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The Onion Satire Analysis

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In the funniest publication, The Onion, the author uses satire to criticize people and expose them to their stupidity or vice, typically in politics or other recent and popular issue. Satire is used through the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule. In this mock press release from The Onion it is made to mock the release and the reasoning for the creating on MagnaSoles, which are shoe inserts. The author of this hilarious work of art writes this to criticize the concept of these shoe soles doing all the amazing things they are said to do, they are just basic shoe inserts. The author uses exaggeration and overstatements to achieve his goal of mocking the shoe soles and their release. At the start of this mock press release, the author makes up his own kind of science. In talking about the shoe inserts the author says “which [inserts] stimulate and smooth the wearer 's …show more content…

When talking about how great these inserts are, it is stated that these inserts enable “your soles to heal your entire body as you walk”. This is a big overstatement. It is not possible for just a ¼ inch of gel foot insert is going to heal your entire body. It is funny to the reader because with common sense you could figure out that there is no way this insert can heal your entire body. It is funny to even think that it would. The author later makes another overstatement by giving a story that someone twists their ankle and they placed MagnaSole on and they didn’t have pain 7 weeks after and they “noticed a significant decrease in pain and can now walk comfortably”. This is an overstatement because there is no way a shoe insert can heal your twisted ankle, which takes 6 3 weeks to 4 months and should have ankle support (brace). These shoe inserts aren 't ankled support and couldn’t heal a twisted ankle. This is a lie, and this is how the author exaggerates all the things the insert can

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The speaker is a critical writer from the onion. This was written during the 1997, a few years after the so called “Cola War”. The “Cola War” was an absurd case and is the target of satire, in the article false interviews were made where it showed how many men were “affected” by the war. The critical writer criticizes how America turns something insignificant into an enormous ruckus and about how both cola company 's value who will triumph over the consumers top choice to an extreme extent.

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In the modern age, satire has become increasingly popular and effective in making a point. An example of this is The Onion's mock press release, Magnasoles, which was published in 2018. The article is a parody of a press release for a product that claims to improve posture through magnetic insoles. The product, although presented as a legitimate product, is actually impossible and ridiculous. By presenting this product as a real one, The Onion is able to make a statement about the lack of scrutiny that marketing companies use when promoting their products.

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John Oliver’s Sugar - Satire Review “The Average American eats 22 teaspoons of sugar a day, 5 times the proper amount!” This is a quote from the host of “Last Week Tonight” John Oliver in his video over making producers include an ‘added sugar’ slot on product nutrition labels. Consumers should at least get to know what the food we eat contains. The producers are trying to avoid including the “added sugar” on their labels. Their reaction should make you question how much sugar they include in their products.

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Throughout the history, different medias-(Movies, tv shows, novels, songs) tackle the topic of teenage society.  Jerad Hess, the director of the film Napoleon Dynamite, used many satirical device such as Exaggeration, Parody, irony, to interpret the life of a teenager in Idaho . The representation of teenage society in Napoleon Dynamite express the ups and downs of teenage life and mock/ exaggerate the life of teenegers and other contemperoty problems and situations. The director's main objective is to exaggerate  and to reveal the covel changes of  the country through a point of view of a teenager and the impact of those changes in their life. The immigration of Latin Americans to America and from urban areas to more rural areas are portrayed through the character Pedro and his interactions with protagonist-Napoleon Dynamite and  other characters.

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The definition of satire is a work that ridicules its subjects through the use of four techniques such as exaggeration, reversal, incongruity, and parody in order to make a comment or criticism about it. The book Cat’s Cradle is a great example of satire being portrayed. In Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, he creates his own religion “Bokononism” to satirize all of the other religions that are in the world. Bokononism is made from and built on lies (foma).

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The mock article from The Onion expresses the gullibility of the consumer to believe whatever he or she is presented with and the laziness for never questioning it. The Onion emphasizes such features in an indirect way, by exaggerating the techniques used by marketer such as, appealing to false authority, using Orwellian language and logical fallacies. This creates a humorous article, which exposes a serious point The Onion tries, and succeeds, in making about the modern consumer: he is being controlled by the advertisements he sees. The first sentence in The Onion’s article clearly states marketers use of untrustworthy techniques to sell their products; “ MagnaSoles shoe inserts, which stimulate and soothe the wearer’s feet using no fewer than five forms of pseudoscience."

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The article mentions the process of developing a pseudoscience called “Terranometry” to match the wearer’s energy to “the Earth’s natural vibrational rate of 32.805 kilofrankels” (47- 48). This sentence is filled with scientific vocabulary that an average consumer will not understand and realize that “kilofrankels” is intentionally fabricated. Words such as “vibrational rate” and an answer to an impossible 4th grade long division problem, “32.805,” supports the satire of consumers believing the idea that MagnaSoles were developed by highly intelligent superhumans that did their homework. Even the sentence as a whole provides no relevance to the functionality of the insole model itself, and has no evidence to support the physical science the product claims. Through creating exaggerated false diction, the consumers become aware of the same methods corporations use in making them think that a piece of molded foam can achieve the same tasks as a computer at NASA.

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