ABSTRACT
A related danger of an excessive focus on history in satire is the deterministic effect inherent in the Historicist approach, an effect which renders satire as primarily a knee-jerk response to historical change. For the Historicist critic, satire is a purely retaliatory form whose shape is dictated by both social determinants and the author's bias with respect to such determinants; satire reacts, never initiates, and to understand the history is to understand the satire. A number of alternative theoretical approaches to satire stepped outside the historical-formalist binary. The Iraqi government even went so far as to sponsor a television series called State of Myths, which mocked Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) for its indiscriminate violence and simple-minded ideology. The power of satire to reorient ISIS' image of omnipotence, to change the nature of their ideological narrative through perceptual translation, and to re-render that ideology as false, self-interested, and shameful represents a real threat to powerful figures.
