Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises

In Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises, Massih Zekavat and Tabea Scheel present an innovative, comprehensive method for both effectively crafting and analyzing environmental communication that incorporates humor. Bringing together insights from communication studies, cultural studies, and environmental and social psychology, the authors essentially offer a how-to manual for using engaging, compelling discourse regarding the environment intended to raise ecological consciousness in the broader population. Humor can make even the most difficult and imposing topics seem manageable, and the authors demonstrate the productive relationship between humor and environmental aims through a rigorous discussion of the factors that influence environmental behavior. Drawing on these insights, the authors develop their own sophisticated model for environmental communication, the modular interdependency model (MIM) that allows for an intersectional, tailored approach to it. The authors demonstrate its utility by assessing the impact of humorous, proenvironmental cultural productions and in the process identify where further research in environmental communication and humor is needed.Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises contains seven chapters. In the introductory chapter, the authors point out that individuals have been unfairly burdened by the myth that altering personal choices is the foremost means of mitigating the climate crisis and argue that, even though individual action is important, crafting messages that influence larger collectives is an increasingly urgent task. They underscore that governments, the affluent, larger collectives (like institutions and corporations) as well as certain economic systems are principal actors in the climate crisis rather than marginalized groups, who contribute the least to it and yet are the most affected by it, and that they need to take responsibility by ameliorating the harms they have caused. In identifying the tension between individual versus collective action within environmental thought, the authors describe the resulting beleaguerment associated with environmental art’s predominantly doom-and-gloom affective mode. Like Aaron Sachs does in Stay Cool: Why Dark Comedy Matters in the Fight Against Climate Change (2023), the authors thus argue that humor is an essential tool for sidestepping these effects. However, while they stress the need to employ it and tailor it to specific audiences and contexts, they also note that it can be a double-edged sword and that has the potential to either divide audiences or unify and persuade them.In the second chapter, the authors provide a detailed review of classical theories of humor and then explore more recent theories that might enhance environmental communication, including evolutionary theories of humor that explain how laughter and play have historically functioned to communicate safety and serve other advantageous adaptive purposes. Today such theories are a “reminder of the value and significance of resorting to the full repertoire of survival strategies for critical environmental advocacy” (22). This chapter not only offers valuable advice to environmental activists and humanities scholars seeking to communicate environmental concerns but also provides indispensable summaries that distill an immense amount of humor scholarship and supply clear explanations and succinct definitions of benefit to a broad range of communicators.In chapter 3, the authors identify the determinants of behavior and mechanisms behind action and inaction in individual and collective approaches to environmental engagement. They emphasize that humor is highly context dependent and ephemeral, elucidating why each aspect of a piece of environmental communication must be carefully targeted to its audience to maximize impact and encourage more ethical, relational environmentalisms. They also maintain that cultural productions whose goal is to increase environmental awareness need to incorporate both scientific and artistic elements: “It is naive,” they note, “to believe that facts speak for themselves or that they are enough to motivate people to take action” (46). The authors’ review of existing literature measuring the impact of humor on proenvironmental behavior reveals a significant gap in the research on the subject, which in turn highlights the pioneering investigation their own research provides.Chapter 4 presents the fundamentals of the MIM as a communication tool. It consists of three submodels, the first of which describes the psychological mechanisms of behavior, the second of which identifies ecospheric and biological determinants of behavior, and the third of which discusses the social determinants. The authors distinguish their framework from other communication models that do not go beyond elucidating anthropocentric strategies rooted in individual psychology, demonstrating how the MIM instead foregrounds humanity’s enmeshment in the more-than-human world. Importantly, they illustrate how each submodel can help communicators better understand what kind of humorous environmental messaging they should employ to optimize the likelihood of their message reaching their specific, contextualized audiences. This chapter features a crucial discussion of the necessity of anticipating the challenges in employing humor and how one can mitigate them in light of the complex behavioral determinants outlined in chapter 3.Chapter 5 discusses how the MIM framework can not only be used to craft messages but also as an analytical tool. The authors examine three cultural productions that incorporate humor into their environmental messaging: episodes from The Simpsons, segments from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and an array of cartoons from the New Yorker Magazine. In their analyses, they use the MIM to pinpoint which behavioral determinants contribute to the texts’ content and implications. In one memorable example, they examine what motivates Lisa Simpson’s environmental actions in the “Lisa the Tree Hugger” episode of The Simpsons and what the consequences of those actions are, bringing to light an instance of proenvironmental actions arising from social rather than psychological determinants (130-31). A clear-cut strength of this text is the generous provision of accessible, concrete examples that elucidate the complex ideas throughout, and the extensive array of them in this chapter allows for an exhaustive exploration of the different combinations of behavioral determinants.In the penultimate chapter the authors review various means of measuring the impact of humor and satire on environmental behavior by focusing on methodology and elaborating on the various experiments and surveys informing their study. The result is an important, clear-eyed assessment of the gaps in the research on humor and environmental behavior. This key chapter speaks to the power and utility of their own work, one that suggests directions for future research and that identifies what tools we continue to overlook in our endeavors to create effective environmental messaging.The conclusion is similarly comprehensive and practical, showing that the MIM has broad implications for audiences beyond the academy. The authors are consistently clear and diligent in their assessments of what their own research offers, and they are aware of its limitations. Readers will find that the authors’ communication model opens up a conversation and that it provides tools and resources for use in future analyses of an even more diverse array of texts. Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises combines tremendous scholarly rigor and precision in its demonstration of the MIM and its potential for environmental communication.