Genocide in Romania
Happy Birthday to All The Companies Who Love You
Writing
It was nice to take a bit of a break from research this week. I felt comfortable taking a week off from it considering I have 30 pages full of notes at the moment… Next week, however, I’ll get back to looking at historical leaders (like Aleksandar Vucic) as well as current affairs.
I focused so much on writing, because I wanted to get a better feel of my writing style. Since I figured out that news satire isn’t accepted on comedy sites I had to dip my toes into other formats. The piece that I wrote this week, which I have dubbed ‘The Marketers Manifesto’, is more angry and outwardly sarcastic than my Wk 2 story. I wanted to dissect the rise of propaganda and how- because it’s so normalized in our daily lives- it’s harder for us to notice when it’s being used on a political/national scale. I had tried a couple different variations (from job application letters to convention award ceremonies) but they felt too lighthearted. The dictator I wanted to reference in this story, too, was an awful man by the name of Trujillo who was a mastermind at manipulation and committed genocide on thousands of Haitians. Not something I wanted to be tongue-in-cheek about...
Hence the manifesto. I could spin the marketer character to be selfish, power hungry, and repugnant, make some references to consumer culture, and then make him idolize Trujillo.
Publishing
I found equal satisfaction in publishing as I did completing pieces. Drafting, outlining, and researching is great, but it doesn’t have an actual ‘end’ to it. I could easily pour hours more into furthering those and still feel like I hadn’t accomplished/produced anything. (Not saying this is a valid mentality, but it can feel like this!)
So finally deciding on what blogging site to put my articles on was a relief :)!
I had been debating between Medium, Write.as, and Neocities for a while, but settled on the first because of how popular it was. Just the satire tag alone has about 70 thousand usages (I.E. 70 thousand satirical pieces) and it also is home to larger satire ‘publishers’ like GreenerPastures or TheBelladonna.
A great feature Medium has is its “Stats” section where it tracks how many readers, viewers, and commenters a story has had. A goal I have for the future is figuring out a way to attract more attention to my stories (to discover what topics/styles are better engaged with). The best way to do this would be to get my work published on satire sites like TheBelladonna or McSweeney’s. However, that’s not an easy thing to do... There is only one poor guy reviewing all of the submissions McSweeney’s gets, who is overloaded with tons of other brilliant pieces, and I’ve just started out! So my hope is to just get one of my works published.
Closing Thoughts
The more I write, the more submissions I’ll have to turn in, and (hopefully) the better I’ll be. Next week’s plan is to submit the two works I made this week, continue a little bit of light research, and begin planning my bigger piece.
It’s been fun exploring the less strict world of writing, so we’ll see where it takes me :)
Thanks for reading yall, have a lovely rest of your day.
P.S. The hourglass shape my intro took was completely unplanned. Sorry to those of you who find it annoyingly patterny
Week 4: Writer's Block
The accursed writers block has struck. It was entirely unexpected, given my very productive Sunday afternoon, but it was bound to happen eventually. I started off very optimistic on Monday, ready to revamp one of my pieces, but it just wasn’t happening. For the rest of the week the same thing happened. I spent hours trying different formats, different POVs, and looking at other satirists for inspo but to little avail.
On Wednesday I decided to just ditch the Rose Colored Glasses Ad I had been working on for a week. I liked the idea of it (critiquing leaders for making basing speeches on nostalgia/emotion rather than logic) but I didn’t feel it was snappy enough. On Thursday and Friday I looked through other ideas I had been ruminating on my rather lengthy Senior Project Master Doc.
Some of them include:
1. Presidential Olympics (“Stealing Documents competition” etc.)
2. Populist/Inflammatory Rhetoric New AP Lang Essay (“trump’s style has opened a new door of speech analysis for students”)
3. SA Bill (Guards outside changing rooms in the name of protecting women)
4. Oligarch Monopoly (Monopoly for finance bros)
I drafted full pieces for Oligarch Monopoly and the SA Bill, but like with the Rose Colored Glasses Ad, I didn’t feel like the jokes were flowing well enough. Finally on Friday, I settled on my IVF satire piece (I’ll explain more later haha). I managed to get in that flow state as I was walking back home; I got down enough jokes, and felt happy with the narrative flow. I was exhausted on Friday, so didn’t write down more than an outline, but on Saturday I finished it.
Satire’s Structure (What I learned)
While this week wasn’t as productive as I wanted (I made little progress on my long work), it was actually really good for me to work through. Through all my failures I was able to build a clearer/more precise vision in my head of what I want my satire pieces to be, how they should flow etc. I know that I can trust my instincts; If I’m laughing while writing then it means other people will be too. If the topic is unmoored then that means it probably is. And I didn’t just learn more about audience perception of my pieces but the “academic” structure of them too.
There are four main things to consider when writing satire (that I've picked up during my experimentation):
1. Format
2. Style/POV
3. External & Narrative Audience
4. Subject
Format: How you structure the piece. Short story, advertisement, news article, facebook post, recipe, manifesto, radio transcript, email, love note etc. The list is long haha. But this is usually the basis of what type of humour you decide to go for. If I go the news-satire route, then I tend to be more understated, when I did a speech/manifesto I was a little more absurd/evil.
(Note: different comedy sites prefer diff formats. So it’s necessary for me to switch it up)
Style/POV: Style refers to what type of satire you are going for. Juvenalian, Horation, Menippean etc. Basically are you going to be subtle in your jabs? Over the top? Do you switch between the two? POV is referring to your narrator in the piece. What is their role and personality and how does that come across in the writing. There can be multiple POVs depending on the format you choose.
Audience: This one can be tricky. External Audience is who, in the real world, you wish to digest your piece. Male/female, conservative/liberal, nationality, and education level are all important to consider. If you are trying to educate/import an opinion on your audience (which frankly everyone is) then you must keep in mind the beliefs of your external audience while writing. Narrative audience is just my term for who your narrator is speaking to. This needs to be consistent otherwise readers can lose track of the joke.
Subject: What’s the point/focus of your piece. You can't be too broad or too specific! If you want to educate people about an issue then you may need to pad it with references the audience is already cognizant of. ~70% of the piece should be directly related to your subject otherwise you lose narrative flow and the reader gets confused.
(This has been the hardest for me to get down. Writing a max 700 word satire piece about a random politician no one’s heard of is pretttyyy tricky. So too is narrowing down a really interesting topic hehe)
I hadn’t wanted to return to news satire so soon (ie. Trump goes to Kumon), but I had little time and it was a style I felt confident in. It’s entirely based off of Chief Justice Parker’s statement about the LePage Alabama ruling: “even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory”. I was immediately reminded of bio class and seeing how stage I and II fetuses (or zygotes can’t be sure) across a range of species look so similar.
Thus, came “Alabama Supreme Court Justice IVF Opinion Proves Millenia Old Secret: God is a Rabbit”.
Concluding thoughts
I didn’t get what I wanted done this week, but I’m still ahead of my syllabus and have learned a lot of stuff :). Failure (I got my first rejection from McSweeney’s!) is an inevitable part of life and certainly so in the writing sphere. It’s something I need to get used to and learn how to view it as encouraging. I also did manage to churn out a whole story in a day and a half which is pretty alright!
Next week, I’m going to go back to researching (current/historical) as I think that helps me come up with fun ideas, as well as working on a structure for my longer piece. Thanks to my epic internal advisor, I am full with tons of ideas for silly blog posts so I hope to do that too.
Tidbits of the Week:
- Back in the USSR by the Beatles (political satire, slight dig at the Beach Boys in the melody. Dichotomy of life…)
- Bertrand Russel on fascism: “The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other” (information & intimidation is key to power. Links to last week’s story)
See you all and have a lovely evening!!
P.S.
Realising all this has made it easier to write blog posts too. Sorry the initial ones were a lil word dumpy :)
Week 5: (Late) Week 5: FuzBeed Quiz! Politician or Not Climate Change Denier Edition
Hello Everyone!
Since I couldn’t write a post last week (I was struck down by a microscopic organism) I want to post something fun :). Take yourself back to 2016, when Buzzfeed quizzes were the only interesting thing to do when you had friends over. Except this time you’re not picking your favourite vegetable to see what 1D member you’re secretly twins with, but puzzling through Climate Change denier quotes!
The rules are simple:
- There will be a series of quotes said by either an American politician or a non politician (American)
- Mark down who you think said what (no individual names necessary)
- At the end check your choices with the answer key
The main question is: Do you attribute the more reasonable statements to the civilians or the politicians? Are the people we collectively voted into office any better than us laymen?
Politician or Not?! Climate Change Denier Edition
1. "It used to not be climate change. It used to be global warming. That wasn't working too well, 'cause it was getting too cold all over the place.”
2. “We must demand that more coal be burned to save the Earth from global cooling.”
3. “That’s kind of how we’re treating God when he’s given us these gifts [of coal/natural gas] of abundant and inexpensive and effective fuel sources,” he observed. “God has buried those treasures there because he loves to see us find them.”
4. "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive."
“I’m one of the skeptics that man has anything to do with climate change. It’s a fear tactic utilized by politicians.”
6. “The solution to climate change is not this un-serious resolution that [is being considered] this week in the Senate, but rather the serious business of human flourishing. The solution to so many of our problems, at all times and in all places, is to fall in love, get married, and have some kids.”
7. “I have a theory about global warming and why people think it’s real. Go back 30, 40 years when there was much less air conditioning in the country… Now, 30, 40 years later, all this air conditioning, and it’s a huge difference when you go outside. When you go outside now, my golly, is it hot. Oh. Global warming. It’s all about the baseline you’re using for comparison.”
8. “I believe there’s climate change. I believe there’s been climate change since the beginning of time. Do I think man has some impact? Yeah, of course. Can man change the entire universe? No. Why do I believe that? Well, as a Christian, I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us. And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take care of it.”
Answers
1. Politician: Donald Trump- former POTUS
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/donald-trump-still-doesnt-believe-in-climate-change
2. Non Politician: Don Blankenship- former CEO of Massey Energy
3. Non Politician: Bryan Fischer- American Family Association
https://sojo.net/magazine/march-2013/top-notch-theology-or-not
4. Politician: Donald Trump- former POTUS
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=en
5. Politician: Don Young- US rep
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/1060071647; https://gizmodo.com/9-quotes-from-republican-politicians-next-to-their-stat-1847140415/slides/3
6. Politician: Mike Lee- US Senator
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/26/politics/mike-lee-green-new-deal/index.html
7. Non Politician: Rush Limbaugh- political commentator
https://grist.org/accountability/2011-12-20-the-year-in-crazy-rush-limbaugh/ ; https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-10-dumbest-things-ever-said-about-global-warming-200530/
8. Politician: Tim Walberg- US rep
https://time.com/4800000/tim-walberg-god-climate-change/
Regarding Tim Walberg’s statement, climate change is actually fundamentally changing the Earth. A recent article published in Nature explains how melting ice caps “[have] decreased the angular velocity of Earth more rapidly than before”. According to the author’s analysis, this will push back the need for a leap second from 2026 to 2029 as well as make it negative (Nature.com, Nature)
Additionally, human-caused climate change has been a known phenomena since 1896 with the publication of some of Svante Arrhenius’s rough calculations that showed the relationship between radiation, atmospheric CO2 levels, and temperature (The Guardian). Many accredited scientific associations from the Geological Society of America to US National Academy of Sciences have stated support for anthropogenic climate change (NASA).
Add’tl Sources:
- https://friendsoftheearth.uk/climate-change/donald-trump-stupid-quotes
- https://gizmodo.com/9-quotes-from-republican-politicians-next-to-their-stat-1847140415/slides/8
Closing Thoughts
Maybe trusting politicians to know everything about every complicated scientific topic wasn’t one of our best ideas… I think my favourite egregious statement was from Mike Lee, who essentially said that the solution to climate change is to birth stronger families. His mind had to do some impressive reaching to come to that conclusion. 20/10 my man.
Week 6: Last Week Tonight with Emily
Happy 38th of March everyone.
Here’s a quick TL;DR of what I did this week!
- Current news research (esp surrounding Trump’s bonds, religion, Ukraine, and Switzerland)
- Historical research (the history behind the personality cult/political religion)
- Drafted new short work
Last Week Tonight
The final idea I settled on for this week was a piece that took the mick out of Trump's deification by himself and his fans. The easiest example is, of course, the fact that he has just promoted the “God Bless the USA” bible and it’s unclear where the profits of the book go to.
Note: (CIC Ventures, which is connected to trump, has been listed as recipients of some of the cash)
Picking out the hypocrisies (cough- church and state separation) in his ad was not the tricky part; Making them more absurd than they already were was difficult. I was giggling throughout the whole three minutes… Obviously, a difficult comedic bar to get above.
That’s when the other outside research came in. I heavily relied on Anita Pisch’s The phenomenon of the personality cult — a historical perspective for my academic research. She’s a great writer and gave tons of definitions for political religions. Here are a couple of good ones:
- Historian Jan Plamper “god-like glorification of a modern political leader with mass media techniques, and excessive glorification of this leader”
- Political scientist Pao-min Chang, “the artificial elevation of the status and authority of one man… through the deliberate creation, projection and propagation of a godlike image”
Essentially, a personality cult/political religion is the moniker ascribed by historians to political ideologies that become a little too all encompassing. When the line between appreciation and veneration of the leader becomes blurred. Personality cults have existed throughout human history- they are not just a modern phenomena- Alexander the Great, Maximilian I, Napoleon, Stalin, and Hitler have all been leaders that fell into this category.
I think it’s always difficult to call out contemporary politicians for being of that ilk (because their followers are alive and kicking), but being aware of the attributes is nonetheless important.
Next Week... uhh Tomorrow
I have two main goals:
1. Finish up the Trump & Religion work from this week
2. Find better ways to distribute my writing
The Trump & Religion piece is meant to be part of the “larger work” that I mentioned in my prospectus. It’s done in an epistolary style (written as a letter), so hopefully I can write a few more in that same format and compile them.
I decided against writing one massive story because honestly I won’t have the time. I have been able to stick to ~1 article per week, but any more than that is tough!!
As for the second: The point of my project is to educate and entertain people which is a little difficult when you only have had ten people read your work haha. I’m still a student, with limited resources and time but getting a few more readers would be fabulous. Otherwise, the stats I present at the end will be a little silly.
(That being said, if anyone has actually read this far please feel free to share my Medium Acct!! https://medium.com/@emily_73725/asinine-antics-special-report-on-trumps-entrance-into-evening-math-classes-9078e53e7661 )
Adieu everyone :)!
Post 9: Asinine Antics: The Merge of Kpop and MAGA Fanbases: Too mighty for this earth? (Hey Barbie! Hey Obama!)
Hey everyone!
There was one other real-world community that fit in eerily well with the defining characteristics ( "excessive glorification", "mass media techniques", and "The artificial elevation of the status and authority of one [person]") of political cults. What is it may you ask? Well of course it's...
KPOP
Kpop artists are called "idols" by fans and media, their management perfectly curate personalities for each member, which is often so polished that their fans think they're deities. All of this is coming from someone who used to be invested in the community haha [Note: no community is a homogenous blob and there are many lovely + normal Kpop fans out there].
Serendipitously, Trump shares characteristics with both Kpop fans and political cults, hence this piece below. I hope you enjoy the chaos; I had way too much fun writing this.
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Asinine Antics
Music & Culture
~ Special Report~ The Merge of Kpop and MAGA fanbases: Too mighty for this earth?
For the first time in history, Kpop and Trump stans formed a united front to petition Melon Music Awards (MMA- a famous South Korean Kpop competition) to admit Donald Trump into the “Solo Singer” category for its 2024 show. Donald Trump, a well known businessman and former President, is also a superb singer, known by many musical aficionados as the “21st century Mozart”.
With his hit covers of “Barbie Girl” and “As it Was” garnering an impressive 30 million views combined, he’s become a real sensation. One fan on Youtube commented, under Trump’s duet with Obama of “Barbie Girl” by Aqua, “IT'S BEEN 5 YEARS AND THIS SONG STILL SLAPS OMG”. Clearly, his music touches the soul.
[[Barbie Girl Duet- Maestro Ziikos]]
Trump has multiple concerts scheduled in the US already; Rallies are happening in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and the former president has already raised a whopping $50.5 million which he plans to put towards his “swarovski red tie” budget.
Although Trump has no albums for sale, he does have multiple official merchandise sites where eager stans can get their fill of their flawless orange idol. Included below are reviews, from Twitter, of three fan favourite products.
“God Bless the USA Bible”: “I tape it to my chest at night to always feel the spirit of my darling Donald even when I’m unconscious”- tradwifey_Vict47_
“Trump Superhero Charm”: “OMG I GOT THE TRUMP CHARM!!! He looks so hot in his red suit ahh~~ I’m putting him next to my photocards of DeSantis and Margie Taylor!!” - 0RANG3M3N0NLY
“Victory47 Cologne”: “Im LITERALLY repubi-kinning right now!! I can smell like my bias and ‘be a part of history’?? I’m innnn” - _LibSnowFlake_BLASTER
“The signature scent of strength and success”, courtesy of Victory47, will be heavy in the air this week as Trump and Kpop fans battle to get their new favourite Rookie Idol on the big screen. If he does get into MMA, this could mean a wondrous start to the long awaited cultural takeover Trump has been promising downtrodden Americans since 2015. FIN
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Post Script:
Here's another amazing video compiled by Maestro Ziikos using clips from Donald Trump's speeches- As It Was. I tried to add it into the main story, but Wordpress was being funky when I published it.
Week 7: The Writing Bug Gets Stronger
Happy 11:41 all,
*Check out my new story I published on Medium: A World Domination and Propaganda Training Course for the Aspiring White Collar Advertiser*
(It's from a couple weeks ago b/c I have been sending in to comedy sites, and now I can finally show you all)
TL;DR of the week!
1. Gathered more rejections. Published more on own blog
2. Edited last week’s Trump & Religion piece
3. Spedran a short satire piece
Rejections & Publishing
On Friday morning, I got a very friendly email from The Belladonna Comedy telling me my work I had submitted had been rejected.
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“Hi Emily,
Thank you for submitting to The Belladonna. Unfortunately, we are going to pass on this piece.
This had some fun moments, but the writing felt too factual and dense at times, and needed to be punched up with more jokes.
While we do not accept resubmissions of the same piece, we hope that this feedback will help the piece find a great home elsewhere, and strengthen your understanding of our voice to maximize your chance of acceptance here in the future. Our feedback is never a referendum on you as a person, comedian or writer!
We hope this doesn’t stop you: even we get rejections all the time! Just keep writing and keep being you. And keep submitting!
Thank you for trusting us with your work.
The Belladonna editors"
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I now have two rejections under my belt, but it’s honestly exciting. I’m a new writer in a pretty specific satirical niche so it’s no surprise the acceptances aren’t flowing in. Rejection is so common in the literary field that writers write about it.
Kim Liao wrote a piece for LitHub back in 2016 called, “Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year” and it contains an important lesson: not submitting out of fear of rejection gives you just as much as being rejected, so why not do the latter? So that’s what I’ll do. Even if at the end of my project all I have to show people is a list of polite “Sorry, not for us” emails, it still shows my perseverance. But that’s also why personal blogging sites like Medium and Write.as are so awesome. They’re places to publish your own precious work; Places where you can get that little dopamine hit of sharing your stories with others, as you grow towards getting into big publications like The New Yorker.
Writing and Editing
Although my publishing hasn’t been the most fruitful adventure, I have gotten much more practice in finding comedy in politics :)! I have a rough strategy down now where I research a current event, then find historical/academic sources that corroborate it/add to it, then go back to finding more current things for some more accessible references.
The Trump & Religion piece is based on the idea of the “political religion/cult” that historians have observed over the millenia. It’s the grey area between ideology and reverence that can get forgotten about. The extra work (which mocks celebrity worship and leader worship) I wrote on top of that is a tad more eccentric [see my april 11th post]. There is comedy in the absurdity of a politician having an official merchandise site, but also in his made up fans’ silly twitter handles.
Final Thoughts
I definitely accomplished my goals for the week- always a relief!
I spread the word of my writing blog using the wonderful social media platform Instagram. I finalized the Trump & Religion piece from last week into something much snappier. And finally, I managed to write another work for a fun blog post :).
Next week I intend to refocus again on history. All of my writing so far has been inspired by historical events, but that's not always obvious at first glance. I might revisit some of my old ideas (like the MLM marx-lenin-mao philippines) or discover something completely new. A couple weeks ago I came across a great article that had names of dictators (or at least crappy leaders) that I hadn’t heard of before like Nursultan Nazarbayev, Vladimiro Montesinos, and Baby Doc. Exploring the historical context that led to the rise of these leaders could be really fun.
See you all soon, adieu!
Week 8: Beginning of the End!
Hi everyone :D!
(This update is a little shorter because on Friday I spent almost six hours making a lemon meringue pie + salmon and cabbage wraps with a friend. I highly recommend trying fried cabbage btw; It’s feels like one is consuming a colossal brussell sprout.)
Officially 75% of the way through, wooo!!! So far, everything has gone relatively according to plan. Their were a couple of hiccoughs here and there (like figuring out how difficult publishing fact heavy news satire is) but I'm proud of what I've accomplished.
This Week I...
Spent most of my time researching. Think back to week one, when I came into school, sat in an almost empty entrance hall for three hours, and thoroughly exercised my two scrolling fingers. I've never felt closer to JSTOR or my Paracetamol before (thanks to gorging myself on blue light). Jokes aside, I actually had a really fun time. It was nice to put dedicated time aside to reading and learning :).
The texts/articles that I consulted the most this week were:
- Dangerous Alliances: Populists and the Military
- Corruption and the Curse: The Dictator’s Choice
I wanted my final piece to be as broad as possible- while still fulfilling the short story brief. So, I felt the best way to do that was through a list like format. Thus I looked through research journals describing the various impacts that dictatorship has on the public. This includes economic, societal, religious, and environmental lenses. For example, I learned that countries with high percentages of military officials in government positions tend to be more autocratic as well as impose themselves on civilians civil liberties. Although, in Latin America, the military is viewed as this apolitical, moral stronghold, which has let presidents like Bolsonaro appoint more military officials to govt. positions without public dissent. [Dangerous Alliances: Populists and the Military]
I have a decent outline knocked up covering this. At the moment I'm leaning towards a narrator from Hell's wellbeing department hoping to make his future long term residents a little more optimistic about Earth and fearful of the Underworld. But more on that next week heheh...
Next Week I...
plan to finish the Hell Wellbeing work! This will most likely be the last thing I write the year, so it's a tad bittersweet. At the moment, I'm planning to make my final Presentation some sort of satirical news anchor show (*cough* The Day Today), and I want to focus my attention on that- instead of just more pieces.
Alongside writing, I'm going to run with Mr Brady's (my internal advisor) advice on Facebook advertising. It's difficult to quantify the impact of my writing if I only 30 people have read each work- although that is not the only measure of this project's success. So, I will make a new email and start learning about how to set up a business manager account, how to target specific audiences for engagement, and creating the actual ads!
Note: This website has been an invaluable source
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Enjoy this lovely cartoon, and have a great day everyone!
Christopher Weyant- Boston Globe
Post 12: The Death of Stalin Movie Review: How Satire Helps Explain History
“When tyrannical dictator Joseph Stalin dies in 1953, his parasitic cronies square off in a frantic power struggle to become the next Soviet leader. Among the contenders are the dweebish Georgy Malenkov, the wily Nikita Khrushchev and Lavrenti Beria -- the sadistic secret police chief. As they bumble, brawl and back-stab their way to the top, the question remains -- just who is running the government?”- Google Film Synopsis
The Death of Stalin
Watching The Death of Stalin was a feast of fun and fact. The storyline was almost entirely historically accurate- with most deviations only being made for the sake of fitting multiple years into two hours- and yet Armando Ianucci (the Director/Screenwriter) managed to produce a comedy. That is impressive.
But why is it useful to implement comedy into what is, in reality, a period of corruption and distress? When you learn about history, you learn about the wars and the palaces, and the great inventors. It is always about what a person has done/had done to them, and not what they feel. (Of course, this is a generality, but it is a tad tiresome to always write in ‘not-quite-absolutes’). When you learn about Medieval peasants, you can only ascribe those funny colourful engravings of legging’d men to them. When you learn of Queen Vic, all you can see is a photo of a dour faced lady sitting stiffly on a couch. No emotion, no individuality. It’s true that we’re told the death toll of ancient wars, told the economic impacts of plague, and the social effect of art movements, but (unless you’re a real nerd) it doesn’t make you realize that those old peasants and Queens are just as Homo sapien as you or I.
So, you need comedy, because it is the immediate key to ‘relatability’ and ‘in-group status’. Like c’mon, don’t tell me you’ve never bonded with some stranger over a vine, or reel, or general funny event that’s unfolding before you!
Satire in TDoS
I loved The Death of Stalin because it used comedy to highlight the exact follies and absurdities in the Soviet government at the time, that would have otherwise taken pages of academic essays to fathom. In this section, I will go over a few scenes that i think demonstrate this well :).
Scene One: “Svetlana, SvetLANA, SVETLANA DEAR!”
Summary: This scene occurs at the beginning of the movie, right after Stalin dies and Politburo is struggling to decide who will succeed him. Georgy Malenkov, Lavrenti Beria, and Nikita Khrushchev, all rather old and portly, are shown scheming in the woods with various other Politburo members. They hear Svetlana- the well loved daughter of Stalin- and start speed walking through the forest to be the first to console her. A chorus of “Svetlana dear!”’s, that could contend with a coyote’s evening concert, is heard ricocheting through the pine trees.
Satire: This scene is meant to be silly. The surface level joke is that it’s funny to see a bunch of old bureaucrats scheme like little children in the woods and then speed walk/waddle to some poor, grieving girl. There’s a juxtaposition going on: The solemnity and honour of academic men being contrasted with their movement and and lines.
This light, almost slapstick comedy has a deeper point, however; While this exact scene in the woods did not occur, Malenkov, Beria, and Khrushchev all did try to vie for Svetlana’s support to gain the support of the Soviet people. And isn’t that silly? For a politician to stay/gain power he must act like a fool and toady to other people of political import. They’re all playing a game, and those men would kill or kiss ass to any person to get power.
[Note: This is one of the only light humour scenes in this dark comedy film. Highlights even more the import of this scene!]
Scene Two: “‘I demand my rights’ said the corrupt secret police chief ”
[TW: blood/death. Only watch if comfortable.]
Summary: Khrushchev has managed to successfully finagle the support of Malenkov, the Politburo, and General Zhukov and deposed Lavrenti Beria (the chief of the NKVD who had been very close to becoming the next General Secretary). Beria is brought into a shed, with jeers from officers and politicians who played a role in the coup, and read an account of his crimes against the state. As he’s being dragged into the courtyard to be executed, an officer shoots him. Silence, and then everyone works to burn his body with no sadness.
Satire: There's nothing funny about Beria being shot, no matter how awful he was, but there is a delicious irony found in his last words: “I demand my rights… Please don’t shoot me”. The tables have been turned on Beria, and we see how empty a person he is when he’s without power; He can’t stick to his ruthless moral code, and has no true allies. Who would have thought that the allies you bribed/terrified into loyalty weren’t that loyal when a bigger fish comes along :).
In the broader view, it shows how fickle and baseless the Soviet government really was. By Stalin’s death, unadulterated love of communist rhetoric and love of the Russian people had long since disappeared from the Party’s leadership. Malenkov, Beria, or even Khrushchev, wouldn’t have ruled for the people, or even their social class, but solely for themselves.
Closing Thoughts
The backstabbing, the chaotic distress, and the queer power plays all existed before Armando Ianucci (and the graphic novel of the same name) came around. All Ianucci did was embellish the material with comedy to enliven the absolutely crazy minds of the political elite in 1950s Soviet Russia.
This film’s genius, because even if you only read a textbook about Soviet history, all the humour would still be there. Less obvious, for sure, but ultimately the absurdities would remain unchanged. There are definitely a good few leaders I can think of today that are so good at being hypocritical (and plain incorrect) that they are walking satirical entities.
[all images courtesy of The Death of Stalin production team]
Week 9: Drafting, and drafting, and- you guessed it- more drafting
Hello!!
This update will be reasonably short, because I spent ~3hrs doing The Death of Stalin Movie Review. I hadn't actually done an in depth analysis of comedy yet for my project and felt that it was high time to do so. The Death of Stalin was a perfect pick as well, because of how brilliantly the screenwriters balanced historical accuracy with humour.
As for this past week...
The majority of my hours I have spent wiggling my fingers on top of my worn computer keys. I wanted to give my final satire piece the extra attention it deserved : ). "Optimistic Hell" as it has been dubbed in my google doc, has been really fun to write. I was super passionate about the idea since it first popped into my head which eases the arduous process of editing, falling in love, and then revising the next morning!
I ended up creating three versions of Optimistic Hell. V1 has a very factual and short intro. It explained why Hell on Earth was bad for business and morale in Down Under using historical references. V3 dove more into Hell as a system/character. I gave Satan a title (His Disgustingness) and was less straightforward. V2 was a mix of the two- and probably the worst.
personally, I loved V3 the best. I had so much fun playing with the narrator and coming up with almost a "Hell ecosystem" of sorts. It came back with mixed opinions however. My internal advisor and Mum, who had read only V3, said that they loved it. They thought it was witty and made them think. My external advisor and Dad, who read all versions, both said they much preferred V1. Very, very interesting, I thought!
I think, by the time I had started on V3 of the story, I knew the story and world in my head too well. Thus, when I was writing, my explanations weren't catered to a completely unknowing audience, but a very informed internal monologue (cough, me). Like when anyone gets too into their own head and knowledge, like a learned physicist or dentist, they forget how it feels to be in that setting with zero experience. I will go with what my Dad and external advisor's opinions therefore, and publish Version 1.
Next Week To Dos...
Main Goals: Advertising & Script Writing
Optimistic Hell will be my final satire work, and intentionally so. I want to be able to put a lot of time and care into my final presentation on May 18th. I have ambitious plans at the moment- filming, writing, and acting out a lives news show in my project's name- and I'm hoping three weeks will be enough!! Unlike STEM or other Humanities projects the so-called 'presentation' aspect of my project is vital. I can't write satire/comedy and then give a plain factual presentation at the end, can I? The same goes for the project description, as well as these blog posts. I have to be constantly showing off that I can be a little funny (hopefully... My general posts are very academic I must admit oops) to entice people to read my actual work!
Till next time!
Week 10: Submitting to Our Tech Overlords
Hello, hello hello!!
Welcome to the end of week 10. Which is pretty scary ahaha. It doesn’t feel right to only have two weeks left before final presentations are due and school is all over.
I have published my final satire work on Medium! This time without submitting to McSweeney’s or TheBelladonna first, because of time constraints. The summary is as follows:
“Viewing the Glass 1/10th Full: Satan’s Guide to Total Joy”
If it’s Hell on Earth, what the Hell’s the point of Hell then? Toxic positivity propaganda from Hell’s wellbeing departments.
Facebook Advertising, Indulging Hypocrisy
Courtesy of the advice of Mr Brady, I have successfully published my first Facebook Ad Campaign!
While taking advantage of the vast stores of personal identification that Meta has stored on its users is a tad icky, I really did want my stories to reach more people. Especially since I haven’t been published on any comedy sites, I needed a strategy to get more people to view my content and ideas. Facebook was the simplest way to do that- as it didn't require me creating an entirely new Wordpress site.
So far I have had 4,219 page engagements (link clicks, comments, reactions, likes) and 4,200 link clicks- which lead directly to my medium account. If you remember from earlier posts, this is a major tenet of POSSE: Publish on own site syndicate elsewhere. Essentially, I want to direct engagement to my original post. The ad has reached 201 thousand accounts and will still run for three more days!
As for how this has affected my audience stats on Medium… well, all I can say is that it’s been marvellous :). Shown above is a screenshot of the views I’ve had since May. They have skyrocketed since I published the ad! I have the most views on my “World Domination” satire piece, since I referenced it in the ad, but my other stories have seen an influx of readers as well.
Designing an Ad
Surprisingly, it’s terribly simple! The process goes as follows:
1. Create a business page on Facebook
2. In Ad Manager, create a tagline for your ad as well as the images to go alongside it
3. Select what result you want this ad to create (eg. app download, web clicks, general engagement)
4. Choose the people you want to target: location, interest, occupation, family status etc. (the possibilities are eerily endless)
5. Pick the duration and strength of the ad. Minimum FB recommends is $5/day for 4 days (surprisingly cheap)
My Target Audience
I purposefully put down regions that I had mentioned in my stories before (Hence the capitals of Laos, Romania, and Haiti), as well as hobbies that are more about puzzle solving and strategy. It's impossible to predict what types of people will enjoy my writing, but that felt the best place to start. You can continually customize this throughout the duration of the ad, as well. I have no clue why 90% of my viewers are people from the Vientiane Prefecture, and why there are zero from London and California, but, shrug :)!
According to Facebook, "Your ad is performing well!", so I'm glad my stories are agreeable to people. I have tried to balance my likes with the views of others, but you don't know until you distribute on the big bad web hehe. (only one "angry emoji" so far).
Next Week
The only thing I have planned is to work work work on my final presentation. It’s been tricky so far coming up with ideas that feel exciting to write about but I know they will come eventually!
I only have 15 minutes- not a lot of time to cover 5 stories and three months of preparation- so some tactful summary will be in dire need.
See you all later!
P.S. Here is what my ad looks like. Excuse the bad language, but it's necessary to grab people's attention.
Week 11: We didn't start the fire / it was always burning since the world's been turning
Hello everyone!!
This is the penultimate week how exciting... That being said, I unfortunately don't have much to chat about for Week 11. It was largely me going over ideas and ideas and outline and outlines for my final presentation. This initial drafting stage (which also applies to my stories) is always the most laborious and least impressive haha.
What did I do?
My friends and advisors have given me some great suggestions on what i could do for a final presentation. I've had: 10 minutes of standup, be a news reporter, and play a character! i thought they were all really cool ideas and did end up taking a few of them to the speech drafting stages. But, I dunno, they were all quite complicated and didn't give me the space I needed to speak about the academic side of my project. Doing standup, while I think I could do it if I practiced enough, is quite a leap for me. It was making me more nervous than was necessary for a project presentation :).
I ended up settling what I call the "Fun Youtube Science Communicator" vibe. You know, people like Lindsay Nicole, CGP Grey, MiniMinuteMan etc. All of the people who are amazingly nerdy and passionate, but goofy too. It's a style i'm familiar with- as I often use it up at Scout Camp-, it's easy for me to do, and I may get a few smiles which is all I need B).
The slide deck that I'm going with is all bright colours and fun lettering which will be of additional help in keeping people engaged. For a tas more pizazz, I used Procreate to create drawings to go with the slides. Enjoy some sneak peeks:
Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire"
The reason for me chatting about this song are twofold: 1) There's no way I could have talked about redrafting the same speech 5 million times for 500 words. I think you all might have genuinely died of boredom. And 2) this song is utterly PERFECT- it fits with the whole gist of my project impeccably. So enjoy my little rant about why I love this song so much.
If I had remembered this song before I submitted the final description for my SP, I so would have included it. "We didn't start the fire" is a song commemorating the cycle of crap that humanity goes through. It's a song about pop culture, politics, and pain. Really, the agnostic's version of the Holy Trinity. If you are unaware of the song (go listen!) it is a list of well known events, + & -, that rocked humanity from the mid 20th century to when Billy Joel published the song in 1989.
Britannica has a great article (find it here) that explains all of the 119 references in it. But before you read it, try and see how many you understand just with prior general knowledge. I got maybbeee 20 ish. Here's a stanza (?) explained:
“Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev / Princess Grace, “Peyton Place” trouble in the Suez”
1. Bardot: Brigitte Bardot. Famous French adult film star.
2. Budapest: The center of many of the Hungarian revolutionary fighting against Soviet rule occurred here.
3. Khrushchev: The PM of the USSR. Known for his de-Stalinization policies [learn more about him in my Movie Review of "The Death of Stalin"]
4. Princess Grace: Grace Kelly. Famous American film star who married Prince Rainier of Monaco.
5. Peyton Place: One of the first successful soap operas on television.
6. Suez: The Suez Canal was nationalized by Egyptian President Gamal Nasser from the French/British enterprise that owned it prior.
What's additionally cool is that Billy Joel gave Fall Out Boy (FOB) permission to produce & write a "sequel" to this song. It came out in 2023 under the same name (listen to it if you have not!). FOB used the same song structure (e.g. listing events) and melody, although they added a bit more electric guitar. I think it's such a great piece of art to give a sequel too. Like, we really don't need an additional live action remake of The Lion King, but of "We didn't start the fire"? I'm all in. The song is such a great summary of important events of the last 30 odd years, and again reiterates the original point of the song: bad and/or crazy stuff will continue to happen as long as us humans exist and let it be.
The FOB sequel does have a slight difference, however. The original chorus goes:
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it but we tried to fight it… (Billy Joel, 1989)
whereas FOB's goes:
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it but we’re trying to fight it... (FOB, 2023)
Did you catch it?! FOB's version says "But we're trying to fight it" instead of "But we tried to fight it". For a younger generation (yeah, I know FOB is not thattt young, but let me have this) that is often paradoxically lampooned for either being too cynical/apathetic or too naive/coddled, this lyric was an argument against that. It's the incitement of genuine courage and optimism that the world needs if we ever are gonna have the chance to fix the problems that riddle this land. So props to FOB for writing that :).
P.S.
Another song I wanted to mention, as it fits the satirical bill, is "Back in the USSR" by The Beatles. It's a playful jab at Capitalist and Communist countries' propaganda about why their economonic system is the best. It's all made funnier by the fact that they used melodies reminiscent of The Beach Boys who are oh so bubbly and American.
Week 12: Boo-yah, It's the End of Beginning
Gosh everyone. Here we are, finally at the end.
I have little from last week to give a review about, but we shall do one final one for old times sake :).
This Week in History
Sunday and Monday were spent fervently editing my final slides. I found that I could spend more time working on them if i did some doodles along the way. And then I thought: “why keep them to my sketchbook”?! This project is all about embracing silliness after all.
So, I ended up creating 4 different cartoon mini me’s as well bordering images/graphics I wanted to include. It made everything feel much less constrained and more like those fun animated science videos on Youtube.
After some help from my internal advisor and my friends, I cut down a few slides and then polished up my speech. The intention was to be structured enough (intro, problem, solution etc.) for complete strangers to understand but without feeling cut and paste or too predictable. It helped to have bright slides, funny drawings, and good transitions (hence why making slides to match your flow of consciousness is so important).
I did most of my work at home this week because when I practice a presentation I just talk to myself for hours on end. Since I know I’m actually practicing for something it’s not weird to me. If others saw me mumbling, cackling, and gesticulating, though…. I would stay away from me too.
The Big Prezzo Bois
She was a success!
A success which I only really felt when I watched my Dad’s out of focused recording back, but still.
I got a little spooked by some slide shenanigans- they would randomly move forwards/back- so when I was presenting all I could feel was my burning hot face and small memory lapses. It was fun being able to show all of my work though and great to hear people’s laughs :D. The questions I got were fab- sorry again Dad for getting a FB account, but it was worth it to see your astonishment.
If you were not able to listen to the Sweatshop 6, who played during the breaks, then check out some of their songs on “I’m With the Band”’s YT Channel. Nivedita helped organize it all :).
Memorable Stories + Digital or Physical Media Containing Invaluable Information
Best Personal Satire Works
Trump Goes to Kumon: The first piece that I wrote, back in late Feb. I have to give credit to Trump for providing me with all the hilarious material so I only had to cobble it all together.
World Domination and Propaganda Training Course: My first time diving into the horrible parts of history and translating that into satire. Learned a lot, and I got to combine my twin passions of yapping about history and yapping about consumerism.
Best Comedy Inspo
Mr Meyerowitz’s Copy of the 2001 Annual of “The Best of the Onion”: I’m so sorry I will give this back to you, EOY I promise. It was so helpful though! Early 2000s Onion loves to be a bit understated, a bit against the grain, and spookily clairvoyant. My fave stories included “genocide is such a harsh word [p. 162]” and “Arabs, Israelis Sign ‘Screw Peace’ Accord [p. 171]”.
I’m a Conservative Feminist and I Believe You Should…: This satire short story and others like it showed me how epic character monologues can be. It heralded ideas such as “Communist Party Philippines MLM Scam” and “Biden Robo Calls”.
The Death of Stalin: I’ve already written this movie a full love sonnet so I shan’t do it again. But just know I love this film. It’s so perfect. It does exactly what I attempted to do with comedy/history. Highlighting how satire is the perfect medium to portray absurdism & hypocrisy.
Best News and History
Informational Autocrats- Guriev & Treisman: This journal gave my mind structure for the demagogues of the modern day. It explained why media manipulators are just as insidious as violent dictators and why we need to be on guard against them
The Phenonenom of the Personality Cult- Pisch: Again, in my head I knew idolizing political leaders is bad, but Pisch laid it out so succinctly.
Even this screenshot does not show all of the news articles and subjects I researched! There were many interesting and gruesome events that i learned about even if I did not end up writing about them.
Final Thoughts
Turns out I did have a lot to write about hehe. I guess I forgot how important it is to explain one's resolution. It’s been a real fun ride everyone :)). I came in not expecting any great writing to come out of it but I genuinely am proud of what I have managed to create.
Attached here is a recording of my final presentation as well as another link to my writing account.
Thanks for joining me, friends "and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night"!