Does it count as a satire if it defends the status quo?

[HuckleB]

Does it count as a satire if it defends the status quo?

http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/movies/mmx-0410170407oct17,0,1286182.story?coll=mmx-movies_heds

"...

Meanwhile, our standards for what passes as satire have dropped. The Cold War era gave us Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964), a black comedy that was as ominous and unsettling as it was absurd.

The Vietnam War era gave us Altman's "M*A*S*H" (1970), which, although set during the Korean War, offered a timely, irreverent look at the bloody costs of battle. David O. Russell's Gulf War critique "Three Kings" (1999) also was politically charged but came out during the relative safety of the Clinton years.

...

Most of the points being made by "Team America" have been made before -- albeit by talking heads rather than puppets. The best satire provokes discomfort, but no one on either side will be threatened by broadsides against Jerry Bruckheimer movies (is anyone defending "Pearl Harbor" these days?) or the overexposed Moore.

The "South Park" movie was an assault on the status quo. "Team America" is a defense of it, which is inherently less funny.

.."

Unfortunately, a column that's all too true.

[pen dragon]

1. It's sycophantic propaganda