1. SATIRE
“A composition in verse or prose holding up vice or folly to ridicule or lampooning individuals.”

2. SATIRE
“The use of ridicule, irony, sarcasm, etc., in speech or writing for the purpose of exposing and discouraging vice or folly.””

3. SATIRE
A particular use of humor for moral purposes, seeking to hold up to scorn those examples of unacceptable or immoral behavior in hopes of changing the offending individual’s (or institution’s) behavior, and to encourage others to behave like that.

4. SATIRE
Although satire can be quite funny, it differs from straight comedy in that often comedy asks us to laugh at ourselves, at those parts of ourselves that make us human, that we cannot control.

5. SATIRE
SATIRE pokes fun at those behaviors that we CAN control, and encourages us to correct those flaws or misdeeds, in an effort to make us better than who we are.

6. SATIRE
Often uses CARICATURE, which is a technique of exaggerating for comical and satiric effect one particular feature of the target, to achieve a grotesque or ridiculous effect.
EG: Gulliver’s Travels – Lilliputians & Brobdingnags
EG: The Simpson’s – Homer (shortcut-taker, responsibility shirker)