Study of Irony and Satire in Cartoons

Satire, as is well known, is 'the use of ridicule to criticise folly or vice', and would probably be one of the more interesting concepts in English and Media Studies. It is helpful, therefore, to consider;

WHAT/WHO is being ridiculed OR being presented in a ridiculous manner (a system, practice, belief, idea, group, society)
WHICH techniques are utilized to convey this ridicule (analogy, exaggeration, reversal, irony, distortion, anti-climax)

Let's take a look at the following cartoons as examples. The first one is done for you. See if you can analyse the next three yourselves!

(The following cartoons are taken from The Facts of Life by Brian Clowes. Human Life International)

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WHAT/WHO is being ridiculed OR being presented in a ridiculous manner?

The Black Adult Angel says to the White Infant Angel -"I know how you feel. When I was a slave the courts didn't think I was fully human either!"
It is clear that the US Courts are being critized for their hypocrisy. The same courts which denied the rights of a whole people (Black Americans) and then declared their rights in the name of freedom, are now denying the rights of another group of people - the unborn in the womb - ironically in the name of 'freedom'. History is repeating itself.

WHICH techniques are utilized to convey this ridicule?

Irony is one technique being adopted in this cartoon. Irony can be detected in different ways;

verbal irony ( where the meaning intended by the speaker is not the same as meaning conveyed by the words chosen, or feelings expressed by a speaker towards a subject are a direct contradition to the way he describes that subject and the connotations that subject has for the listener)
dramatic irony (where character 'a' or an audience knows something that character 'b' does not know and does not suspect, usually because character 'b' does not realise that the words of character 'a' are not what character 'a' intends. As you can see, verbal irony can be a part of dramatic irony)
structural irony (when any of the above are part of the structure of an entire play/story/novel)
what I call 'surprise irony' (when the event or situation we LEAST expect occurs just after we have been speaking about it)

In the above cartoon, it is ironic that;

an aborted foetus is in Heaven - since those aborting the foetus are declaring it not to be human at all (dramatic irony - we, the audience, and the court of Heaven, know what the abortionists do not)
the child has obviously expressed his/her sadness at the situation, since he or she is not meant to have any understanding or awareness (dramatic irony)
angels are depicted as black. Black men and women were once treated as less than human, let alone depicted as more than human.

Reversal is another technique being adopted in the above cartoon.

A deliberate reversal of a situation which people have grown accustomed to accepting - in this case that angels couldn't posisbly be 'black' - in order to lead people to question or criticise their own understanding or perceptions. In this cartoon, the satirist has wanted to question the way we treat all minority groups in our earthly courts, especially the black slaves of old and the abused unborn children of today, by depicting a heavenly court where these minority groups have the highest privilege and status. The message is quite sad - only when dead can these abused minority groups find justice and peace.

Analogy (a situation compared to an equivalent one) is yet another technique used in the cartoon

Through association, the abortion industry is depicted here as analogous to the slave trade. So too, by association, are the ideas and philosophies which have permitted both to be accepted and tolerated.