The Way We Live Now

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices,... follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon. A common feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm—"in satire, irony is militant"—but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. This "militant" irony or sarcasm often professes to approve of the very things the satirist wishes to attack. Satire is nowadays found in many artistic forms of expression, including literature, plays, commentary, and media such as lyrics. The word satire comes from the Latin word satur and the subsequent phrase lanx satura. Satur meant "full," but the juxtaposition with lanx shifted the meaning to "miscellany or medley": the expression lanx satura literally means "a full dish of various kinds of fruits.
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Social commentary is the act of rebelling against an individual, or a group of people by rhetorical means, or commentary on social issues or society.... This is most often done with the idea of implementing or promoting change by informing the general populace about a given problem and appealing to people's sense of justice. Two examples of strong and bitter social commentary are the writings of Jonathan Swift and Martin Luther. Swift exposed and decried the appalling poverty in Ireland at the time, which was viewed as the fault of the British government. Luther initiated the Protestant Reformation against practices of the Catholic Church. Writers who engage in social criticism have been well-educated members of the upper classes. Notable ones from the lower social strata are Charles Dickens and Will Rogers. Social commentary is not limited to printed forms, as it is commonly practiced through all forms of communication, from conversations to computerised communication. This list is far from exhaustive. Examples of social commentary may be found in any form of communication. Artistic works of all mediums are often defined by what they say about society.
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In literature, a serial is a publishing format by which a single large work, most often a work of narrative fiction, is presented in contiguous ... installments—also known as numbers, parts, or fascicles—either issued as separate publications or appearing in sequential issues of a single periodical publication. More generally, serial is applied in library and information science to materials "in any medium issued under the same title in a succession of discrete parts, usually numbered and appearing at regular or irregular intervals with no predetermined conclusion." The idea of stories being told in serial form dates back to at least the One Thousand and One Nights , which consisted of a series of serialized stories, or "serialized novels" or novellas. Its frame story is about Scheherazade telling stories to King Shahriyar, and she needs to keep him interested in each of the stories, to prevent his executing her the next morning. She often tells the stories in a series, beginning each story with a narrative hook, leaving off with a cliffhanger, and continuing the story the next night.
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