Political satire in the context of "Satirical music"

On November 24, 2014, the hacker group "Guardians of Peace" leaked confidential data from the film studio Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE). The data included employee emails, personal and family information, executive salaries, copies of then-unreleased films, future film plans, screenplays, and other information. The perpetrators then employed a variant of the Shamoon wiper malware to erase Sony's computer infrastructure.

During the hack, the group demanded that Sony withdraw its then-upcoming film The Interview, a political satire action comedy film produced and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The film stars Rogen and James Franco as journalists who set up an interview with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un only to then be recruited by the CIA to assassinate him. The hacker group threatened terrorist attacks at cinemas screening the film, resulting in many major U.S. theater chains opting not to screen The Interview. In response to these threats, Sony chose to cancel the film's formal premiere and mainstream release, opting to skip directly to a downloadable digital release followed by a limited theatrical release the next day.

Augustan literature (sometimes referred to misleadingly as Georgian literature) is a style of British literature produced during the reigns of Queen Anne, King George I, and George II in the first half of the 18th century and ending in the 1740s, with the deaths of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, in 1744 and 1745, respectively. It was a literary epoch that featured the rapid development of the novel, an explosion in satire, the mutation of drama from political satire into melodrama and an evolution toward poetry of personal exploration. In philosophy, it was an age increasingly dominated by empiricism, while in the writings of political economy, it marked the evolution of mercantilism as a formal philosophy, the development of capitalism and the triumph of trade.

The chronological boundary points of the era are generally vague, largely since the label's origin in contemporary 18th-century criticism has made it a shorthand designation for a somewhat nebulous age of satire. Samuel Johnson, whose famous A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755, is also "to some extent" associated with the Augustan period. The new Augustan period exhibited exceptionally bold political writings in all genres, with the satires of the age marked by an arch, ironic pose, full of nuance and a superficial air of dignified calm that hid sharp criticisms beneath.

Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin (Russian: Евге́ний Ива́нович Замя́тин, IPA: [jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑ zɐˈmʲætʲɪn]; 1 February [O.S. 20 January] 1884 – 10 March 1937), sometimes anglicized as Eugene Zamiatin, was a Russian author of science fiction, philosophy, literary criticism, and political satire.

The son of a Russian Orthodox priest, Zamyatin lost his faith in Christianity at an early age and became a Bolshevik. As a member of his Party's Pre-Revolutionary underground, Zamyatin was repeatedly arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and exiled. But Zamyatin was just as deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) following the October Revolution as he had been by Tsarist policy.

Puck was the first successful humor magazine in the United States of colorful cartoons, caricatures and political satire of the issues of the day. It was founded in 1876 as a German-language publication by Joseph Keppler, an Austrian immigrant cartoonist and Adolph Schwarzmann, a German businessman, co-founder and financial backer. Puck's first English-language edition was published in 1877, covering issues like New York City's Tammany Hall, presidential politics, and social issues of the late 19th century to the early 20th century.

"Puckish" means "childishly mischievous". This led Shakespeare's Puck character (from A Midsummer Night's Dream) to be recast as a charming near-naked boy and used as the title of the magazine. Puck was the first magazine to carry illustrated advertising and the first to successfully adopt full-color lithography printing for a weekly publication.

Don't Look Up is a 2021 American political satire black comedy film written, co-produced, and directed by Adam McKay from a story he co-wrote with David Sirota. It stars an ensemble cast featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep. In the film, it tells the story of two astronomers attempting to warn humanity about an approaching comet that will destroy human civilization.

The movie's central comet impact event was used by McKay as an allegory for threats arising from climate change, and the film satirizes government, political, celebrity, and media indifference, in particular to the climate crisis, but with further synergy with regard to responses to science during the COVID-19 pandemic; Donna Lu of The Guardian notes that "[d]espite a stellar cast", the movie "received a frosty reception from many film critics", while being thoroughly lauded by climate activists.

Gulliver's Travels, originally titled Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, is a 1726 satirical prose novel by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift. The novel satirises human nature and the imaginary "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. Gulliver's Travels is one of the most famous classics of both English and world literature, and popularised the fictional island of Lilliput. The poet John Gay remarked of the work, "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." Although the novel is popularly classified under children's literature, Swift had originally written it as a political satire. The book has been adapted for theatrical performances, films, television, and radio over the centuries.

The story is about Lemuel Gulliver, an adventurous Englishman who travels to a series of strange and distant lands, each inhabited by unusual beings that reflect different aspects of human nature and society. In Lilliput, he encounters tiny people engaged in petty political disputes; in Brobdingnag, he is a small man among giants who criticise European customs; in Laputa, he meets impractical intellectuals disconnected from reality; and in the land of the Houyhnhnms, he finds rational horses living peacefully alongside savage human-like creatures called Yahoos. Through these journeys, the novel satirises the flaws of various civilisations.

Religious satire is a form of satire that refers to religious beliefs and can take the form of texts, plays, films, and parody. From the earliest times, at least since the plays of Aristophanes, religion has been one of the three primary topics of literary satire, along with politics and sex. Satire which targets the clergy is a type of political satire, while religious satire is that which targets religious beliefs. Religious satire is also sometimes called philosophical satire, and is thought to be the result of agnosticism or atheism. Notable works of religious satire surfaced during the Renaissance, with works by Geoffrey Chaucer, Erasmus and Albrecht Dürer.

Religious satire has been criticised and at times censored to avoid offence, for example the film Life of Brian was initially banned in Ireland, Norway, some states of the US, and some towns and councils of the United Kingdom. This potential for censorship often leads to debates on the issue of freedom of speech such as in the case of the Religious Hatred Bill in January 2006. Critics of the original version of the Bill (such as comedian Rowan Atkinson) feared that satirists could be prosecuted.

Servant of the People is a Ukrainian political satire comedy series created and produced by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was an actor before he became the President of Ukraine. Zelenskyy stars as Vasyl Petrovych Holoborod'ko, a high school history teacher in his thirties, who was unexpectedly elected president of Ukraine after finding instant fame when a student recorded a video of him delivering a profane rant against government corruption in his country and uploaded it to the internet. The series ran for three seasons between 2015 and 2019, and a film adaptation was released in 2016. The series was produced by Kvartal 95, a studio founded by Zelenskyy.

In 2018 the studio became involved in Ukrainian politics when a political party of the same name as the show was registered. While this was initially done to prevent others from using the name for "cynical political purposes", it quickly became active in Ukrainian politics, with Zelenskyy running as its candidate in the real-life 2019 Ukrainian presidential election against the incumbent Petro Poroshenko. Zelenskyy would be elected president following a landslide victory in the second round election, winning 73% of the vote. Zelenskyy was sworn in as the president of Ukraine on 20 May, 2019.