Two Sides of America

Satire is defined as, “the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices.” However, satire isn't just used to poke fun at people. The artist, Banksy, uses satire in his street art to voice critiques of social and political injustices. One of Banksy's works titled, Napalm girl, uses satire to expose the many facets of America. Banksy doesn't really use humor in this particular art piece, rather he uses ridicule. His work criticizes America. In the image, Banksy uses a pre-existing image of a girl fleeing from a napalm attack on her village in Vietnam and shows her holding hands with Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald. In the image, the two well known characters are smiling, while the girl is screaming and crying, which gives the piece a twisted and messed up tone. Banksy successfully uses satire to get his point across because he places two characters that represent the fun and carefree side of American culture with a girl running from her village that was recently bombed by Americans which shows the darker part of America that drops bombs on villages full of people. By doing this he show that at face value America may seem like the perfect place full of friendly people, but in reality its not, and that's only a side of it because that is the same country that dropped Napalm on Vietnam and  bombs on multiple other cities around the world.





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