What is the SAT? The Scholastic Achievement Test, or SAT for short, “…is a globally recognized college admission test that lets you show colleges what you know and how well you can apply that knowledge,” (Collegeboard). The test is used to measure “…college readiness and predict future academic success,” (Education Planner). The standards that students are held up to though have dropped increasingly. In the cartoon, it shows a pencil labeled ‘SAT” that is sharpened almost all the way to the bottom and is surrounded by pencil shavings. Above the pencil is someone holding a red, handheld pencil sharpener labeled ‘Lower Standards’. The purpose of this image was to show how lowering testing standards has impacted students negatively. In order for the viewer to understand the drawing, they must first know what the SAT is and have a little background knowledge about America’s education system. Without this crucial info, the viewer will have difficulty seeing the humour in the cartoon. The theme of this political cartoon is that ‘the less ‘tools’ you have to do the work, the less work you have to do.” The theme is revealed through the author’s use of satire, caricatures, and irony.
This political cartoon is an example of high comedy because the cartoon’s main focus is SATs and lower standards, a somewhat political issue. It takes a bit of background knowledge to understand the humour in the image and it uses comedic effects such as satire to portray the theme. Satire is a form of comedy that uses humour, irony, or exaggeration to expose and criticize issues in society or people’s weaknesses. The satire in the cartoon is that you are sharpening the pencil to take the test, but it is a test of lower standards. To take the SAT, you need a pencil. Without that pencil, you wouldn’t be able to complete the test. In the image, it shows the pencil being sharpened until it is almost non-existent, but it’s still there. So, there is still enough pencil to take the test. What the cartoon is saying is that the SAT’s standards are sSo low, that you don’t even have to know that much to take the test. You only need the most basic skills to complete the exam. The testing standards have diminished massively, so you don’t need a ‘full pencil’ to take the test. This comedic effect helped further prove the theme that “the less tools’ you have to do the work, the less work you have to do.’
The cartoon also used caricature to help develop the theme. A caricature is a pictorial, written or acted representation of a person that exaggerates characteristics or traits for comic effect. The caricature used in this cartoon isn’t exactly a person, but the images are over exaggerated for a comic effect. Most political cartoons use bright, vivid colors against a stark, white background to draw the viewers’ attention to the images and value’ their importance in showing the theme. The images in this cartoon were very bright and ‘in-your-face’. The pencil was bright yellow and the sharpener was bright red. Without these intense colors, the images wouldn’t have seemed as important. The size and position of the pencil and sharpener were also helpful in trying to find the theme. The pencil sharpener was above the pencil and seemed large and grand compared to the pencil below it, that was all ‘worn-out’ from sharpening and seemed miniscule. Having the pencil be so much smaller than the sharpener made the pencil seem less important. This could be interpreted as the lower standards overpowering the SAT’s. The use of this comedic element helped portray the theme by showing that the pencil that does the actual work, is not that important, therefore needing less to do the work, because there isn’t much work.
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The last humourous element used by the author is irony. Irony is “..the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really think especially in order to be funny,” (Merriam-Webster). In the image, it is ironic that you would only need that little of a pencil to complete a test. The viewer would think that you would need a full pencil or two to do the test because of how much work you need to complete, but as stated in the theme, you don’t need much if you’re not going to do work.
