Joseph Zhang

Writing 38B

Professor Babak Mazloumi

12 December 2017

The Relevance of Irrelevance

Rhetorical Analysis of RIP Project

In my RIP project, I chose political satire as my genre, which is a bald but interesting and very

bold move in this project. Some people may think that political satire has nothing to do with this class

topic--science fiction. However, political satire and political science fiction have many aspects in

common and, of course, have many differences at the same time.

First, from the definition, science fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological

advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life

on other planets. Also, Frederik Pohl, a famous science fiction producer once said, A good science

fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam. From his point of view, a

good science fiction should not just completely about fancy future technology--automobiles, what truly

matters is how a science fiction predict traffic jam-- the problem that could possibly cause by a certain

technology that can be invented in the future. Usually, a science fictions are based on an existing

technology, and apply some theoretical principles into a future context, to make people realize the

possible problem around them and let them think about solutions or how will people react if it comes true.

In other words, this is the message that the rhetor trying to deliver to the audience. While, similarly,

political satire also exposes existing problem in our society, mostly in the area of politics. The difference

is political satires process these questions in a more dramatic and humorous way. For example, in the

class, Professor showed us a science fiction movie clip called Fahrenheit 451, which is a movie based on
a science fiction novel. This movie delivers a subtle message about government censorship by using a

story that set in the imaginary future. In the article "Life of the Mind and a Life of Meaning: Reflections

on Fahrenheit 451", Smolla from UGA law school describes Fahrenheit 451 as The Anatomy of

Censorship, and she also believes Bradburys tale is one of inexorable woe to those who censor.

Which can show us how does a science fiction deliver its message that is already existing in current

society? After I saw that movie clip, I had this idea about writing a political satire, which, in a way,

basically has the same function as science fiction, to reveal some problem that is possible to happen in the

future and deliver this message in a subtle way--by delivering this idea as some imaginary content.

Not only the two articles are similar from definition, but from another aspect of the structure, one

can see that science fiction uses fiction elements to set up the background or story line. For example, it is

common to use time travel machine and laser guns in science fiction movies. From my own perspective,

these scientific elements not only just define this article as science fiction. More importantly, these

elements also can have a specific purpose, such as gene modification in Sci-fi is usually used as revealing

the true nature of humanitygreedy and hypocrisy, people in those movies or articles usually hope to

change gene to make themselves stronger or smarter by using time gene modification technology, and

they usually started with some noble reason, such as revolutionize the science field. But in the end, they

only aim at money or fame. So, from this perceptive, political satire used the same technique such as

exaggeration. For instance, in my RIP project, instead of using science and technology elements, I used

the fake names Yi for the Chinese government leader. And agencies that does not exists. It is like the

ministry of truth(Orwell) in his book 1984. By creating the official medias propaganda to promote this

imaginary character's idea, I revealed the mysterious media censorship and dictatorship in Chinese

society. Moreover, I created some fake event in the article to serve a purpose of showing the true side

of this inexorable dictatorial government.

 Last but not least, about the differences. In this political satire, I also used some obvious

exaggeration and sarcasm during composing the article. This is usually different from normal science

fiction. Usually, science fiction does not involve obvious unreal execration to make people think this

article as not credible. Because science fictions cannot get rid of actual scientific principles such as the

theory of relativities. So everything inside a science fiction should at least be based on science and makes

sense. This is totally different from political satire. This is because political satire usually requires these

dramatic contradictions to make people understand the irony behind this. For example, Jonathan Swift

wrote a satirical writing about the famine in Ireland in the 1700's. His solution to the famine was for poor

people to sell their babies to the rich people so the rich people could eat and the poor people would have

money. No matter from which angle, eating children is obviously a ridiculous solution to a famine and

would not solve the root problem. (Wiki how) This exaggeration highlighted how badly the government

treated poor people and the negative lens that rich people viewed the poor people in the country. In my

article, I used same techniques such as the ridiculous number of meetings that Communist Party of China

holds every month to discuss solutions to improve the welfare of the public while people are suffering

from more serious problem--air pollution. However, this brings challenges, Satire is only funny if your

audience thinks that it is funny. (Wikihow) It is hard to make the references and examples both includes

irony and make them obvious. So I tried my best to makes those references clear by using external links

for all people to get my point behind them. So I tried to leave as many hints as possible for the audiences

to remind them that I used particular words under the purpose of exaggeration or sarcasm.

Even though this is my first time trying to write a political satire and I did encountered a lot of

obstacles in the beginning. But altering this first try I gradually become more confident in trying a new

genre of writing, and most importantly, I learned the similarities between two seemingly irrelevant

genrespolitical satire and science fiction. They have very similar way of delivering messages and they

both requires similar techniques. But sometimes political satire require more obvious exaggerations.
 Works Cited:

A quote by Frederik Pohl. Quote by Frederik Pohl: "A good science fiction story should be able to ...",

www.goodreads.com/quotes/810570-a-good-science-fiction-story-should-be-able-to-predict.

Smolla, Rodney A. "Life of the Mind and a Life of Meaning: Reflections on Fahrenheit 451," Michigan

Law Review vol. 107, no. 6 (April 2009): p. 895-912.

http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/mlr107&div=36&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collecti

on=journals#

Orwell, George, and Ana Luisa. Faria. 1984. Antigona, 2015.

wikiHow. How to Write Satire About Current Events. WikiHow, WikiHow, 20 Nov. 2017,

www.wikihow.com/Write-Satire-About-Current-Events.

Swift, Jonathan. A modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people from being a burden to

their parents or the country, and for making them beneficial to the country. For Weaver Bickerton, 1730.