Often, the best satire exists in a state of cognitive dissonance, with absurd characters acting in obviously ridiculous ways that nevertheless feel like the pro

Often, the best satire exists in a state of cognitive dissonance, with absurd characters acting in obviously ridiculous ways that nevertheless feel like the product of the exact same systems that govern our lives, with the obfuscation swept away. Dr Strangelove and Catch-22 are my favorite examples. The 60s US nuclear policy wasn’t really set by generals named Jack Ripper who want to inflict atomic hellfire because of baseless conspiracy theories… except that’s the chain of order the bureaucracy produced, with a longer timeframe and more words. Catch-22 is a comedy because the betrayals, idiocy, and soulless power moves all occur in one squadron with one or two links between people, instead of over the breadth of the theater and spread over many people so every step looks reasonable. It’s very hard to make this kind of satire because condensing and heightening narratives like that makes it so, so easy to tilt things a little more in favor of your ideas, which immediately loses that ephemeral sense of reality and turns your satire into a sermon with clown makeup. This is why there are so many attempts and so few successes. I’d say Disco Elysium is one of those successes.