Satiric Impersonations

Book excerpt: In this entertaining and provocative new work, Joel Schechter selectively surveys political satire covering a wide range of periods and events from Aristophanes to the present. His absorbing essays focus on the satires of Jonathan Swift, Charlie Chaplin, Will Rogers, Dario Fo, and the Guerrilla Girls, among others. Schechter furthermore examines how the histrionic behavior of some politicians and world leaders has prompted them to become unwitting contributors to political satire. He argues that these politicians are as theatrical, if not as comic, as the plays, pamphlets, and films in which they are satirically impersonated. As examples, he cites Hitler, Stalin, and Reagan as performers whose "acts" rival anything a satirist could invent and any impersonation a comedian could stage. In Schechter's view, satiric impersonation is not only an art form through which one living person appears to be another, it is also an act that reveals that the person imitated is an imposter. For example, he comments that "while Hitler conquered Europe, Chaplin [in his film The Great Dictator] in his own way conquered Hitler; adding him to a repertoire that included the Little Tramp and (later) Bluebeard." Schechter approaches satire with candor and humor, personalizing his text by concluding with a memoir of his own brief career as an actor-politician.