Satire and Humor

Era of Satire.

Cynicism and ebullience coexisted during the 1920s and found joint expression as satire in words and in images. It was an era when ridicule was the weapon of choice. Politicians, financiers, intellectuals, puritans, reformers, feminists, and revolutionaries were popular targets. The main target was pomposity.

Irreverence and Wit.

The defining characteristic of American humor is irreverence—the refusal to be impressed by or respectful of institutionalized power or conventional morality. Wit was prized during the 1920s, and reputations were built on the application of it. The reputations of literary humorists rarely outlive them because humor becomes identified with its time: a comic style often achieves its humor by originality of perception and expression; repeated and copied, it becomes corny. Satire and parody, however brilliant, depend on reader recognition of material that usually has a short...

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