The Substance: Demi Moore is ferocious in gloriously gory satire on Hollywood’s female ageism: Fans of body horror will not want to miss director Coralie Fargeat’s latest offering, The Substance, which bagged Best Screenplay for the Frenchwoman at Cannes this year, and features an astounding comeback performance from Demi Moore. There’s a sense of grim …
Channel 4’s shocking Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat owes much to Swift and his gruesome satire: There wasn’t much advertising ahead of the release of Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat, which was touted as a documentary about the food industry. Wallace is a TV presenter who is much beloved by British audiences so …
Trevor Noah brought a new perspective to TV satire – as well as a whole new audience: South African comedian Trevor Noah at the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on September 12, 2022. Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images After seven years of hosting The Daily Show on Comedy Central, a hit comedy show …
How anti-vax memes replicate through satire and irony: Don/KnowYourMeme For most of us, memes are the harmless fodder of an “extremely online” internet culture, floating benignly between different social media platforms — and, on the whole, making us laugh. But in the shadier corners of the internet, like on the forum 4chan, memes can quickly …
US TV satire has lost its edge: Inspiring/Shutterstock For over two decades programmes like The Daily Show, a political news satire production, have positioned themselves as the antidote to a cable news landscape favouring partisan theatrics and politics served as entertainment. While their content isn’t news in the traditional sense, TV satire shows have had …
Tom Lehrer and US satire from Charlie Chaplin to Randy Rainbow – why it remains relevant now: Ten years ago my wife, the Broadway singer Judy Blazer, performed in a satirical revue for the Lyrics and Lyricists Series at New York’s 92nd Street Y. The programme drew heavily on the work of the satirist Tom …
How Trump’s America changed political satire – for both liberals and conservatives: Even before Donald Trump was elected in 2016, he had been providing America’s late night TV show hosts with ample fodder for comedy. These late night TV shows are the spearhead of political satire for liberal America, and many take their orientation from …
Political satire has a rape problem: In 2017, a parade float featuring a giant model of Donald Trump raping the Statue of Liberty travelled the streets of Düsseldorf as part of Germany’s annual Rose Monday Carnival. The float symbolised America’s violation under Trump’s power. A second float, which travelled behind, showed the Statue of Liberty …
Gerald Kaufman (1930-2017): satire, suicide notes and sequins: By their very nature, Fathers of the House of Commons tend to span ages. That a neophyte associated with the “white heat” of Harold Wilson’s New Britain should have occupied the role in his ninth decade is to remind us that half a century is a long …