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