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THE WORLD OF MUSICAL SATIRE
David Misch (“Mork and Mindy”, “Saturday Night Live”, “The Muppets Take Manhattan”, “Funny: The Book”) presents a course on musical satire.
Satire is one of the oldest forms of humor, a way to set boundaries of behavior as
well as chide malefactors without violence. Using music only seems to make it more
powerful; in early Germanic and Celtic societies, people would break out in boils and even
commit suicide if attacked in song.
Explore the world of musical satire in a variety of genres, cultures and eras, especially
America since 1950. We’ll cover Horace and Juvenal, opera (the first surviving comic
opera was written by a pope – Clement IX, if you’re keeping score), “Yankee Doodle”,
slave satire, Gilbert & Sullivan, the Gershwins, the Beatles, Randy Newman, Monty Python, Spinal Tap, “Saturday Night Live”, “Avenue Q”, “Spamalot” and “South Park”.
Best of all, we’ll look at the Crown King of caustic cultural commentary, Tom Lehrer,
who once said “If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worthwhile.”
No background in music necessary; in fact, because satire is often dependent on
social and historical events, this course is as much cultural history as musicology. However, while words are preeminent in musical satire, we’ll also discuss the music and its
interactions with lyrics. But please – no students who are prone to boils.
Among David Misch’s TV and movie credits are the Emmy-nominated “Mork & Mindy”, the
Emmy-losing “Duckman”, the Emmy-engorged “Saturday Night Live”, and the Emmyineligible “The Muppets Take Manhattan”. He’s the author of “Funny: The Book / Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Comedy” and is also a playwright, songwriter,
blogger, teacher and recovered stand-up comic, and has lectured at Columbia University,
Oxford Univ., the Smithsonian, the Univ. of Sydney (Australia), the VIEW Cinema Conference (Torino, Italy), the Burbank Comedy Festival, USC, UCLA and AFI. Too much more
at davidmisch.com, not to mention (yet here I am mentioning) funnythebook.com, funnythebook (Facebook) and @funnythebook (Twitter).