Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The genre of satire seems to tie closely to the element of comedy and humor. Satire often plays around with the widely known knowledge, meaning that it makes laughter by making nonsense in a somewhat logical way.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was definitely a bit old for my taste, but the amount of wit and exaggeration within it was amazing. The element of science fiction in this came from the upcoming background that takes place outer space. The whole storyline of the first radio podcast was how spaceships from outer space came and destroyed earth, but this was carried out with a lot of exaggeration in words and the situation. Even when the protagonists are talking about being thrown out of the spaceship to die, the dialogues are talked in a very witty way. All the plots talked about in the story are based on pretty desperate situations such as losing one’s home, torture, or death, but they are all handled in a witty way making it a sort of dark comedy. It was very interesting to see myself laughing away when the radio was talking about people being tortured and spilling out their intestines as a result.

I think that this element of dark humor is what makes satire a way to present social commentaries. From the beginning of this story, it starts with the protagonist finding out that his house will be demolished when he had just called a workman to clean up his windows. I learned in high school that during the late 20th century, many African Americans in the States lost their homes without their chance to make a choice. The opening of the story therefore seemed to comment on the issues that are placed in the same category as this, and I thought at least in a very subtle way, the story acts as a social commentary. The exaggeration that I talked about in the previous paragraph, I think is not the exaggeration that makes everything look fictional and unrealistic but an exaggeration of reality, making it relatable for the audience and allowing room for actual issues of society to step in.