Deborah Schaffer
English
Montana State University-Billings
Satire is tricky business. The best that satirists can hope for, it seems, is that the choir members among their readers will cheer their brilliance, while the unconverted will at least value their wit and find food for thought, if not opinion-altering arguments, in their writing. In the worst case, readers of all persuasions will find the satire limp and the arguments totally unconvincing. What position on what topic could a writer possibly satirize to the appreciation of all parties?
Case in point: Arnold Silver's Shortchangers. The novel follows Jonas Trelawney, Dean of Students, at a fictional, p.c.-dominated Midwest public university, through a crisis-filled week which proves to be a turning point in his life. On a campus where every professor and student must fit some demographic pigeonhole in the university's overall diversity profile (often regardless of academic qualifications), where everyone must participate in his or her own minority's campus organizations and go through extensive sensitivity training, and where minorities are constantly winning concessions in everything from course offerings to campus building plans, Jonas' major crisis this particular week is the takeover of a classroom building by a new minority student group, the Liput Liberation League, representing the overlooked rights of "differently sized" (16)--read short--people.
From Jonas' first meeting with the protesters, where he is forced to his knees to appreciate the difficulties of the height-disadvantaged, through seven days' worth of ludicrous multicultural activities and accumulating revelations about the extreme philosophy governing political correctness on this campus, the reader is being offered what Silver clearly hopes will be amusing as well as thought-provoking comments on current trends in liberal academia and where they might lead if left unchecked. His portraits of students, faculty and administrators alike are extremely unflattering, but he obviously blames multiculturalism for warping values and turning formerly intellectually rigorous, principled members of a productive academic community into self-absorbed promoters of cliques who are ripe to be taken advantage of by the unscrupulous. It takes one or two voices in this wilderness, plus some unsavory--and, indeed, painful--discoveries, to awaken Jonas to the dangers of the current situation. In the end, reason prevails, and Jonas is set to embark on a Swiftian journey to enlighten his fellow academics and bring a larger sense of community back to higher education.
All well and good--if one already believes that political correctness and affirmative action have gone or are about to go too far in this country. But what about those of us (and I state my own position plainly here) who are far from convinced that individuals even today are truly judged on their merits and can expect to compete in education or the economy on a level playing field? In particular, at a time when race-based preferences and even affirmative action are under steady attack, leading many academics, among others, to feel sincere concern about possible reduced opportunites for some minority groups in higher education, how can most of us take seriously or humorously Silver's extrapolation to the other extreme, especially as at no time has academia in this country achieved total freedom from bias, much less the reversal of discrimination targets that Silver depicts?
And so my reactions to the steady stream of exaggerated, unconvincing attitudes and incidents Silver depicts bounce from annoyance to bemused sympathy for his obvious insecurities to anger at his apparent ignorance (or ignoring) of how our society really deals with diversity. Yes, of course he's right that "...teachers should put [students] in touch with great and powerful minds, whatever the group they were born into.... They will be [students'] ideal role models" (166). But what about the brilliant minds which have always been ignored because they belonged to people of the wrong gender or color - or worse yet, have been denied the chance to develop their potential because of that status? Naturally, "in university life, only a person's ability and the amount of hard work he/she puts in should count" (117), but how much have those factors counted historically in education or employment, especially if minorities are also struggling to overcome the negative effects earlier prejudice and deprivation have had on their preparedness as adults to meet the challenges of the dominant culture?
My biggest complaint about Silver's satire is that he fails to acknowledge these valid fears and rights of minority groups, instead making their every privilege and demand ridiculously trivial, if not downright counterproductive (the Liputs, for example, demand, among other things, that "all figuratively used words and phrases drawn from small size be eliminated from all speech and writing emanating from this university" [22-23]). He is certainly entitled to his views, and if he thinks current p.c. policies on college campuses have gone overboard, or are heading to harmful extremes, he has every right to make that case. But every argumentative-writing student knows that if one is going to present opposing arguments in order to debunk them, one must first represent them accurately: ridicule is easy; persuasive counterarguments are hard. Perhaps I am being unrealistically demanding or idealistic in expecting a satire to play fair, but the picture Silver paints does not even remotely resemble reality, and so to my mind, his whole case fails, both as polemic and as satire (especially as the passages presenting his central views on political correctness and meritocracy offer an uncomfortable mix of earnest preaching and hail-fellow jocularity which is neither compelling nor amusing). In the end, he comes uncomfortably close to sounding like just another put-out white male upset at losing any piece of his academic pie. That may be cause for pity, but it is not funny.
However, one target of Silver's satire which I will credit him with handling effectively is his depiction of the bureaucratization of good intentions--the kiss of death no matter which ideological cause is being served. On Jonas' campus, not only are faculty and students admitted to the university based on strict ethnographic quotas (the Chancellor's "Diversity Tabulator" board keeps constant track of shifting proportions of various groups and alerts administrators when changes must be made [30-31]), but even the University Personnel Committee in charge of tenure and promotion decisions must reflect campuswide diversity--hence its growth from 12 members to 63 (78-79). The ultimate effect of multiculturalism's institutionalization here, however, is that, as with so much else for which people give up individual responsibility, it becomes a scam which deceitful leaders can manipulate for their own benefit, until Jonas manages a rather satisfying unveiling of schemes and resolution of crises.
I also recognize Silver's attempt to caricature all university dramatis personae evenhandedly, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation, though his hand seems somewhat heavy when it comes to gender. I imagine he perpetuated so many negative female stereotypes--the sex-starved sex-education professor (27), the co-ed who seduces Jonas (61-64) and then turns out to be a nympho (109), the airheaded talk-show hostess (71-74), the ecdysiast botany professor (80)--in the same equal-opportunity-offender spirit with which he portrayed the flamboyant gay professor who turns out to be a closet straight (121) and the Liput leader's insistence on being treated by a tall doctor (107), but I doubt that I am the only reader who will think that women receive more than their fair share of his irreverent attention.
These concerns, though, are really part of the wider issue of what strikes readers as funny. I have no doubt that some will enjoy Silver's style of humor, including his inveterate punning (the guests on a local talk show are two families named the Fitches and Chipps [74]; faculty include botany professor Laurel Rosenbaum and Texas agronomist Jim Prayry [79]; courses include "Ba'hai and Below" and "Nihilism for Novices" [115]) and his delight in extrapolating any situation to its most ridiculous extreme (Jonas copes with sampling every dish at the Diversity Dinner by surreptitiously stuffing food into baggies hidden in his pockets [45] and vomiting twice in the bathroom [49]; the Liputs finally take Jonas hostage and pressure the administration by cutting off two of his toes before threatening a more precious part of his anatomy [173-76]). Silver even goes so far as to present the key argument between Jonas and his mentor, the one which triggers Jonas' eventual reversal of his earlier p.c. beliefs and takes place while both men are standing on their heads--don't ask--by turning the print itself upside down (154-66); the chapter rights itself when the men do. But other readers will also find, as I did, that after a while the puns and exaggeration get old, and the unrealistic nature of everything from campus finances to personal motivations finally strikes one as being less playful than self-indulgent.
To be fair, not all reactions to Shortchangers have been as unenthusiastic as mine. Publishers Weekly, for one, was glowing in its praise of the book, calling it "a lighthearted, memorable satire that takes on some serious subjects" (1). But if the majority of the humor strikes me as lame, the characters behave so idiotically as to defy basic common sense, and the central message itself is fraught with faulty reasoning, my verdict seems inevitable. I like to think I have as sharp, open-minded, even irreverent a sense of humor as any other thinking adult, but in this case, Silver's humor and mine part company. Publishers Weekly may give Shortchangers an A, but I can go no higher than a C+--the + being for those occasional moments of humor and reason that are effective even for a nonbeliever like me.