While I had an understanding of what satire was, I never fully understood it. I have consumed media like South Park and follow the Beetota Advocate on Instagram but, I wasn’t fully aware of how to create satire or what it really meant or achieved. After looking at examples in class of satire media I was able to see what satire looked like in different forms. From the mimicking mockery of Brass Eye to the sketch-based jokes and gags of Chappelle’s Show. I kept these two ideas as opposite sides of the same spectrum when it came to brainstorming ideas with my group.
Once the brainstorming had begun we mainly focused on why satire exists and its purpose in society. We knew that we had to pick something to make fun of and critique at the same time. After some thinking we settled on the new wave of Gen Z’s obsession with appearance through the form of absurd diet culture as well as other ‘do it quick’ methods that have no effect. Once we had this idea we decided that we would present it in an office lunch break scenario that we we would be able to exaggerate this diet culture in many different branches and have them get weirder and weirder rather than just be one exaggerated thing by itself.
I think that my group and I did a good job at creating satire for our chosen topic. I think that we exaggerate what we are critiquing enough so that it can be funny to someone watching but not too much that it doesn’t make sense. I think that if we had more time to script and plan our sketch we would be able to have more variety in what we make fun of and the ways we do it rather than it just being exaggeration throughout, but more clever and well thought out jokes.
This week really taught me that comedy can be used as a tool to help people, since even though we were technically making fun of certain ideologies, through satire we can twist it into a somewhat positive message.