Satire is defined as the
use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s
stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and
other issues: the form that satire takes, such as a play, novel, film, or other
work uses comedy or a mock serious facts or situation to call out the practice
or values that are being made light of in a genre of literature or art that
characterizes satire. A good example of satire and the humor is involved
in the movie (DVD) “Evan Almighty,” (2007). In the movie, Steve Carell
plays a junior congress man, Evan Baxter, whose wish to change the world is
heard by none other than God, played by Morgan Freeman, and so God appears with
the perplexing request of Evan to build an ark. While God makes this almost
unbelievable and impossible request, Evan is faced with a satirical situation
and the absurdity of this God-given task that seem as if it is a work of
monumental proportions. At one point, God gives Evan “Ark Building for
Dummies,” and soon animals of every shape and size are flocking to Evan to be
put on the Ark. In its impracticalities and the exaggerations of Noah’s
Ark, the scenario from the book of Genesis, into the comical result of an
hilarious take on Evan’s call before a contemporary flood. God’s
expectation and down-to-earth interaction gives new meaning to Evan’s life as
he completes the ark just as it starts to rain. It seems as if God had
chosen an unlikely, but faithful servant to save the animals and he and his
family from the fate that Evan is encumbered with and for which he stands to
serve and see to it that what “God wants, God gets.” The movie is
satirical because it is an exaggeration of what faces Evan and how strange it
would seem to repeat the Genesis story and yet this is the contemporary world
where sometimes believers and few and far between.

Retrieved from:http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/satire

Retrieved from:http://www.imbd.com/title/tt0413099

Because Utopia is a perfect
society that can never be achieved in real life, the satire of Sir Thomas More
contains a large number of somewhat wacky descriptions of how Utopians
live. For instance, the traffic and merchandise of the Utopians brings
them a great deal of gold and silver “whereof money is made, they do not so
use, as none of them doth more esteem it than the very nature of the thing
deserveth.” (More, 2005, page 86). As Raphael Hythloday, our guide
to Utopia suggests, “Whereas to gold and silver nature hath given no use that
we may not well lack, if that the folly of men had not set it in higher
estimation for rareness sake.” (More, 2005, page 86). He maintains these have a
contradictory value from the way that England and Europe find these precious
metals. This in a sense the result of the wayin whichthe business
and personal property exists for the general equality of all within the
boundaries of Utopian island. This is odd and is especially ironic to the
situation and the kingdom of Henry VIII and thedisproportion of wealth in
Englandthat has given itself over tonew beliefs of Europeat
the start of the Reformation

The remark strikes a
citizen of Europe, “But of the contrary part, nature, as a most tender and loving
mother, hath placed the best and the most necessary things open abroad, as the
air, the water, and the earth itself, and hath removed and hid farthest from us
vain and unprofitable things.”(More, 2005, page 86). Where this would be
quite strange to people who regard these metals as valuable, Utopian society
finds them merely the more base riches, which is contrary to their values and
the establishment of their economy. While this is quite an irony to most
of the world: the exaggeration and the lack of value for the Utopian
society sees a much lesser distinction of value for things that the English and
Europeans of the 15^th century found at the center of the wealth and
a propriety as the distinguished desirability and esteem of such goods.
Clearly, the goals of Utopian society are quite different and unexplainable to
those outside Utopia and look closely at what is described, one can see that
somewhere in the mixture of Utopiaand the social, educational, and
political problems all work in a much different way that 15th century
England.

More, Sir Thomas. (2005). Utopia.
Translated by Ralph Robinson. Barnes & Noble Classics. New York, NY.