Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre – Week 2
Squeaky Shoe
The form of comedy that we explored this week was silent comedy. Silent comedy is not necessarily ‘silent’, rather it is content which humour is generated through visual performance. An example that we looked at in class was Mr Bean. Mr Bean has minimal dialogue, yet he is an iconic figure in the modern comedy world. It is his facial expressions, lanky body movements, opposite emotional reactions and childish nature that get audiences laughing out loud. After viewing the first 10 minutes of Mr Bean s01 ep01 (1990), we were able to discuss more findings of the way comedy is generated. Mr Bean takes an exam and the whole duration he is attempting to copy the answers from his peer. With a focus on timing and rhythm, anytime that he is being sneaky… which is a lot of the time, he moves in slow motion with his eyes wide and eyebrows up. As soon as he is spotted his movement is exaggerated, fast and he may even make an indescribable noise. This contrast in timing ultimately results in more amusement.
In class we also discussed our reading about the ‘Benign violation theory’ (2014). A diagram of the theory was provided which assisted with my understanding;
Benign is when something ‘needs to seem OK, safe, acceptable’ (Warren, C. & McGraw, A, 2015). If you watch a clip and someone falls down a flight of stairs and dies, you aren’t going to laugh… well I hope you wouldn’t. However, if the person falls and then gets back up like nothing happened, it is funny because benign has been added to the violation of the fall. There needs to be a balance of the two factors in order to be successful.
My sketch, ‘Squeaky Shoe’, depicts a girl who has bought some new shoes, trys them on, and boom, they are super squeaky. I was inspired to make this skit because I HATE squeaky shoes. I had attempted to squeak a familiar beat with the shoes to enhance the humour, however after watching Tony Zhou’s video essay, ‘How to Do Visual Comedy’ (2014), I decided to experiment with another element. Zhou identifies 8 things that Edgar Wright does in his film, 1 of those things being ‘action synchronised to music’. So I decided to include the riff of Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on The Water’ into my skit. It plays quite suddenly and seems somewhat random so I am interested to see what feedback I receive.
Feedback from my previous sketch allowed me to be more focused on exaggeration and timing. While my peers liked the length and character of my ‘fart’, they did suggest that I could have added a pause or two to build more laughter and surprise. They also commented that my character could have played into the fart more, highlighting that it is in fact a fart and that can require some movement of the body.
My sketch for this week has a lot more movement. Instead of my character simply walking back and forth, she moves around and even does a little dance. I still wanted to play on what we discussed last week, which was the element of familiarity. I am sure many people can relate to my character and admit to doing some silly movements to test out if the shoe is the right fit.
Reference:
- Warren, C. & McGraw, A.P. (2015), “Benign Violation TheoryLinks to an external site.” in Attardo, S. (ed), Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Los Angeles: SAGE Reference.
- Zhuo, T (2014), ‘ How to Do Visual Comedy‘, Vimeo