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The sly genre of satire uses exaggeration, humor, or irony to criticize political or social issues and is often exaggerated to the point of absurdity. Within this framework, the tone of individual satirical works can vary greatly and take a variety of approaches to criticism. Some works may utilize a bitter and biting narrative voice that mocks society’s heartless attitudes and cruel follies. Prime examples of this approach include the movie Fight Club (1999), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), or Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729). A different approach to satire maintains a more cheerful and intellectual tone, detachedly poking fun at common social biases and ideas rather than condemning individual follies. For example, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), by Lewis Carroll, is an intellectual satire that utilizes the quirks of math, chess, and language to create an absurdist world that critiques common attitudes and perceptions in British society.
The most common form of satire in contemporary literature is playful and light-hearted, focusing on folly with a certain amount of sympathy in order to create a narrative that appeals to the broadest audience and is easier to understand than the more intellectual satires of classic literature. Most satirical writers tend to use a light and witty style focusing on wordplay or hyperbole and exaggerating the narrative to the point of ridiculousness. Familiar examples in mainstream American culture would be the television shows The Simpsons and South Park, both of which superficially appear to be aimed at children but are really designed to subversively challenge the norms and assumptions held by an adult audience.
With so many different avenues of satire at her disposal, Rosenblum crafts the satirical elements of Bad Summer People in order to critique a certain set of self-serving values and ideas held by many in the upper-class, privileged social circles to which her background has given her access. In pursuit of this goal, Rosenblum adopts a serious and realistic tone, but she also admits that her characters are exaggerated versions of people she remembers from her childhood years in Saltaire. Thus, her novel embraces an element of exaggeration and absurdity even as it utilizes a more somber tone than is generally employed by satirical writers.
Eschewing postmodernism, most commercial fiction typically aligns characters in grand narratives, also called metanarratives, of good or evil. One of the most widespread metanarratives is perpetuated by organized religion, but the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and even simple empathy can also be considered metanarratives. Less concrete grand narratives might include the virtues of truth, justice, mercy, and loyalty. However, these abstract concepts have no concrete existence beyond that of the definitions that have been agreed upon by a society as a whole. By contrast, the virtue of postmodernism is in its view of people as a mixture of both bad and good. This stance allows readers to see other people—and themselves—not as saints or villains, but as fallible individuals with both good and bad qualities. This philosophical outlook emphasizes the potential of people to change and grow beyond their current level. On the other hand, if individuals lack a stable conception of universal right and wrong, they have nothing to guide their choices other than their individual whims and desires, and this concept plays a key part in the machinery of Rosenblum’s plot development.
Thus, Bad Summer People exhibits a distinctly postmodern influence in both its character development and its overall structure, for like many other postmodernist authors, Rosenblum deliberately moves away from the grand narrative of “good versus evil” and instead explores the micronarrative of the individual. Her novel reflects the postmodern decline in the belief that there is a single objective reality, truth, or morality that can be known by any one individual or culture. Without a universal objective reality, all relationships are about power, and so the novel’s tumultuous and many-sided events are designed to delve into the issue of which characters can most successfully impose their version of reality on others.
To this end, Rosenblum rejects metanarratives entirely and withholds judgment on her characters, no matter how morally ambiguous their behavior becomes. While their interactions range from negative to positive, they can never be labeled fully “good” or fully “evil,” and the author also she explores a variety of micronarratives by showing scenes from multiple perspectives. External perspectives are developed through the judgments of observers, while internal perspectives illuminate the thoughts and feelings of different individuals, creating a patchwork narrative from many subjective truths and building a world in which no objective reality can be seen to exist. Rosenblum even withholds judgment on the murder of Susan Steinhagen, for none of the complicit characters experience the grand narrative of crime and punishment. Rosenblum therefore strives to elicit empathy for her characters’ various plights, creating a narrative that is sympathetic to the summer people’s morally ambiguous actions even as it acknowledges the shortcomings of the moral relativism inherent in the postmodern perspective.
For further reading that explores themes similar to those that dominate Bad Summer People, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) is an instructive option, for it takes place in the Hamptons, the other stereotypical summer enclave of upper-class New York society. In this novel, Nick Caraway, the middle-class narrator, observes the antics of the wealthy class, including acts of adultery, betrayal, and murder. In a similarly postmodern perspective, Nick initially withholds judgment on his neighbors, but he soon learns to appreciate the grand narratives of honor, loyalty, and truth. In the world of Bad Summer People, the character of Micah Hold is designed to function as a modern-day version of Nick Caraway.
Fire Island is a long, narrow strip of small islands off the east coast of New York’s Long Island. The name is sometimes used to encompass three smaller islands—Long Beach Barrier Island, Westhampton Island, and Jones Beach Island. The barrier strip changes continually over time, for it is so narrow that sea and wind often cut new channels between individual islands and gradually fill them in again. Since the 1930s, individual islands have been separated by channels as wide as nine miles or as narrow as a few yards. In 2012, for example, Hurricane Sandy washed out enough land mass to turn the big island into two smaller islands that were initially separated by 100 feet. Now, that gap is slowly closing. A beach-maintenance program in 2009 has helped to preserve the island from more severe damage.
Fire Island features beachside resorts for wealthy summer people looking for a low-key escape from the city. It is less ostentatious and more laid-back than the Hamptons—the other summer retreat for the moneyed east-coast elite. The island is a part of the Fire Island National Seashore and Robert Moses State Park, which also features the Fire Island lighthouse. Each year, summer residents (including tourists) temporarily expand the tiny population of year-round residents by the thousands. The island contains several villages and hamlets with their own personalities. Fire Island is probably best known as a destination spot for gay tourism, and its appeal for writers, artists, and actors has highlighted this aspect of the island’s character. For example, Andrew Holleran’s 1987 novel, Dancer from the Dance, depicts the island’s gay party scene of the mid-20th century, and the romantic comedy with gay characters titled Fire Island (2022) is also set there. Similarly, Jack Parlett’s Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise (2023) features a full history of the region and recounts the history of arts, artists, and gay culture that have come to be associated with the island. The Fire Island Artists Residency also actively supports emerging LGBTQ+ artists.
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