Month: April 2024
Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre – Week 6
Trenches – Week 6 Sketch
- What is your understanding of the comic form and concepts explored this week, with reference to the reading(s), in-class discussion, and/or your own research?
Wow. This week has been interesting and proven that comedy is a complex genre… if you can even call it that. While we used documentaries as a case study, the broader topic this week was Genre Hybridisation. From my understanding, Genre Hybridisation is when a particular genre is portrayed with elements of comedy. These elements are what we learnt about at the start of semester; benign violation, silent comedy, comic frame, situation, and story ect. Using these elements should help to build a comedic foundation in a non-comedic genre.
Lesley Speed wrote about ‘docucomedies’ and how they ‘use performance reflexively to highlight spectacle and explore the humour of awkward situations and contemporary and changing cultural values.’ (2020, p.690). Speed is highlighting that the humour in these ‘docucomedies’ are not simply created through parodying documentary components, but through moments found in real life footage.
- How does your media artefact respond to these constraints and concepts?
Our media artefact has attempted to hybridise action with comedy. After brainstorming with Bradley, we decided the best way to approach our sketch was to imagine we were directors of a Marvel film. Marvel films are filled with action and typically fight scenes. They also include many comedic moments. From my general knowledge and experience, these moments are created through character performance. In our work, we focused on a very dramatic and exaggerated performance. Even though it may seem like we are being comedic in our fighting/action scenes… we are not…we just have limited skills in this area. I am hopeful that our dramatic acting and cheesy one liners can generate some amusement.
- What have you learned about comedy’s relationship to other forms/genres by making this sketch?
Genre hybridisation is difficult to manipulate in short form. The two sketches prior to this one was much easier to generate. To accomplish genre hybridisation well, I believe more research would have to be done on the chosen genre, and the actual narrative of the piece needs more craftsmanship. This is not to say parody and satire works don’t require effort, they defiantly do. I guess from my experiences so far, genre hybridisation is a different kind of effort.
- (In week 6:) What have you learned about your own comedic sensibility over the past three weeks of collaborative making? What kind of work are you interested in producing for the major project? (This will help you figure out who you might like to work with.)
By creating weekly sketches, I have been able to discover a lot about the depths of comedy. There are so many ways to create and generate comedy, however it can be easy to overcomplicate, or as Seth Meyers says, ‘hat on a hat’. For the major project, I would love to challenge myself and create a work that does not entirely use parody and satire. I found that these elements of comedy are easy to manipulate, which is not an issue, I just want to challenge my creativity. It would be great to create a film or series that follows a comic character, like Mr Bean or Neapolitan Dynamite. I feel that these ‘odd’ characters are not made anymore. I want to create an iconic-like comic character.
Reference:
- Speed, L. (2020). “Comic Investigation and Genre-Mixing: The Television Docu-Comedies of Lawrence Leung, Judith Lucy and Luke McGregor.“, Continuum, 34(5), pp. 690–702.
- Late Night with Seth Meyers. (2014, September 16). Bill Hader reveals all the things seth taught him at SNL – late night with Seth Meyers. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEBAcPWpJog
Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre – Week 5
Causing Cancer
- What is your understanding of the comic form and concepts explored this week, with reference to the reading(s), in-class discussion, and/or your own research?
The comic concept that we have explored this week is Satire. Immediately going into this week’s exploration, I wanted to know what the difference was between Satire and Parody. While they do go hand in hand for some situation, they differ.
“Where parody, as we have seen, draws on – and highlights – aesthetic conventions, satire draws on – and highlights – social ones.” (F, Krutnik, and N, Steve, 1990, p19).
We watched three examples of satire in class which all highlighted the social issue of drug use, however they were all different in their approach. To outline their approaches, I will focus on their primary targets, who are they attacking?
- Brass Eye. — episode 2, “Drugs” (1997) – The British news outlets and the way they exaggerate stories.
- Chappelle’s Show. — “Tyrone Biggums” sketch from season 1, episode 2 (2003) – Drug users and the education system
- Corey White’s Roadmap to Paradise — season 1, episode 10, “The War on Drugs” (2018) – Government drug programs
These works all intend to humour their viewers, however they also build meaning and intent. Especially Brass Eye and Corey White’s piece, they want point the finger and prove that the news we are fed is not always as it seems. I found the Dave Chappelle’s piece was quite funny and ridiculous. While he does use satire in this piece, because of its fictional approach, a serious message of the currupt education system or intent does not feel reached.
- How does your media artefact respond to these constraints and concepts?
We decided to experiment this week with a non-fiction approach. We created a segment show titled ‘Causing Cancer’. Our primary target is the medical industrial practices and constant research for cancer provoking chemicals. Our secondary target is news outlets that are constantly reporting on ‘what gives you cancer’, and never giving enough detail as to how or why.
Writing the script and creating this work in general felt quite ridiculous but that is how we felt when we discussed the absurd number of things that will give us cancer… well what we are told by news outlets. For example, tampons, sunscreen, too much wine, too little wine ect!!
- What have you learned about comedy’s relationship to other forms/genres by making this sketch?
It has been great to learn how comedy can be used as a dominant tool in highlighting social issues. Thinking more about it, we laugh at something that is funny, that should be a good thing. However, sometimes with a satire approach, you laugh, and then question your reaction due to the nature of the comic messaging. I laughed at Chappelle’s skit, however I then thought, ‘imagine if this was real, a man, high on drugs at a primary school, swearing his head off and scaring the children’ – of course in real life that is not actually amusing but very worrying. Making fun of a serious issue should not communicate that it is not serious, rather it is just another one to reach a target audience and help them understand what the issue is. Many people tell jokes or laugh at things to hide/distract from pain, satire is somewhat similar.
Reference:
Krutnik, Frank, and Steve Neale. Popular Film and Television Comedy, Taylor & Francis Group, 1990. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=178274.
Created from rmit on 2024-04-11 02:45:44.
Beyond a Joke, Beyond a Genre – Week 4
Parody Week – Keeping Up With The Assessment
- What is your understanding of the comic form and concepts explored this week, with reference to the reading(s), in-class discussion, and/or your own research?
The focus for this week was investigating ‘Parody’ as a mode of comedy. I have come to realise that there are many definitions and ways that people absorb comedy. Many genres have been created which include comedic moments yet are not classified as a “comedy”. Action comedy, Romantic comedy ect. However, are there types/modes of comedy that allow other genres to play within? That sounds complicated… I guess it is!
After class I thought of a comparison of two similar hybridized films, both being action/comedy. One example is The Avengers (2012), and the other is Deadpool (2016). The Avengers has many comedic moments, however Deadpool is overall comedic. Even though both films have superheros and villains, and are also apart of the Marvel universe, Deadpool is by far more amusing… is this because of the mode of comedy it uses? Would Deadpool be considered a paradox of a superhero film?
- How does your media artefact respond to these constraints and concepts?
Our sketch for this week is titled, “Keeping up With The Assessment”, and as you may be able to guess, it is a parody of reality TV. The idea was quite simple and inspired from the class discussion we had with comedian, Hannah Camilleri. It was interesting when she was asked about how she generates her ideas, and she replied saying that many of her scripts are written with the same structure. For example, one character is logical, the other characters are unreasonable and ridiculous. As well, the humour comes from the conflict of her scenes, and because she has one reasonable character and one non reasonable, they collide in a humorous way.
- What have you learned about comedy’s relationship to other forms/genres by making this sketch?
Making this sketch has made me realise that it is important to research as many details you can about the other form/genre. Doing this detailed research will allow the comedy to fall more naturally because a lot of the time, doing something opposing or surprising in a hybridized form will cause people to laugh. We chose reality TV to parody in this sketch. I think with more research we would have been able to amplify our comedy even further. Our sketch is amusing, however there are areas that could be amplified.