Political Satire

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Pages: 5

Political Satire Cartoon Analysis
Comedy was not just created as a pure source of entertainment, it was created to make us laugh but also to make us question and analyse the world around us. Satire is designed to expose and ridicule people’s stupidity and/or mistakes. The point of satirical political cartoons is to mock politicians and governments for making stupid decisions which draws the attention of the public towards the issue and encouraging change to occur. The cartoon that will be analysed today is “Rudd’s Asylum Seeker PNG Solution” created by David Pope and published in the Canberra Times on the 23rd of July 2013. The message of this cartoon conveys how little the politicians care about the refugees and expressing showing how the
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In the PNG Solution cartoon, parody is used extremely well, portraying the situation realistically. The example of parody used in this political satire is the image of the monopoly chance card. Pope has created a parody by changing the chance card to a “no chance” card. The point of a parody is to display a humorous imitation of a story, poem or song or in this case a game like monopoly - which in this case has been achieved extremely well. The main purpose of this use of parody is to mock politics and politicians comparing what they do to a game. In addition, Pope contrasted the similarities of children playing games and politicians, saying their decisions are poor and there are not thinking about the health and wellbeing of others particularly …show more content…
The tone is used extremely well in this cartoon, using two very effective types of tone: mocking and accusing. This cartoon uses mocking tone because it is mocking the Rudd’s Governments’ irrational choices they made about refugees and comparing his campaign to that of a game of monopoly. As well as the mocking tone, Pope has included an accusing tone as it is condemning the Rudd Government of showing no remorse and only making decisions for self-benefits and not for others like the refugees who are desperately in need of asylum in Australia.
The final element used in this cartoon created by David Pope is values. A major value used in the cartoon to tug on the heartstrings of the audience is Equality. This is a major element as these refugees aren’t being given a second chance in Australia instead they are being denied this opportunity and shipped back to PNG. This value is also very important because the Australian people should be giving these people a chance at redemption allowing them to extend their futures and given themselves some level ground to start from allowing them to work their way up in the work