Satire. Satire tends to be witty, but through the way it's conveyed it expresses insults. It's a way of using irony and sarcasm to scorn. Something is satirical if it succeeds in doing this. As it's become very popular to intelligently delve into creatively insulting things such as society, religion, and peoples values, satire has become a literary genre within itself.
Voltaire's Candide is a perfect example of a satirical novel. He blatantly ridicules the hypocritical society he lived in. How the rich knew nothing of the troubles with the poor, for example. The perfect example of this is Candide himself. Then before he knew it, his perfect world was completely shattered and he was just another peasant - with very bad luck. He went from being naive, thinking he had everything he needed and therefore nothing else mattered, to very quickly becoming pessimistic, having nothing in comparison to before being kicked out of the castle and not appreciating the small things, like the companionship he achieved. His situations worsen and worsen.
The Jerk is set up very similarly to the plot of Candide. Navin invents an eyeglass attachment that brings him in a huge income. He is rich. And therefore "happy," not having any worries or thoughts about what's going on in the world around him. His happy situation, too, shatters completely. He burns through all the money and ends up homeless, living a severely less than lavish lifestyle. Money making people "happy" is satire within itself.
I'd say that certain people going through the current recession are responding very like Candide and Navin did when they lost everything, because they were so money-happy and naive in the first place. Both Navin and Candide simply didn't know what to do when they entered a world new to them, one they hadn't realized had been outside their front door all along.
