Irony and Satire: Barbara Shepherd and Dave Shepherd try to avoid speaking sarcastically to each other as they explore irony and satire.
This week’s topic was suggested by Abbie G., a smart 9th-grader. Ironically, this show ended up being rated “R” and given an explicit tag. (Sorry, Abbie!) (2:08)
Dave and Barbara just attended the show awarding the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, honoring the late George Carlin. Carlin was a master of American satire. This show will air on PBS on April 1, 2009. (2:40)
Comedy as a culturally-specific phenomenon; the two careers of George Carlin (7:00)
Music bumper from “Baja Taxi” by Brain Buckit (18:59)
Carlin’s famous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”; Lewis Black and censorship at the Kennedy Center (21:15)
Is George Carlin the modern Mark Twain? (27:13)
Song: “Chiron Beta Prime” by Jonathan Coulton (32:18)
Rude Word of the Week: “genius” (35:07)
Music bumper from “Round One” by Evan Tate. (38:30)
Parody vs. satire: Mad Magazine, Weird Al Yankovic, and Saturday Night Live’s take on Sarah Palin (39:10)
Music courtesy of The Podsafe Music Network
Theme music by Kick the Cat
Closing theme from “Grapes” by Evan Stone
time: 48:18
size: 44.2 Mb
rating: R (It is impossible to talk about the work of George Carlin without talking about “forbidden” words–and we use a couple of really taboo words several times. Once again, apologies, Abbie!)
George Carlin and his great “Modern Man” routine
(This routine is perfectly clean and a brilliant display of American English.)
Oh, snap!
You used the RWotW to describe your featured artist? But JoCo’s on our side!
Yep, you’re right. I became aware of that little word of praise when I was doing post-production.
But Jonathan is a real Genius, not a “genius.” Know what I mean?
I just liked the irony of it all. Speaking of which, it reminded me of a stand up bit about Alanis Morissette.
Are you thinking of doing an episode on taboo words? Can’t remember if you did one already but it’s a nice topic to revisit. Maybe through a different angle, like language and age or what is contextually appropriate.
Good show, good topic! I have all of Weird Al’s CDs and love his parodies. Which is a good sign, as I now know, as it means that I am fluent enough to get the humour in his lyrics.
Greetings from Hamburg,
Volker
Hi Volker! I wanted to say that when I’m in Europe, one of my very favorite shows to watch on TV is Genial daneben on RTL. (? I think it’s on RTL.) The stars of the show are comedians, whose task it is to to figure out the meaning of arcane expressions and words. The comedians take a very witty route toward their solutions. (For non-German speakers: “genial daneben” would translate roughly as something like “ingeniously clueless.”)
Volker, I do think that if you get the humor in Weird Al you must be a pretty fluent speaker. I’d be curious to see whether you can get the humor in George Carlin. Listen to some of his older stuff, like “Class Clown” or “FM and AM”, because those albums have more pure wordplay and less topical social commentary. And do check out that performance of “Modern Man” to which I’ve provided a YouTube link.
Alexandre, Howard S. and I did taboo words over three years ago, in the first six months of the show. I am quite sure it’s time to revisit the topic.
Hi Dave,
if you watched “Genial daneben” in Germany you might remember that in each episode someone from the studio audience gets to ask a question for the panel.
And guess who was there 2 years ago… you can even see me in the studio here:
http://www.klaerchen.de/zauberer_hamburg_luebeck/2006_07_01_archiv.htm
Greetings,
Volker
OMG! Wow! That is too cool! I am now DEEPLY envious of you. And let me point out that you are not only a magician, but now you are a cool word-nerd magician whose question has been used on Genial daneben!
I bow down in awe! Only half-jokingly!
One funny thing about podcasters is that you hear what they write. And I can just hear Dave expressing his admiration to Volker…
(About humour and fluency in a second-language… I recently discovered that I wasn’t the only one to have learnt English through Three’s Company. More recently, Friends has become a major tool for learning both US culture and American English.)
About taboo words, you probably know that there’s an ethnographic literature on them. For instance, a fairly common practise is to make taboo the names of deceased people. Or there are complete language varieties which are meant to avoid language restrictions.
It does go into Politeness (Brown and Levinson) but what discussion of language taboos doesn’t?
(Fellow Montrealer) Steven Pinker has a section on taboo words in both his book and prepared talk. That talk is available online so it could be a useful reference, if only because Pinker is a well-known popularizer.
Dave …
I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for turning me on to Jonathan Coulton. He was certainly a perfect featured artist for a show about irony and satire. I’m a big fan of They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies, so Coulton’s stuff was an instant hit with me.
Nice Carlin tribute, too. But you didn’t mention the greatest irony about his seven words. At least two of them (piss and tits) are now more-or-less acceptable on broadcast television.
One more thing about Carlin … in my spare time I maintain a few blogs based on the haiku poetry form. One of the less active haiku blogs is “The News In Haiku” (www.thenewsinhaiku.wordpress.com) and when Carlin died I discovered that his list, in the original order, worked as haiku. So, I wrote:
GEORGE CARLIN DEAD AT 71
His seven bad words:
Sh*t, piss, c**t, f**k, c**ks**ker
Motherf****r, tits.
… heh …
Finally, if I can engage in a little self-promotion, you might be interested in one of my other blogs … http://www.thetorahinhaiku.com. I know you’re not Jewish, but you’ve spoken of being raised in a religious environment so you’re probably familiar with the stories in the Torah. The blog is a weekly haiku based on something from the current week’s Torah portion. I hope you find it interesting if you have the time to check it out.
Hi Ed. Thanks for the great comment, and thanks for the Carlin haiku.
Now here’s what a prude I am. Unlike George Carlin, I make my primary living as a public school teacher. So I’ve put those appalling little asterisks in Carlin’s Big Seven words. Nobody who knows English will have any doubt about what the words are–which makes them even ruder in the mind.
I left “piss” and “tits” alone because, as you say, their taboo quality has diminished greatly in the past 30 years. I’ve thought about that very irony as I’ve heard the routine recently.
I’ve been listening to “Class Clown” for the past two weeks, and that is truly a brilliant essay on the “dirtiness” of words.
Ed, I notice that your main URL is for a Cubs blog. I am delighted to have another avid baseball fan in the Word Nerds fold. I am glad to have introduced you to JoCo, and I am looking forward to looking at thetorahinhaiku.com very soon.
@Dave Those of us who are subscribed to receive comment notification received the uncensored version. Feels like being in the live audience at the Daily Show.
In the “early days of podcasting” (from 2005 to 2006), it seemed to me that a lot of podcasters in the US were liberally using swear words as a way to liberate themselves from the shackles of FCC speech. Nowadays, the number of swear words seems to have gone down significantly even though The Onion News Network promises “Twice as many swears as other news organizations, guaranteed!”
In Québécois, our swear words tend to be religious words, though we do use the “f-word” from English. Thing is, they seem to all be allowed on national radio and tv. Most announcers on Radio-Canada use a very constrained register, but I’ve never heard a bleep on national radio or tv.
Just today, I was listening to an independent podcast and they were complaining about the current provincial electoral campaign being too polite. The whole show was about swear words. There’s even a national pride in our use of swear words. It does feel good, sacrament!
That’s very interesting about the version of the comment you received, Alexandre. I made a point to edit and save Ed’s comment before I approved it, but something in the software got crossed up and sent out the notification before that happened (I guess). Also, I did not receive a notification of Ed’s comment and my response. That probably has something to do with that edit-save-approve sequence too, I guess. Good old WordPress.
I do feel a show on Taboo Words coming on. Howard S. and I are recording two shows this next week, when he comes to visit. But maybe we already have our next topic after those shows. That would be probably late December or early January.
@Dave Actually, wp could have tagged that comment for moderation, given the words it included. But its filters are mostly intended to catch fake comments, not “potentially offensive” ones. Plus Ed is a wp blogger, which whitelists him in Akismet.
Enough “inside baseball”…
Speaking of Howards, can we expect Howard C. to come back, in the near future? No disrespect to the Shep-herd, it’s just fun to hear different voices. :-)s
One last “inside baseball” response: I’ve got the Word Nerds blog set to require initial moderation for new commenters, or at least commenters with new email addresses. So that’s why Ed was flagged for moderation. But I did my prudish little edit before I approved his comment, then approved it. I guess you got the notification for the original version. Anyway…
I very much hope to get together with Howard Chang in mid-December for a show. We have missed his being on the show this year as well. I take it from my communications with him that he is just extremely busy running the Latin program at the Flint Hill School, where he’s been for the past couple years.
I believe irony is a highly effective tool for social criticism and enlightenment, but I am reminded of the phrase “you can fool some of the people some of time…” and it makes me curious. I find that it is often far easier to fool a person than in is to enlighten them.
Do you think that, for the people who don’t “get” the fact that what is being presented is actually satire, that for them the ideas being attacked are actually reinforced?
@KatS
(Don’t want to preempt this, but it’s too fun a topic…)
It seems that humour is often an efficient way to get people to think. Or, at least, to “plant the seeds of knowledge.” Little “landminds” which will “blow people’s minds” when they least expect it. Those who don’t “get it” at first may still get it later.
Reinforcement shouldn’t be that strong, given social pressure to laugh when others laugh…
To be honest, I often think about the same thing while watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. “What if people start taking it at face value?” After a while, I got to thinking that those risks aren’t so high. And the chances that the satire will get more people to think critically is outweighing the risks. IMHO.
Hi there,
I just wanted to say that I’ve been listening to your podcasts for about 5 months now, and enjoy them every time. One thing about this last podcast that kind of struck me, was that the subject was suggested by a 9th grader, whom you thanked at the beginning of the show, but due to the explicit content they would not have been able to enjoy it. A bit disappointing for little Abby G. I’m sure.
Thanks for the comment, Blair. I’m glad you like what we’re doing.
I was in touch with Abbie directly by email before we even posted the show. I wanted her to be aware of the content of this particular one. The fact is, we could not meaningfully discuss our topic without using language that would get us in trouble at school.
However, as a teacher of ninth-graders for the past nine years, I am keenly aware that it is we adults who are more uptight about these words than are any teenagers I know.
I also would be the last person on earth to call a 13-year-old ninth-grader “little.” That would instantly and permanently place me on the other side of a conversational gulf with that person. Just saying…
Dave, I followed your advice and bouht “Napalm and Silly Putty” on Audible. I listened to it with my wife when we had a long journey by car, and it was really great. I will definitely get some more of his books.
Volker