Satire in SpongeBob Squarepants Essay

Written by a marine biologist, SpongeBob Squarepants is a fast-paced comedy that has been running since 1999. In this series, there is the use of satire throughout and that makes it worth watching. When we talk of satire we are looking at a form of irony. Satire is usually using exaggerations, parody, irony, and humor in order to mock something or something (Hodgart). We use satire to criticize aspects in the society that we want to highlight for correction but we make them humorous. In satire, the main aim is to criticize something or something maybe a type of behavior and turn the spotlight on the main problem (Hodgart). People who use satire apply humor so as to be able to raise awareness especially of a social problem like a political change. SpongeBob Squarepants has applied satire as a way to correct some vices in society. Through the use of humor, the series has achieved this and they have spotlighted the problems by making them laughable.

One of the instances of satire in the series is when Hillenburg shows us that the tendency to dehumanize someone because we classify him or her as a 'foreigner' no matter the fact that we are similar. This was seen in "Sandy's Rocket" when Patrick convinces SpongeBob that they landed the rocket ship on the moon. This is despite the fact that the ship made an instantaneous turn during the flight and returned them safely to their hometown (Jones, 27-30).

Patrick seems to be fervent to the fact that the 'aliens' have set up a somehow familiar setting to pamper SpongeBob and Patrick into contentment so that they could carry their attack. Even after confronting and communicating with an alien that looked like Squidward, they proceed to rage the town and with no knowledge 'harvest' their friends and neighbors (Jones, 28-29). They tie them up in little net bags. Here what the writer is trying to pass across is that there is a fallacy that being different is bad and also being foreign is bad. What is also being communicated is that sometimes we become so entrenched in ideas of 'different' to an extent that we cannot see beyond the fact that 'other' is just the same as us.

For a very long time, social commentators tore SpongeBob Squarepants by accusing him that he is gay with his friend Patrick. This may not have been the case with the knowledge that he had a crush on Sandy. During Valentine's Day, we see something that is different like a kind of innocent affection between SpongeBob and Patrick (Hodgart).

They exchange gifts and we learn that SpongeBob's gift delays and that makes Patrick passive aggressive. From this, we see that it was just a simple friendship appreciation. In this instance what they are trying to tell us is that being a heterosexual, affectionate towards male is not bad at all and does not make anyone gay. In fact, it shows that it is healthy and that it is good to make friendship appreciation just like SpongeBob and Patrick did (Jones, 27-34).

They were just out there appreciating each other for being good friends and that is why they gifted each other, in the end, it is usually good to gift a friend and appreciate the friendship. The message is clear and the writers have used humor to bring it out to the world.

There is an obsession by the society that looks at appearance and judge. In the series, SpongeBob has it with being a wimp. One time he sits in front of the television and starts imagining as someone who is huge, muscular as opposed to his current rickety nature. At that moment he comes across an ad that satisfies his thoughts. The ad is about a product- "GET ANCHOR ARMS" which presents a fast way of not being a cadaverous shrimp boat. What he decides is that he buys it although it is a short-term solution (Jones, 34-39). It works and he briefly impresses his friends but again goes back to being a shrimp. He then decides that it would be better if he started working out.

What SpongeBob is trying to communicate in this episode is that we are a consumer world and that is somehow ludicrous. Many of us have found ourselves watching ads and decide to try and become just like the ad says without giving a second thought on it. A time comes when we have been made passive by long working hours that we put into our work to a point that we don't mind about anything else but convenience. What we do is we want quick fixes; we don't want to put any effort to have self-improvement because we use our free time as a way to escape from our boring and demanding jobs. What we long for is to get quick fixes without putting any effort. What SpongeBob is addressing here is that anything that is worth our time needs work, commitment, long-term work and not looking for shortcuts and quick fixes. To solve our problems we don't just need to be passive and expect that sitting down will bring a solution to our problems all the time.

Something else that the series has shown through satire is that employers have no problems about using over-qualified applicants. What they will do is to manipulate the existing applicants and make them working machines.

The series has used an example of issues of over-qualified workers through pilots when SpongeBob says that help is wanted. SpongeBob presents the overqualified and optimistic candidate who wanted the frycook job.

In another episode, SpongeBob portrays what it is for a student when doing school work. In this episode, we see that a small distraction made it difficult for him to start writing the essay. This highlights the experience that students go through (Orji, 24-27). When we want to start something we get a lot of distractions and we end up procrastinating. Even once we have already started we feel like we have done too much while in reality there is nothing that we have done. This compares directly to students who will always get distracted when they are doing something and end up procrastinating.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the series has applied satire as a way to highlight problems that we are facing in the real world. Although it appears laughable the series pinpoints the problems and makes them like they are just mere laughing activities. Satire usually draws the attention of the people on the issues that are usually presented. These issues usually affect the society in one way or another. This shows that the writers were targeting addressing issues and the best way they did that was to do it humorously. This draws the attention of the viewers who see the issues in a laughable way but still, the point is driven home.

Works Cited

Hodgart, Matthew. Satire: Origins and principles. Routledge, 2017.

Jones, William R. "People Have to Watch What They Say": What Horace, Juvenal, and 9/11 Can Tell Us about Satire and History." Helios 36.1 (2009): 27-53.

Orji, Bernard Eze. "Humour, satire and the emergent stand-up comedy: A diachronic appraisal of the contributions of the masking tradition." The European Journal of Humour Research 6.4 (2018): 24-38.