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the onion
With the growing consumer importance in culture today “The Onion” utilizes satirical strategies to highlight the public gullibility and power of advertising in this marketing parody. Indirect satire criticizes a person or thing from a possible of six different angles. In this essay, indirect satire is very strong and is used to criticize the gullibility of consumers, the products sold, and “doctors” on television showing the benefits of paying $19.99 a month plus shipping for seven years. When a product comes to the market, it sounds eerily similar to the way “The Onion” satirized it. The entire essay could be considered a parody of an infomercial. In lines 66-70, the author satirized how the customer believes this product will work because the man in the white coat told him it would. “The Onion” pokes criticism and humor at this situation through the use of parody because many people sadly think this way, but they don’t realize how idiotic it sounds until they either hear someone else say it or read it in print. A specific example of parody, however, is the introduction of Contour Points TM in line 13. The fact that there is a trademark stamp on the name is satirizing ridiculous products that are named and sold. The satirical tone continues as the article proceeds to make MagneSoles the only solution for the nonexistent or hardly existent dilemma. The MagnaSoles promise to “restore the foot’s natural bio-flow,” implying a problem with human biomechanics. By using mocking words such as bio-flow, they create a false sense of professionalism. It then suggests hilarious and absurd problems with the consumer, such as one’s feet being out of frequency with that of Earth, causing “the entire body to suffer.” Such assertions cause the audience to step back and re-examine the problems one actually will find in life, and ponder if these miracle products are the only solution. The next satirical strategy used is diminutization. This is used when describing pseudoscience, reflexology, and terranometry. These all sound like very serious matters, and as something above normal intelligence, but in actually its nonsense. Pseudoscience is derived from the root word in Latin “pseudo” which actually means fake. This “science” in vernacular English means fake science, but by turning it into a Latin derived word a consumer would sit up and listen without trying to figure out what it truly means. The definition of pseudoscience is a belief or practice that is made to appear to be scientific, but which does not adhere to an appropriate scientific methodology that lacks supporting evidence plausibility. An example of this would be fortune telling. Some may believe it could work, when in reality it is nonsense. Reflexology is simply an alternative to medicine that consists of massaging to improve health. Although massaging helps with some problems it cannot cure everything The next form of satire used in The Onion’s consumer satire is caricature. The workingman is portrayed as “stressed and sore footed” (line 1,) worn out feet (line 4), and rather unintelligent (line 57). Using larger words, anyone flitting this stereotypical description would easily fall under the products influence. The interviewed consumers for the essay pull the point of caricature quite nicely. Helene Kuhn uses poor grammer while Geoff DeAngelis simply uses the fact that the man endorsing the product wears a white coat as evidence that the product is good. This apparent gullibility is a cryptic warning by the Onion to stop consumers from making foolish and even harmful choices based on smooth advertising. The final type of satire in this piece is exaggeration. Most of the descriptions used to describe Magna Soles exaggerate the effects of the product in order to sell it. The section in paragraph 5 speaks of biofeedback and power crystals. Clearly, this is not only an exaggeration of the product, but also of what is said on infomercials to potential customers. The Onion makes sure to add this strategy in the piece because this is the way miracle products survive; they promise health, new life, and even extended life. It is made up to get people to empty their wallets. The Onion satirizes ways that companies market to customers through four of the six indirect satire techniques. The reader is able to laugh at the humor and criticism the author is making towards these companies, and now we should not fall for these outrageous miracle products.
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