24 Satirical comment

This type of text is a phenomenon related to analytical commentary. Very often, a satirical commentary in its size and polemical acuity is reminiscent of the kind of commentary called a replica. However, satirical differs from an analytical commentary in that the dominant feature of this type of text, which makes it possible to refer it to the family of artistic and journalistic works, is the author’s explicit target setting - to ridicule the phenomenon that attracted his attention.

Realizing this goal, the journalist turns primarily to the methods of artistic understanding of reality. Most often he uses for this satirical typification (it is a type of artistic-figurative typification), irony, lithothe, hyperbolization. Most often, a satirical commentary is being published in the footsteps of current and most ridiculous or harmful actions of various political figures, authorities, institutions, etc., actions that can cause a certain public outcry.

The subject of attention of the author of a satirical commentary can be phenomena of any kind - not only substantive actions, actions, but also “informational phenomena”, for example, statements of some people. Thus, the achievement of the press in recent years has become a satirical commentary, the subject of which is precisely the judgments, statements of people. Such comments can now be found on the pages of many periodicals (both “central” - Moscow, and regional, local).

A satirical commentary has a “relative” not only in the “person” of an analytical commentary, but also in the “person” of the feuilleton. This genre is related primarily to the purpose of the performance. It lies in the fact that, like the feuilleton, the satirical commentary is aimed at ridiculing certain human shortcomings, vices, blunders of the most different plan.

However, if the satirical commentary “costs” mainly by means such as irony, mockery, then the main method of a full-fledged feuilleton is satirical typification. In other words, in the feuilleton the author exposes to ridicule not a single, unique phenomenon, but a phenomenon that has become typical, a phenomenon whose “faces” can be found in the most unexpected places, in various spheres of life.

Losing the feuilleton in the level of generalization of life phenomena, in a set of expressive means, the satirical commentary wins in efficiency, and this makes it an indispensable artistic and journalistic genre.

See also

• Reportage
• 15 Review