missing the joke: a reception analysis of satirical texts

Communication, Culture & Critique ISSN 1753-9129

ORIGINAL ART ICLE

Missing the Joke: A Reception Analysisof Satirical Texts

Ann Johnson1, Esteban del Rio2, & Alicia Kemmitt3

1 Department of Communication, California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, USA2 Department of Communication Studies, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA3 Department of Communication, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

This paper presents findings from a study of audience interpretations and evaluations ofsatirical videos. Thirty-one participants were shown 1 of 4 short video segments from 3satirical films (Starship Troopers, Bob Roberts, and Thank You for Smoking) and atelevision program (The 1/2 Hour News Hour). Participants were then asked to describeand evaluate what they saw. We found that audience members frequently missed the satirein the texts. However, these nonsatirical readings typically worked in the same ideological orrhetorical direction as satirical readings. When participants thought the author’s intentionswere serious, they also found the argument less than compelling. We conclude that viewerswho ‘‘miss the joke’’ may still ‘‘get the message.’’

doi:10.1111/j.1753-9137.2010.01077.x

Critics in the fields of literature, communication, journalism, and film caution thatsatire as a persuasive tactic is difficult to execute and may even backfire. These concernsarise from the nature of irony, on which satire rests. Tindale and Gough (1987) suggestthat when irony is employed, the ‘‘possibility of misinterpretation is always there’’(p. 10). Olson and Olson (2004) describe ‘‘irony’s checkered outcomes with actualreaders’’ (p. 27) and warn of its ‘‘strategic unevenness’’ (p. 31). Predictions ofmisunderstanding arise from the polysemic and polyvalent nature of irony. Polysemyrefers to the possibility that a text will have multiple meanings, and polyvalence refersto how a text might be understood by viewers in a similar way but evaluated differently.Gring-Pemble and Watson (2003) warn that ‘‘because of its polyvalent nature, the useof ironic satire as a rhetorical strategy to debunk a position is unpredictable’’ (p. 133).Today satire permeates American popular culture, prompting scholars to turn theirattention to the most popular satirical texts, most notably the television programsThe Colbert Report and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, to assess satire’s impact inthe public sphere (Baym, 2005; Boler, 2006; Hariman, 2007; Hart & Hartelius, 2007).

Corresponding author: Esteban del Rio; e-mail: [email protected]

396 Communication, Culture & Critique 3 (2010) 396–415 © 2010 International Communication Association

A. Johnson et al. Reception Analysis of Satirical Texts

This interest is reflected outside the academy as well, as in the case of the JewishAnti-Defamation League’s statement regarding the film Borat: ‘‘One serious pitfall isthat the audience may not always be sophisticated enough to get the joke, and thatsome may even find it reinforcing their bigotry’’ (Anti-Defamation League, 2006).

Concerns regarding the persuasive value of satire rest on two assumptions:(a) a reader or viewer may not read a text as satire, as intended; and (b) if thathappens, the text might convey an argument that in some way undermines or evenopposes that intended by the author. If both of these assumptions are true, then theargument forwarded by the text could potentially be reversed. In order to explorethis possibility and these assumptions about satire, this paper presents findings froma study of audience interpretations and evaluations of satirical videos. This studyis driven by our desire to provide a deeper understanding of satire by employingaudience research methods to supplement the growing body of textual analysis ofsatirical texts.

Readings of satirical texts

The first assumption that audiences might miss the intended satire does not presumethat such audiences are wrong or stupid. Satirical content relies on readers being inthe know, and it is easy to judge those who do not get the joke as ignorant of thepremise or not smart enough to understand the humor. However, as the traditionof audience research tells us, audience members are active, selective, and motivatedby interests that do not necessarily line up with those of a text’s author. Audiencereadings hold the possibility of a variety of readings, some highly idiosyncratic andothers sharing common features. Further, the contemporary viewing environment isfertile ground for polysemy. Given these conditions, we would expect that what manypeople would call ‘‘misreadings’’ occur regularly. The idea of misreading implies thatthere is a correct reading, a position rejected by most audience researchers, includingourselves.

Each audience reading, however unique, involves some understanding or inter-pretation of the text and an evaluation. The concerns about satirical texts raisedabove involve two important aspects of the decoding process: interpretation andevaluation. These two dimensions provide a framework within which to examinereception of satirical texts.

The type of reception analysis we employ is derived from theories of polysemyand polyvalence. The concept of polysemy, or the potential that a text will havemultiple meanings, was key to the theoretical development of audience researchwithin cultural studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In Television Culture (1987)Fiske considers the textual qualities of polysemic texts and points to irony as onefeature that opens texts to multiple readings. Fiske employs a broad definition ofirony as ‘‘a statement that appears to say one thing, while actually meaning another’’(p. 85). Textual structures such as irony and jokes work as ‘‘collision[s] of discoursesthat simultaneously oppose meanings against each other’’ (p. 86).

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Reception Analysis of Satirical Texts A. Johnson et al.

An important addition to the concept of polysemy comes from Condit (1989),who focuses on how the values that audience members possess limit a text’s openness.Condit introduces the concept of polyvalence to describe how two viewers can sharebasic interpretations of a text but evaluate them differently. She interviewed twocollege students after screening an episode of a television drama dealing withabortion. One student was actively involved in the prochoice movement and onewas prolife: ‘‘In this case, it is not a multiplicity or instability of textual meaningsbut rather a difference in audience evaluations of shared denotations that bestaccounts for the two viewers’ discrepant interpretations’’ (pp. 106–107). Accordingto Morley (2006), Condit’s distinction between interpretation and evaluation pointsto an unresolved issue in audience research—the degree to which these processescan or should be conceived separately. He argues that processes of interpretationand evaluation are inevitably intertwined ‘‘in any society characterized by significantcultural divisions’’ (p. 110). Morley argues that by neatly separating out these twoprocesses that empirically occur in conjunction, scholars may miss the opportunityto critique cultural power, which the encoding/decoding model means to investigate(Hall, 1980, 1993).

In our study of the reception of satirical texts, the entanglement of processes ofinterpretation and evaluation is an important consideration. Obviously an audiencemember’s belief about what the author is trying to say is related to how that audiencemember evaluates or is persuaded by the text. For example, Booth (1974) providesthe example of ‘‘A Modest Proposal,’’ a famous ironic essay that appears to advocatethe slaughter of Irish children for meat for human consumption. Booth documentsnumerous nonsatirical readings of this text but argues that, while some may havetaken it to be a serious proposal, no one would take it seriously and support it. Indeed,the only reason that we know of such nonsatirical readings is that those who tookthe text seriously were so appalled by what they presumed was a serious proposal,they denounced it publicly. This perspective reminds us that an author’s intentionsmay not be a useful starting point for understanding the meaning of a text. However,we suggest that the author’s intentions should be considered an important audiencevariable. Audiences’ beliefs about authors’ intentions (i.e., serious or satire) form astarting point for any audience interpretations or evaluations.

Contemporary viewing context

In addition to textual properties associated with irony, features of the audience and theviewing environment trigger a range of readings. Recent audience research addressesthe potentially indifferent audience (Morley, 2006; Pasquier, 2003). Such an audiencedoes not engage with a text long enough to decode the textual properties associatedwith irony. Sandvoss (2003, 2005) uses the term neutrosemy to suggest that some mediatexts are polysemic to the degree that they hold a kind of neutral meaning, allowingreaders—especially fans—to project their own self-image onto the text. Accordingto Ruddock’s (2007) discussion of this work, ‘‘Polysemy erroneously locates the



question of media power in the text, and the audience’s ability to rip that text from itspreferred ideology. Neutrosemy pinpoints media power in the individual’’ (p. 91). Webelieve that the condition of neutrosemy may yield significant insight into the processof reading irony that is less tied to the structure of meanings built into the text itself.

Our study also takes into account the scattered and fragmented ways that peopleoften engage with media in our contemporary culture. Ruddock (2001) argues thatthe bits and pieces of media text we consume in our living rooms or on our laptops,cell phones, or iPods have their own kind of patterns of flow that must be taken intoaccount. The Internet, for example, has an abundance of videos that confound ourcurrent understanding of what constitutes a text and an author. YouTube providesviewers with original content, content excerpted from film or television, and contentthat has been reworked in various ways. For our study, we constructed an analysisrelevant to the contemporary viewing context by mimicking the kind of experienceviewers might have as they flip through the screens that constitute our contemporaryvisual and acoustic environment: surfing channels on television, clicking on a videolink from a friend, downloading a video podcast to a phone, or simply stumblingacross a video fragment in a real or virtual space.

Studying satire

Although many observers announce the growing importance of satirical media texts,especially in the spheres of political commentary and news discourses (Baym, 2007;Reincheld, 2006), the absence of reception research of such content is striking.Perhaps the reason lies in the rather open properties of satire, or in the practicalarrangements and considerations of undertaking empirical reception studies, or evenin the complex theoretical history of audience research. Those concerned with satiricalarguments have generally conducted textual analysis (Gring-Pemble & Watson, 2003;Kaufer, 1977; Olson & Olson, 2004; Wilder, 2005; Wright, 2001). This line of researchis typified by Olson and Olson (2004), who describe four possible reading positionsand produce hypothetical readings of a sample text from those positions. One of theimagined audience interpretations closely resembles the type of nonsatirical readingthat concerns critics of satire. The text they read was a political cartoon depictingRonald Reagan as a judge chastising the Statue of Liberty for welcoming refugeesfrom Central America. One of the authors’ hypothetical readings saw Reagan as alegitimate authority rightly protecting the United States from illegal immigration.The authors identify this reading as one of two ‘‘optimistic’’ (in contrast to cynical orskeptical) readings: one supporting the Reagan administration and one supportingthe sanctuary movement.

Further, those who do conduct audience research tend to study large texts (a film,television program, or entire series) and ask broad questions about the relationshipsamong texts, audiences, and everyday life. This tradition employs individual or groupinterviews in order to comprehend how audiences construct meanings around texts.



Such studies employ semistructured interviews for the purpose of recreating the talkabout television through which meaning is constructed (Lewis, 1991).

In recent issues of Communication Review, Martin Barker, David Morley, andCarolyn Michelle discuss the future directions of audience research. Barker (2006)criticizes the trajectory of audience research, inspired by encoding/decoding, as an‘‘accumulation of a number of studies’’ (p. 128) that fails to articulate a comprehensiveresearch program or progress into theory-building beyond vague notions of theactive audience or the assumed utility of the focus groups. This mirrors Bird’s (2003)suggestion that ‘‘we should be thinking more carefully about matching suitablemethods to the subtle questions we are trying to ask’’ (p. 8). As screens fill our homes,classrooms, and even pockets, and as distraction becomes an increasingly centralmode of perception (DeLuca & Peeples, 2002; Rutsky, 2002), audience researchmethods must be both thoughtful and flexible enough to match the fast-paced,highly visual world we seek to understand. This comes at a time when globalization,technological innovation, and ironic detachment potentially diminish the powerof encoding processes to place limits on decoding activity. Such current culturalconditions may also lead to further exaggeration of the polysemic interpretivepossibilities by audiences, particularly as do-it-yourself culture blurs the line betweenproduction and reception.

Method

For this study, we employed video content that was both satirical and conveyed whatwe thought was a clear, obvious argument. We recognize that our interpretationsof these texts, and the interpretations forwarded by the producers and reviewers,are not ‘‘correct’’ interpretations. However, the texts we chose were all identified byproducers, reviewers, and cultural organizers as parody or satire.1 Having knowledgeof the producers, history, and complete content of each text, we found the satiricalnature of these texts to be obvious.

The first video we selected came from Fox News Network’s short-lived comedyprogram The 1/2 Hour News Hour. The clip is a parody of a promotional spot forthe American Civil Liberties Union. In the clip, a white man in a suit walks down asidewalk toward the camera while delivering these lines:

There was a time in America when white supremacists and other hate groupshad to operate in the shadows, afraid to walk the streets in the daylight, afraid toshow their faces. But in 1977, a group of neo-Nazis sued for their right to marchthrough Skokie, Illinois, a town where thousands of Holocaust survivors lived.People like me helped those neo-Nazis take their case all the way to the UnitedStates Supreme Court. And guess what? They won. We won. I’m the ACLU.

Still photographs of neo-Nazis with swastika banners appear in the clip as well. Inorder to maintain ambiguity regarding the seriousness of the text, we removed oneline of dialogue and a laugh track from the ending of the clip.2



The second clip was from the film Thank You for Smoking. We selected an excerptfrom the congressional hearing that takes place at the climax of the film. The characterNick Naylor, a lobbyist for the tobacco industry, argues against a mandatory warninglabel for cigarettes by comparing smoking to other health risks:

If we want to remind people of danger, why don’t we slap a skull and crossboneson all Boeing airplanes. . . and all Fords. . . The real demonstrated number-onekiller is cholesterol. And here comes Senator Finistirre, whose fine state is,I regret to say, clogging America’s arteries with Vermont cheddar cheese. If wewant to talk numbers, how about the number of people dying of heart attacks?Perhaps Vermont cheddar should come with a skull and crossbones.

As the scene ends, Senator Finistirre is rendered speechless by these remarks andeveryone in the hearing room audience smiles and laughs.

The third clip comes from the mockumentary Bob Roberts, which follows thefictitious senatorial campaign of the title character, whose over-the-top Americanismparodies conservative politics of the 1980s. We showed participants an excerptfeaturing a public debate between the ultraconservative title character and the liberalincumbent Brickley Paiste. The scene is composed of juxtaposed sound bites fromthe two candidates:

Roberts: Ladies and gentlemen, why can’t you get ahead? Why can’t you have thehome of your dreams, the fast car, a nice vacation?

Paiste: Let’s tackle the homeless problem. Let’s tackle child care, health care.Roberts: Why has your American dream been relegated to the trash heap of

history? I’ll tell you why: because of the wasteful social programs ofBrickley Paiste.

Paiste: Let’s put people back to work. Create jobs. Encourage industry. I can seea brighter future. But we have to work hard and, dare I say it, sacrifice.

Roberts: Let’s cut taxes. Let’s make it possible for the working man to keep themoney he earns.

Paiste: That is what politics is really about: reality, not image.Roberts: Vote for me and I will bring the values of the common man to bear in

Washington, D.C. I will bring youth and experience and passion andbelief.

Paiste: So let us be real together.

The final clip was from Starship Troopers, a science-fiction film depicting a futureworld where Earth’s military forces battle alien insects. The clip is a montageof military recruiting ads seen throughout the film and includes the followinglines:

Young people from all over the globe are joining up to fight for the future.They’re doing their part—are you? Join the mobile infantry and save the world.Service guarantees citizenship. The bugs send another meteor our way, but this



time we’re ready. Planetary defenses are better than ever. Klendathu, source ofthe bug meteor attacks, orbits a twin star system whose brutal gravitationalforces produce an unlimited supply of bug meteorites in the form of this asteroidbelt. To ensure the safety of our solar system, Klendathu must be eliminated. . .

We need you all. Service guarantees citizenship.

These lines accompany images of spaceships, laser weapons, and maps of the galaxyshowing the location of Earth in relation to Klendathu.

In the spring of 2007, we recruited a total of 31 participants from four collegecampuses in Southern California: one large state university, one private college, andtwo community colleges. Participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 46, with an averageage of 21. We interviewed 16 women and 15 men. Thirteen participants identifiedthemselves as white or Caucasian, nine as Mexican or Hispanic, four as Asian, oneas Korean, one as Vietnamese, one as Filipino, one as Pacific Islander, and one asblack.

Each of the 31 participants was shown only one of the four clips. This limitedany contamination effect, where questions from the first clip would shape howthe participant might watch and respond to subsequent videos. Our interviewprotocol was designed to provide few clues to help the participants interpret the text.Participants were not told the title of the text or if it was from a film or televisionprogram. Clips were viewed on iPods or laptops, further separating the texts fromtheir original form. Unlike in past audience studies, participants were interviewedindividually so that they could not coconstruct meanings together. After viewing theclips, participants were asked to first describe what they saw and then, after providingas much description as possible, offer their evaluation (if any) of the text as theyunderstood it. We used four questions to structure the interview. After viewing theclip, each participant was asked Question 1:

Question 1: ‘‘Please describe what you just saw as though you were describing itto a friend who had not seen it.’’

Restatement: ‘‘If someone—anyone—asked you, ‘Hey, what did you justwatch?’ what would you say?’’

This question was designed to elicit the participant’s immediate impression of theclip, which we felt was necessary to establish before asking more specific questions.The participant was then asked directly about the author’s intentions.

Question 2: ‘‘Please think about the person or people who produced this. What,if anything, do you think they were trying to say?’’

Restatement: ‘‘Who do you think made this? What message or idea were theytrying to get across? Are they trying to say something?’’

Question 3: ‘‘If you think they are trying to say something, do you think theymake their point effectively?’’



Finally, the participant was given an opportunity to evaluate what he or she perceivedto be the message of the clip.

Question 4: ‘‘Do you, in general, agree with what the producers are trying tosay?’’

When analyzing the interviews, in keeping with the tradition of audience analysis,we identified key terms and categories of readings that emerged from the interviewdata rather than employing a predetermined coding scheme. Each author readthe transcripts and coded the responses. Actual audiences can produce unexpectedreadings that can be missed if predetermined categories are imposed. While we werelooking for audience interpretations and evaluations, the coding schema within thosecategories was generative, arriving from the substance of the transcribed interviews(Foss, 2009). Through discussion among the three authors of this study, we identifiedcommonalities across the readings, which became the basic reading types we present;descriptions of these commonalities are provided below. We divide our findings intoliteral and nonliteral interpretations based on the terminology used by participantswhen answering Question 1. The term ‘‘literal’’ was chosen because many of thereadings did not merely miss the satire, they often missed the fictional nature of thetext altogether. Nonliteral readings took the texts as generally fictional, and three ofthose readings identified the clip as having been taken from a specific film that theyhad seen before, in part or whole. For the literal and nonliteral readings, we identifiedthe common evaluations offered by participants.

Literal interpretations

Initially, we imagined that few people would take the texts literally. To our surprise,we discovered literal readings for all but Thank You for Smoking. Out of the 31interviews, we found 14 instances where the participant’s language suggested that heor she understood the text to be literal. Language that we categorized as literal includedlabels typically associated with nonfiction, such as ‘‘commercial,’’ ‘‘advertisement,’’or ‘‘announcement.’’ Responses were also categorized as literal when participantsreferred to subjects who appeared in the clips as though they were real people, suchas ‘‘two candidates running for office.’’

The 1/2 Hour News Hour clip parodying the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) was the one most frequently taken literally, with seven of eight participantsidentifying it as an advertisement or promotion for the ACLU rather than a parodyattacking the ACLU:

Roberta:3 So it seems like it was like a commercial about a white supremacygroup that felt very burdened and like very underneath and felt thatthey couldn’t really express their beliefs and what they stood for.

Interviewer: What do you think they were trying to say?Roberta: I think that they were trying to say that even though this particular

group is, um, established and formed against another group. . . just



to express supremacy—that in America, in democracy, every voiceshould be able to be heard.

Another participant was quick to point to the ACLU as the producer of the message:

Joseph: [I saw] an announcement and this particular person’s values. . . Theywere trying to support their organization. I believe it was the ACLU, ortheir organization they were trying to support.

The science-fiction clip, Starship Troopers, was read by four out of nine participantsas a real military recruitment advertisement, despite the futuristic setting and imagesof spaceships, laser weapons, and alien bugs:

Maria: It is an advertisement to join the Army forces, the Navy maybe. Um,there was one that talked about ‘‘join us’’. . . like if you join the Navy orthe Army they will give you citizenship.

This participant saw the clip as an advertisement:

Elena: I just saw—it looked similar to a. . . like commercial—gettingpeople to join the Army.

Interviewer: So if somebody asked you, ‘‘What did you just watch?’’ what wouldyou say to that person?

Elena: A commercial.

And another saw it as a recruitment advertisement:

Janette: I was watching some sort of recruitment video to guarantee our citi-zenship, right? [It wouldn’t be] on TV, not that, because it’s a little bitcheesy. But you know they advertise on TV, some sort of recruiting typeenvironment, you know where they have people going to high schoolsand talk to you, maybe something like that.

These readings were surprising, because they were so literal. We expected thatsome participants would see the clip as part of a fictional text that genuinelycelebrates militarism, but we did not anticipate that anyone would think it wasproduced by the U.S. military as a recruitment advertisement. However, mili-tary recruitment advertisements do sometimes draw on science-fiction and fantasyimagery, such as an advertisement featuring a Marine fighting a monster of fire androck. Military ads also emphasize cutting-edge technology. Further, advertising ingeneral has taken a turn toward the surreal and non sequitur. Thus, the fictionalrecruitment advertisements from the film share some features of real recruitmentadvertisement.

The clip from Bob Roberts was read by three of eight participants in a literal way.This respondent’s description refers to political candidates rather than actors:



Sarah: To me it was two political candidates talking to all sorts of people andlike asking—not asking, but describing—like what they believe in andkinda communicating to the public at a more personal level about theirstatements.

And this participant identified the government as the producer:

Penny: It’s two men, kind of going back and forth and advertising themselvesbecause they are running for office.

Interviewer: Who would produce this?Penny: Anyone who is in politics. The government.

Certainly participants could have assumed the fictional nature of these three texts(Bob Roberts, Starship Troopers, and ‘‘The 1/2 Hour News Hour’’) without articulatingthat assumption explicitly in their remarks. However, the lack of terminology relatedto fictional texts (movie, film, show, skit, comedy routine, etc.) suggests that thesereadings may have been truly literal. For example, participants could have saidthat the Starship Troopers clip was a fictional advertisement for a futuristic militaryshown in the context of a film. Similarly for Bob Roberts, the three participants withliteral interpretations did not say that this was a film or program about a politicaldebate, only that it was a debate. In contrast, participants did refer to Thank You forSmoking using the language of film. When participants thought it was a film, theysaid so.

Evaluation of literal readings

The literal readings of ‘‘The 1/2 Hour News Hour’’ and Starship Troopers resulted inunambiguous negative evaluations. This was most clear in the clip from ‘‘1/2 HourNews Hour.’’ There were no participants who thought the clip was produced by theACLU who also found the message convincing. Literal interpretations were alwaysfollowed by negative evaluations of the message. This participant expressed generalagreement with the ACLU but thought that protecting hate groups was unacceptable:

Eric: I agree a lot with what the ACLU is trying to promote, which is don’t takeaway our civil liberties. . . There’s kind of an extent where we should stop,kind of like yelling ‘‘fire’’ in a movie theater.

Other participants were less conflicted, expressing strong disagreement with whatthey thought the ACLU was saying:

Roberta: I don’t think it should be allowed, because if every person is made equal,I just definitely don’t agree with what the producers are trying to putout there.

Joseph: I don’t believe in the thing the producers are trying to support.



Finally, two participants went beyond expressing disagreement with the message tocriticize how the message was presented:

Yeon: I think it was largely based on feelings in that video, because they wereshowing pictures of stuff that a lot of people may be offended by or evenproud of, depending on where you side.

Anita: I think they could have done something better. I didn’t really like it. . . Ithink they need more evidence to support them.

The literal reading works against the ACLU’s position and the message’s producerin two ways: first, by putting forward an unconvincing argument (i.e., whitesupremacist should be protected), and second, by appearing foolish enough tothink that the argument would be a good one to highlight in an advertisement.The feature that makes the satire funny (i.e., the extreme example of defendingwhite supremacy) made the ACLU look bad for those who took the clip literally. Itreflects poorly on the ACLU that it would select such an extreme example to makeits case.

The second clip taken literally was from Starship Troopers. The slogan ‘‘ser-vice guarantees citizenship’’ appears twice in the video. Because of the interpretiveframework of Latino immigration, citizenship is a controversial topic in South-ern California, where we conducted the interviews. Several participants presumedthat the slogan, and the policy it implies, referred to contemporary citizenshipdebates:

Interviewer: What, if anything, do you think they were trying to say?Janette: Something like that to get our citizenship we have to fight, you know.

I don’t know if they were trying to give me that message or justtrying to get me to join the military. Because, you know, during themilitary they usually try to entice you guaranteeing a good career,and this is to guarantee our citizenship and that we have to fight.

Interviewer: Would you say you agree or disagree with what the people whoproduced this were trying to say?

Janette: I think I was really blessed to be born in this country. And I don’tknow what we should do about the noncitizens who are cominghere.

This participant was able to consider two different interpretations of the text andoffer his evaluation of each:

Carl: If it was a recruitment video, the whole part about if you enlist, you getcitizenship seems kind of tacky and a bit suspicious. If it is a spoof, on theother hand, then I would agree with their point more.

Others expressed antimilitary views in negative evaluations of their literal readings:



Maria: I think I disagree. Because they are trying to get people to go to war, and

sometimes they don’t come back.

This participant appreciated the aesthetic of the video but found its persuasive

message less than compelling:

Isaac: Okay, that was an overwhelming barrage of military pictures and

space and a lot of multimedia going on. It was pretty cool.

Interviewer: So if someone asked you, ‘‘What did you just watch?’’ what would

you say?

Isaac: An advertisement to join the military. A kickass version.

Interviewer: Is there anything else you would like to say about this clip?

Isaac: It’s pretty ridiculous for the most part.

As for the Bob Roberts clip, participants’ evaluations of the text were less clear.

Three of the eight participants who viewed the clip used terms like ‘‘actors,’’ ‘‘movie,’’

or ‘‘entertainment,’’ whereas the remaining five participants’ responses yielded fewer

clues as to how they interpreted it. Three participants described the clip as a

demonstration of political speaking but did not explicitly state if the demonstration

involved real politicians or was within the context of a larger fictional text. If the text

is understood as a demonstration of political speaking, then what exactly is there to

evaluate? One participant offered this evaluation:

Carol: I guess it was a presidential speech, or something, kind of against

each other. One of them is more on the political side and other one

is not on the political side, I guess.

Interviewer: In general, do you agree or disagree with what the producers are

trying to say?

Carol: [I agree] because they are trying to let us know how there’s two sides

to everything.

Other participants struggled when asked to identify a message for evaluation:

Interviewer: What, if anything, are they trying to get across?

Sarah: [Long pause]. . . Ummmm, what was it trying to say, ummm, just

the differences, I think.

Antonio: Um. . . I mean. . . I don’t see any real concrete interpretation of it.

I think it’s kind of showing, like, how politics are and there is, you

know, almost black and white a lot of the time in politics.

The reluctance or inability of these participants to offer an evaluation of the text

suggests that the text may be neutrosemic, having little or no meaning for the audience.



Nonliteral readings

The 1/2 Hour News Hour clip about the ACLU was taken literally by most respondents,but one recognized a satirical element. The respondent who did see the irony in thisclip referred to it as a scripted text by using the term ‘‘video’’:

Eric: There’s a video I saw. It’s talking about how the neo-Nazis won theright to protest in a town full of Holocaust survivors. At the end,the first thing he talked [about was] how he took it to the SupremeCourt to get their rights. He said he was part of the ACLU.

Interviewer: Please think about the person or people who produced this clip.What, if anything, do you think they were trying to say?

Eric: It seems like, it’s kind of like anti-ACLU, saying look at them, theyare helping neo-Nazis, helping white supremacist groups out.

This nonliteral reading is hesitant; it ‘‘seems like’’ the clip was ‘‘kind of’’ against theACLU. This respondent went on to express agreement with what he perceived to bethe anti-ACLU message: ‘‘There are certain things that freedom of speech does allow,but there are certain things not allowed. It’s borderline hate crime that I can see.’’

The responses to Starship Troopers were split. Five of the nine participants readthe Starship Troopers clip as a fictional rather than a real military recruitmentadvertisement. Whereas the audience members who read it as real used terms suchas ‘‘advertisement’’ or ‘‘commercial’’ in their descriptions, those who read it assatire used terms signifying its fictional quality, such as ‘‘movie.’’ Two respondentsindicated that they had seen the film before; however, this did not ensure a satiricalreading:

Gilbert: I’ve seen that movie before. It’s Starship Troopers, basically it was likea campaign to join the military. They were saying that we have thisproblem with insects or the bugs or whatever, and they were trying torecruit people to basically fight against them.

Steven: It was part of a movie, from Starship Troopers. It was a promotionalmilitary piece where they wanted people to join the military to help fightagainst the bug nation, I guess.

These responses and the literal readings share the basic interpretation of this as amilitary recruitment piece; however, these responses show that the participants wereaware that the clip is a fictional advertisement within a larger fictional text. Theirprior viewing and/or prior knowledge of the clip did not guarantee that they were‘‘in on the joke,’’ but their awareness of the artifact before the study did make literalreadings nearly impossible.

Out of seven respondents who viewed the Bob Roberts clip, three used terminologysuggesting that they saw it as a fictional representation of a debate. This respondentrecognized that the clip was meant to entertain but could discern little else aboutthe text:



Luis: It’s for entertainment—I don’t think anyone would’ve made thisfor a serious reason.

Interviewer: Do you agree with what the producers are trying to say?Luis: Um, I was pretty confused while I was watching. They started off

with something bad about the candidates and then they just wentinto what they were running for.

Another respondent recognized the text as fictional and indicated that she knew theactors. Yet this information did not provide much to assist in her interpretation:

Rachel: The actors who are in it, I know they are liberals. I know they areinterested in liberals.

Interviewer: So do you think they were trying to say something?Rachel: Yeah, I am sure. I couldn’t say from that clip. But I say they are

trying to promote their views, which is what usually happens.

Finally, the third participant who saw it as fiction was able to speculate on themessage:

Lucia: I’m not even exactly sure, but maybe that’s the point, to show that forpolitical campaigns, they stand there and they give out their views andswitch off. . . Maybe showing what’s going on now, like presidents goingin who are older have certain viewpoints, and showing younger peoplewith a different view could be a very helpful one. . . You could say that Iwould agree that the younger gentleman would be more reliable.

This reading recognizes that it is a fictional text but does not see the satire. Herreading favors the Bob Roberts character, a position presumably opposite from thatintended by the author. This is the one instance in our study of a true ‘‘backfire’’reading.

Unlike the other clips, no one took Thank You for Smoking to be nonfiction, thatis, a real congressional hearing. This is most likely because the film starred well-knownactors (Aaron Eckhart and William H. Macy) and had been widely advertised. Theclip we showed had elements associated more with film than with a public hearing.Characters only peripherally involved with the hearing are shown, signaling that it ispart of a larger narrative. It does not have the stand-alone quality that the other threeclips have. Despite knowing that what they were watching was a film, participantswere not entirely certain about any singular message, in part because there weremultiple speakers in the clip expressing conflicting views:

Hien: I don’t actually really, really understand like what their point is. They arejust trying to make a point that smoking—well, everyone knows smokingis bad. But his point in the clip is that everyone knows [that it is bad].

This participant read the satire as attacking the tobacco companies:



Arnold: It seems ironic. . . But it seems safely ironic in that it’s kind of satiricalagainst big tobacco as a bad thing and as a conglomerate of—you know,it has a negative effect, especially when they are the ones funding theresearch on tobacco warnings.

This participant also saw it as an attack on tobacco companies, but saw it as morecomedic than persuasive:

Leticia: I think they were trying to show us that capitalism, in general, reallyproduces this kind of thinking, and also that it’s ridiculous. I meanthat parallels with the system in general.

Interviewer: Would you agree with what the producers are trying to say?Leticia: I think it’s trying to be comical, so I don’t know if I agree with that

per se.

And finally, one participant believed that the point was to defend tobacco companies:

Interviewer: Who do you think would make a movie like this?Liz: Probably tobacco companies. I didn’t see the whole movie but it

seems like, I just saw the previews and I saw that, and it seems likethere are a lot of things that are brought up that encourages it.

This text would appear to embody the polysemic traits of irony outlined by Fiske(1987). Multiple characters utter statements that could be taken at face value or asstatements ‘‘that appear to say one thing, while actually meaning another’’ (p. 85).

Discussion

The four video clips used in this film produced only one reading that could beclassified as a ‘‘backfire.’’ However, in 14 cases, satire was missed in a way that didnot lead to backfiring. For satire to backfire, two things must be possible: first, thatthe text could be read by an audience member as serious when the author intendedit to be satirical, and second, that the audience member will find the message, asread, to be compelling. We found consistent support for the first assumption, butnot for the second. In this study, the four satirical videos produced only one readingthat could be interpreted as a ‘‘backfire,’’ that of the participant who favored BobRoberts over Brickley Paiste in the Bob Roberts clip. These findings suggest that activeaudiences are able to critically engage satirical texts and produce meanings outsidethe dichotomy of ‘‘getting it’’ or not.

Our study lends some support to the claim that audiences might read some textsin serious ways when the authors, or other audience members, might see them assatire. Not only might they miss the joke, they may likely miss the fictional nature ofthe content altogether. One would expect that younger, educated audiences wouldbe savvy at detecting satire and accustomed to the modern flow of media, with itsfragmented videos seen on television, online, and on iPods. However, in our sample,



with an average respondent age of 21, satire went unnoticed more than half thetime. We would like to emphasize that this study does not necessarily suggest thatliteral readings are common or identify the specific conditions that would causesuch readings in real-world viewing contexts. We took people who may have beenindifferent to the text, which would typically lead to neutrosemy or a nonreading,and required them to pay attention to it.

The most likely factor leading to missing satire was the completeness of the textshown to viewers. The three texts that were read by some as literal were self-contained,appearing to our participants as complete texts without reference to any larger texts.Though the clip from Starship Troopers comprised several excerpts strung together,the finished piece resembled one advertisement and contained no references to thefilm in which the advertisements appeared. The excerpt from Bob Roberts showedonly the debate, disconnected from the larger plot of the film. One might expectthat seeing an apparently complete text rather than a partial text would lead tobetter recognition of any satirical elements, yet this was not the case. These specifictexts took the form of a different type of text—promotional video and politicaldebate—which enabled a literal interpretation.

In contrast, the clip Thank You for Smoking was excerpted from a larger text, andthis was likely evident to participants in the study. The quality of the productionand editing, along with cut-away shots to characters not involved in the action,made literal interpretation (i.e., a real Senatorial hearing) unlikely. The satire wasless obvious and clear in its direction, leading to a more diverse and less ideologicallycertain range of readings. In this film, the satire emerges not from one scene, butthroughout the film, making the satire less evident to our participants.

The second requirement for a ‘‘backfire’’ scenario is that the audience memberfinds the message persuasive, credible, or insightful. This was not supported by ourstudy. Our most significant finding is the 14 readings that ‘‘missed’’ the joke butclearly got the message. This suggests that literal readings can work in the same, ratherthan the opposite, ideological direction as satirical readings. Those who thought theywere watching an actual member of the ACLU were not impressed by what he hadto say. Those who thought the military was promising citizenship to enlist soldiersfound the tactic questionable. In these two cases, the message that the author wastrying to communicate through satire (i.e., the ACLU goes too far, or a militaristsociety uses questionable recruitment tactics) was clearly communicated, even toviewers who read the text in a nonsatirical way.

The lack of support for the second assumption of the backfire scenario is linkedto the interrelatedness of evaluation and interpretation and the nature of satire asa form of humor. In this study, each audience member’s interpretation of the textdetermined his or her evaluation of the text. In many instances in our study, theperceived content type (advertisement, film, campaign debate, etc.) clearly providedan interpretive framework that trumped the satirical nature of the content. Clipsof ‘‘The 1/2 Hour News Hour’’ and Starship Troopers simulate the techniques ofadvertising and promotional materials. The clip from Bob Roberts takes the form of a



debate between two candidates. Perhaps viewers employed the initial understandingthat they were watching an ad or a political debate well past the first few exaggerations,straw arguments, or other satirical elements, potentially to the very end. Audiencemembers who produced literal readings did not use textual references such as ‘‘movie’’or ‘‘TV show,’’ and this leads us to understand that the textual properties that activatesatire were overridden by textual cues of ‘‘advertising’’ or ‘‘recruitment material.’’In an era when media is increasingly produced and consumed in decentralized andmobilized modes, the lack of textual cues (e.g., ‘‘this is a film’’ or ‘‘this appears on FoxNews’’) will significantly shape audience interpretations and thus evaluations. Futurescholars may wish to systematically link particular textual features to the interpretiveframeworks they suggest to audience members.

The nature of satire as a form of humor also accounts for these findings. Satire’shumor and insight work only when audience members are tipped off by some aspectof the text that goes too far and becomes ridiculous. Thus, satire exaggerates and usesobvious straw arguments and other fallacies that audiences are expected to recognize.Such exaggerations and obviously poor arguments are not likely to be compelling.In fact, such messages discredit the presumed speaker: The ACLU looks foolish forthinking that people would be impressed by their defense of neo-Nazis; the militarylooks foolish or, as one participant put it, ‘‘tacky,’’ to think that service shouldguarantee citizenship. Thus, from a perspective of reasoning and argumentation,one should not be surprised that some who missed the joke appeared to still get themessage.

Finally, our results confirm an important premise of audience research: Audiencesare active and can produce surprising, sophisticated readings. Those who warn ofsatire backfiring presume that audience members who miss the joke are unsophis-ticated, unable to properly decode the message, and at risk of accepting dangerousarguments. In contrast, we believe that these 14 readings are reasonable and show asophisticated, critical engagement with the text. Each of these readings was producedwithin a context favoring nonsatirical readings (i.e., encountering the satire out ofcontext), so ‘‘misreadings’’ were not necessarily a sign of poor viewing skills. But,more important, audience members were critical of the messages as they perceivedthem. When discussing the texts, audience members showed disagreement, expressedskepticism, and made counterarguments. These behaviors indicate an engagementwith the text rather than an uncritical acceptance of what they thought the messagewas. One participant was able to articulate two potential readings, stating ‘‘If it was arecruitment video [then it] seems kind of tacky and a bit suspicious. If it is a spoof, onthe other hand, then I would agree with their point more.’’ While other participantsmay not have used this exact thought process in their decoding, this is the reasoningof the ‘‘missing the joke but getting the message.’’

In contrast, those who interpreted the texts as satire showed much less criticalengagement. The satirical readings we observed were less clear in their ideological orrhetorical direction. Once the text was read as satire, participants seemed to feel that it



had no real message and engagement with it was not necessary. They felt the satire wasjust ‘‘trying to be comical’’ or was ‘‘for entertainment’’ and would say little else about it.

We believe that future researchers may wish to revisit the intentions of producersas a relevant variable in audience analysis. The purpose of the audience, not theproducer, has dominated audience research for some time. This is understandable, asaudience research has proven time and again that audiences make use of texts in waysthat have little or nothing to do with authors’ intentions. Yet audiences also know thata text has an author of some kind, and what they think they know about the author willcertainly influence how they read the text. Our study suggests that audience members’understanding of producers’ intentions directs their readings and the ideological orrhetorical meanings generated from those readings. Further, more work needs tobe done identifying the visual and audio cues that signal, or fail to signal, satire toaudiences. Our purpose was to test the use of satire to convey arguments, but ourfindings suggest that we have much to learn about satire functions with real audiences.

We conclude with a return to Sacha Baron Cohen’s film Borat and the concernsraised by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League. To apply our findings to this film, thereis potential that someone will interpret the film in a nonsatirical way, particularly if aperson sees only the film trailer, an excerpt online, or a short portion while flippingthrough television channels. Predicting what those nonsatirical readings might be isdifficult. Is Borat a real journalist? Is he a fictional character whom the audience issupposed to identify with? Audience research will always reveal unexpected readings.However, the likelihood that some audience members ‘‘may even find it reinforc-ing their bigotry’’ (Anti-Defamation League, 2006) seems remote. Borat is a poorspokesperson for anti-Semitism and thus offers a critique of it rather than an endorse-ment. Thus, we believe that those who fail to recognize satire may still get the message.

Notes

1 Reviews by Roger Ebert, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone identified all three filmsas satire (Canby, 1992; Dargis, 2005; Ebert, 1997, 2006; Maslin, 1997; Reitman, 2006;Travers, 2001). Variety refers to The 1/2 Hour News Hour as news satire (Learmonth,2007). Further, the three films are categorized by both Netflix and Amazon as satire orspoof.

2 The omitted line was ‘‘Today, vicious hate groups are free to walk the streets.’’ We felt thephrase ‘‘vicious hate groups’’ would give away too much of the satirical intent. However,after completing and analyzing our interviews, we believe that even with this lineincluded, some may have still missed the satire. See our findings regarding StarshipTroopers.

3 We assigned participants pseudonyms.

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错过了笑话: 对讽刺文本的接收分析

Ann Johnson

加州州立大学长滩分校传播系

Esteban del Rio

圣地亚哥大学传播系

Alicia Kemmitt

加州大学圣地亚哥分校传播系

【摘要：】

本文研究观众如何理解和评价讽刺影片。39个参与者观看了3个讽刺电影（《星河战队》、

《鲍勃罗伯茨》和《感谢你抽烟》）和一个电视节目（《半小时新闻一小时》）这4个片断中的

一个，继而被要求描述和评价这些片断。结果表明观众往往会错过文本中的讽刺。然而，这

些不带讽刺的解读通常与讽刺的解读有着同样的意识形态或修辞的方向。如果参与者认为作

者的意图是认真的，他们则认为片中所表达的观点不是很令人信服。我们的结论是“错过笑

话”的观众可能仍然“获得信息”。

Ne pas saisir la blague : une analyse de réception des textes satiriques Ann Johnson, Esteban del Rio & Alicia Kemmitt Cet article présente les résultats d'une étude des interprétations et des évaluations de l'auditoire de vidéos satiriques. 39 participants ont visionné l'un de quatre courts segments vidéos tirés de trois films satiriques (Starship Troopers, Bob Roberts et Thank You For Smoking) et d'une émission télévisée (The 1/2 Hour News Hour). On a ensuite demandé aux participants de décrire et d'évaluer ce qu'ils avaient vu. Nous avons découvert que, souvent, les membres de l'auditoire ne saisissaient pas la satire des textes. Cependant, ces lectures non satiriques fonctionnaient généralement dans le même sens idéologique ou rhétorique que les lectures satiriques. Lorsque les participants croyaient que les intentions de l'auteur étaient sérieuses, ils trouvaient aussi l'argument loin d’être convaincant. Nous concluons que les téléspectateurs qui ne saisissent pas la blague peuvent néanmoins « comprendre le message ».

Missing the Joke: A Reception Analysis of Satirical Texts

조크의 상실: 풍자적 문맥의 수용분석

Ann Johnson1, Esteban del Rio2, & Alicia Kemmitt3 1Department of Communication, California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA,

USA 2Department of Communication Studies, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

3 Department of Communication, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

요약 점증하는 풍자의 대중성은, 특히 정치적 풍자의 경우에서, 풍자적 메시지들의 논쟁적인

함의에 대한 걱정을 제고하고 있다. 많은 비판가들은, 대중적이거나 학술적이거나, 풍자는

맞불을 일으킬 가능성이 있다고 경고한다. 풍자의 효과에 관한 이러한 점증하는 걱정에도

불구하고, 풍자에 대한 대부분의 연구는 오디언스가 아닌 텍스트를 연구하고 있다. 본

연구는 오디언스 해석학 연구와 풍자적 비디오들의 평가의 입장으로부터의 발견들을

소개하고 있다. 본 연구의 목적은 오디언스 구성원들이 풍자를 잘못 이해할 가능성을

만들어 냄으로써, 어떻게 해석하는가에 대한 차이를 연구하였다. 39명의 참여자들에게

4개중 하나의 비디오를 보여주었는데, 이들 비디오들은 세가지 풍자적 필름 (Starship

Troopers, Bob Roberts, 그리고 Thank You for Smoking)과 하나의 텔레비젼 프로그램 (Fox

News Networks’ ‘‘The 1/2 Hour News Hour)에서 발췌한 것이다. 참여자들은 그들이 무엇을

보았는가를 기술하고 평가하도록 하였다. 우리는 오디언스 구성원들은 텍스트내에서

종종 풍자를 확인하지 못한다는 것을 발견하였다. 그러나, 이러한 비풍자적 해석은 풍자적

텍스트들과 마찬가지로, 이념적 또는 수사학적 방향에서도 전형적으로 나타나고 있는

것이다. 참여자들이 저자들의 의도를 진지하게 생각할때, 그들은 또한 저자들의 논쟁을 잘

인지하는 것으로 나타났다. 대조적으로, 참여자들이 풍자의 요소를 인식할때, 그들은 종종

어떠한 중요한 의미를 전혀 발견하지 못하였다. 우리는 본 연구를 통해 풍자는 맞불을

만들어내지 않는다는 것을 발견하였다. 조크를발견하지 못하는 유사한 관찰상황에서

관찰자들은 메시지를 확인할 수도 있다는 것이다.

Perdiendo la Broma: Un Análisis de la Recepción de los Textos Satíricos Ann Johnson1, Esteban del Rio2, & Alicia Kemmitt3

AQ1 1 Department of Communication, California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, USA

2 Department of Communication Studies, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA 3 Department of Communication, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

Resumen

Este artículo presenta los hallazgos de un estudio sobre la interpretación de la audiencia y las evaluaciones de videos satíricos. Treinta y nueve participantes vieron 1 de 4 fragmentos cortos de video de 3 filmes satíricos (Starship Troopers, Bob Roberts, y Gracias por no fumar) y un programa de televisión (La Media Hora de la Hora de Noticias). Los participantes fueron interrogados después para describir y evaluar lo que vieron. Encontramos evidencia que los miembros de la audiencia pierden muy frecuentemente la sátira en los textos. No obstante, estas lecturas no-satíricas trabajaron típicamente en la misma dirección ideológica o retórica de las lecturas satíricas. Cuando los participantes pensaron que las intenciones del autor eran serias, ellos encontraron al argumento menos convincente. Concluimos que los televidentes que ‘‘perdieron la broma’’ pueden aún ‘‘recibir el mensaje. ’’

missing the joke: a reception analysis of satirical texts

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