Link to my media artefact: https://youtu.be/GmxubBxEnH0

In this week’s class of Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre we explored the overarching question of ‘What is comedy?’. In class, we attempted to answer this question in table groups and we came up with the rather simple answer of ‘the art of making some amused’. We firstly defined it as ‘the art of making someone laugh’ but after more discussion we realised people can find something funny but not verbally laugh, a nonverbal remark. Therefore bringing us to our definition. 

Although, I came to realise that comedy is not an easy subject to define because comedy is very subjective. We are all different and experience the world in different ways, so what I may consider funny may not reflect to the next person. I also came to realise comedy depends on the situation you find yourself in, the people that surround you, the environment and many other factors. 

I learnt that people can laugh without a sense of joy. What stuck out to me from Simon’s (2023) ‘Six Small Essays about Comedy’  was the idea that people can laugh because they are uncomfortable, frightened, horny, think they’re supposed to, relieved to have spared misfortune, someone who is suffering and deserves it or someone who is suffering who they believe deserves it. Overall, comedy is not just what we find funny, triggering a good feeling but is also underlined with so many other emotions. 

My media artefact explores the idea of incongruity which was discussed in class. Setting up an expectation, a norm, a prediction for the audience and then deviating from that and therefore triggering a comedic response. Inspired by Key and Peele’s (2015) ‘The Substitute teacher Mr Garvy’ comedy skit whereby they set the expectation that the substitute teacher would correct themselves after pronouncing a students name wrong and deviating this expectation by getting angry, I set the expectation that I was training to lift some heavy weights. I demonstrated this by putting on a sweatband, doing some star jumps and stretches, with the help of the infamous Rocky Balboa theme song ‘Gonna Fly Now’ (1977) playing in the background. This expectation was set but then I deviated from it by filming my partner who is bigger and stronger than me, pretending to be me, lifting weights. He is also of darker complexion and therefore the clear distinction that it is not me lifting the weights is more comedic. 

References:

Comedy Central UK. (2015, August 25). Key & Peele Substitute Teacher Mr Garvy  [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/zRpsRKuyi3Y?si=nh6KFZlJ235IuqF9

Conti, B. (1977). Gonna Fly Now [Recorded by Bill Conti]. On Rocky: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. United Artists Records. (Original work published 1977).

Simons, S. (2023) “Six Small Essays About Comedy,” Humorism, <https://www.humorism.xyz/six-small-essays-about-comedy/>.