Emmanuel Carrère’s novel powerfully satirizes intellectual pretension but at the expense of engaging storytelling.
satire
Film Review: “Sorry To Bother You” — Engaging Anti-Capitalist Satire
Sorry to Bother You is a doozy — vividly shot, morally vigorous, and consistently funny.
Film Review: Satire As it Should Be — “Tickling Giants”
If you want to see what courageous political satire really looks like, see Sara Taksler’s engaging new documentary about Bassem Youssef.
Film DVD Review: 1931’s “The Front Page” — Restored
The improved viewing experience of the 1931 version of The Front Page enhances the stature of director Lewis Milestone as an early-talkie innovator and shows off the crack ensemble cast.
Book Review: “Look Who’s Back” — The Second Coming
The writing in this novel depends on winks and nods. You’re invited to be in on a big joke, assuming it is one.
Film Review: “Welcome to Me” — Me and TV, The American Dream
It is Kristen Wiig’s committed performance, along with director Shira Piven’s skill at comic timing, that grounds the satiric comedy’s absurd premise.
Fuse TV Review: Political Satirist John Oliver — Viewers Are Responding, not Just Watching
Each John Oliver monologue takes a different weighty and urgent political issue and deconstructs it with wit, clarity and moral purpose.
Book Interview: S.T. Joshi on Ambrose Bierce — The Underappreciated Genius of Being Grim
Bierce proffers a satiric temperament gone wild and woolly, partly propelled by a revulsion at the criminal vulgarity of the Gilded Age. Given the current triumph of the 1%, his fury at power mad corporations is worth an admiring look.
Book Review: Flann O’Brien at 100 — An Enduring Comic Genius
There is no way that The Arts Fuse was going to miss celebrating the 100th birthday of one of the greatest satirists of the 20th century — Irish genius Flann O’Brien.
Fuse Book Review: A Couple of Nihilists Ready for a Piece of the Action
Both of these novels about social corruption should be in every Occupy Wall Street library in the country: inequality is not a matter of fate but the result of an exhausted acquiescence to subterfuge.