reflection on humour project

What the process of creating something funny was like

- by vivian lou and heather park

The types of comedy used for our final assignment were comedy of ideas, especially satire. Satire was used in our presentation by illustrating people’s ridiculous needs for excuses. It exaggerated the extremity of this by imitating advertisements and commercials. We thought our presentation was funny because it ridiculed many subjects such as people who use extremely long words to appear intelligent, over excited advertisers, and people who are desperate for any believable excuse. In addition, a key point in making our presentation was saying every line as serious as possible. The incongruity of such absurd excuses being recited with such seriousness was chuckle worthy to us. 

Our advertisement was inspired by Nigahiga (Ryan Higa) from Youtube with his spoof advertisements, such as "The ShamWOOHOO". After looking around for ideas, we settled on making this video advertisement because of our Youtube inspirations. Since Nigahiga's video advertisements seemed the most humourous from our point of view, we decided to create one of our own. This led to our production of an "excuse- maker", a complicated and bizarre-looking device that generates excuses. 

The difficult aspect of comedy is that it is very ambiguous and appears in any form whatsoever. Choosing a form to present our project was hard. Furthermore, something that may seem funny to the creator can seem extremely weird or entirely idiotic to the audience. Our video was a great example of this because we used ridiculous logic in our excuses; it seemed hilarious to us, but we had no idea whether the audience would appreciate it. We also didn't realize how difficult making the video would be. Writing the script was a breeze and we had a good laugh thinking up the most far-fetched excuses. When we got to the actual filming, reality smacked us right in the forehead as our many attempts went down the drain. Advertising the product in a serious way that would seem hilarious was very awkward to do and took acting skills. The name of the product (Ultimate Superlative Exemplary Unsurpassed Splendid Excuse-a-nator), along with ridiculously long words, were a mouthful to memorize and say in front of a video camera. I guess the moral of the story was that comedians have a tougher job than we thought, at first.


Nevertheless, it was an amusing experience. We were able to watch the end product and be satisfied with what we had worked on to present. Even if our humour project does not seem funny to others, we still got good laughs out of creating it out of scratch. Like most assignments, it was strenuous work for our thinking minds, but in the end, the production of humour was something that we both enjoyed doing.

creation of something funny

The USEUSExcuse-a-nator (Ultimate Superlative Exemplary Unsurpassed Splendid)A Supposedly Funny Advertisement

Title of product courtesy of Thesaurus.Com

- by heather park and vivian lou

Please do not take this publication and product seriously... or you could get injured...

response to a book

What I thought about it

Confessions of a Shopaholic, by Sophie Kinsella, is a novel that uses comedy of manners with the character’s witticisms, and comedy of ideas with the satirical mocking of financial debt. The protagonist, Becky Bloomwood, is a shopaholic and an extreme spender who has severe problems with managing her money. Ironically, she is also a financial journalist but claims that her occupation does not require knowledge to appear impressive at conferences. She also replies with witty excuses to postpone her bank account meetings. These examples are comedy of manners because they portray Becky’s clever use of words to elicit humour.  The satirical aspect of the novel includes mockery of regular people unable to deal with debt, and regular people going about a pretense to impress others. In the novel, Becky deals with many situations in which she is unable to control her expenditure on excessive items and clothes. Using the technique of reversal, Becky is very determined to cut back, which fails miserably because she ends up spending more ridiculously. In addition, Becky’s preparations to impress others, such as ensuring she has a copy of the Financial Times but not reading it, are often hilarious. This is effective comedy of ideas because it focuses on the lighter, comical aspects of normal problems and habits of people. 

I recommend this book to anyone who would read a book for pure enjoyment. The protagonist’s frequent mishaps draw laughter from all readers. However, anyone who may be going through a severe financial crisis would not find it helpful to their situations. In the end, Becky suddenly becomes a regular on a TV show, which immediately allows her to pay off her debts. In reality, that chance is meager, so the reader should not take this this as advice. Furthermore, the book essentially pokes fun about people with expenditure habits have difficulties breaking the habit. Since Becky’s many attempts to stop buying things failed, this could come across as demotivation to the potential shopaholic who is reading the book. Otherwise, I appreciated the many funny retorts of the protagonist. It is definitely a good recommendation for an enjoyable read.  

a satirical video and article

Added "leap centimeter" corresponds with the leap year; many positive reactions from society:

http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i102904

This article has satirical aspects in the way that it mocks the philosophy of people in modern times. The willingness of people to believe ridiculous things in order to reassure themselves (as long as they are made official by authorities) is openly mocked. In this particular case, incongruity is present as a "leap centimetre" is added, much like the leap year, to the common measuring system. Because there are now extra centimetres in one metre, measurements become smaller in comparison to before. The Spoof mocks how people will believe this and use this to reassure themselves that now, they are either average weight instead of being overweight! Overall, this satirical article was humourous because it effectively poked fun at the ignorance of people and their willingness to make themselves feel better without making improvements individually.

Teenage Affluenza is a horrible pandemic that is spreading rapidly:

Teenagers of this generation are suffering form the affluenza, which affects many normal, healthy teens across first-world countries. These adolescents are constantly forced into unpleasant and horrendous situations, such as riding backseat in the car, not having enough space for music on their iPods, and eating dry cereal because they have run out of milk in the fridge.

This video convincingly parodies the everyday life of a normal teenager and highlights the little mishaps. It points out the fact that developing countries are much worse off, but it reverses the fact in the video by narrating with a very serious voice about how awful a first-world teenager's life is. By use of exaggeration, we realize that the teenagers' usual complaints are quite silly in comparison to the current issues in developing countries.

satire about current event

Zuckerberg purchases the world

- by vivmeister and heather²

  

Just two weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg’s big enterprise social network, Facebook, took control of the iPhone Application, Instagram. Just today, Good Morning America announced that Zuckerberg has taken the next step and bought Google, Hotmail, and Microsoft Windows Technology Co. In his most recent interview, he confessed that his “next big goal is to buy Apple and Sony to combine and make the best social network and social networking devices in history.” (New York Times)

 

On the topic of Instragram, the majority of Zuckerberg’s supporters feel that it was a beneficial move to the development of social networking. “And it was like only like a billion dollars, like it could have been like more. It was like such a good like buy ‘cause it’s like worth like that much, like gosh!” reports a Facebook employee of the headquarters in Palo Alto, CA.

Instagram allows you to post photographs to your Facebook Timeline with very interesting filters that make you seem like a professional photographer. For example, with this improvement, you will be able to share pictures of mundane activities in your life, such as going to the bathroom, putting on mascara, or stubbing your toe on the coffee table, all in a very sophisticated manner. Instagram and Facebook combined have an infinite number of uses.

Clearly, Zuckerberg is a very skilled economizer. His company’s capital income is one of the largest grossing in the United States of America. With the purchase of these new top-notch sites and companies (Google, Hotmail, and Microsoft), he has only expended a mere thirty billion dollars from his company’s income.  This 2010 Man of the Year states, “I figure I spend as much on coffee. It’s not a really big deal, you know.” His new plan is to connect Google and Hotmail by re-creating them into Facebook applications, all to improve your stocking experience. From the introduction on the Facebook website, “Your Facebook friends will always be notified when you search a simple thing on the new Google App, or open an email from the new Hotmail App.” Also, in the near future, Microsoft Windows Technology Co. will be the suppliers of computers that have one sole function: Facebook.

Not only has he only spent one billion dollars to keep Twitter from getting his prized Instagram, he will also be dropping another billion on his new project, Petbook. Petbook, a branch of Facebook, will involve a new social network site, dedicated to the house pets of America. He has already created a draft account for his dog, Beast (his profile picture is a professional studio photograph of the Hungarian sheepdog). 

Through this means, our social life as human beings will be improved greatly by this new Facebook combination. Everyone will be capable of communicating more efficiently. The world will be full of the sharing of all information with a single website. Zuckerberg is certainly a man of immense power. We can only sit back and admire his work. Society will be greatly improved with this new transformation, credited to the creator of Facebook.

satirical article number one

The Peak of Evolution: Music now creates the greatest success of all time

“Hot Problems”, a song by Double Take, debuted on YouTube as an Internet sensation that became viral in April, and has since then triggered great interest from the audience. Subsequently, I decided to investigate this wild reaction from the viewers of “Hot Problems”. After several interviews among students and adult listeners, all they had to say was “Wow. This is the best song I have ever heard in all my life.” 

Of course, being a journalist, I had to do my research prior to interviewing. From what I saw, the song definitely deserves recognition for its incredible musicality. It was written and performed by Double Take, composed of two teenage girls who passionately sing about their struggles of “being hot and pretty” in their melodious voices. The song consists of about four different notes (albeit off-pitch, but I'm sure it was intended to add a special effect) and about two different harmonies, which creates immense musical variety.

From a Facebook interview, “Jacqueline Angell Bieberrxxx” revealed her opinion about “Hot Problems”, writing that, “there is like an inexplicable way the singers can like make us like understand exactly like what theyre saying!!! like omg i know exactly how like hot girls struggle becuz theyre like thought of as like stuck up and stuff but like really theyre like normal people even though like people start rumours like about them. like i luvvv Hot Problems cuz its like totally relatable♥♥ like xoxox.” From the video’s 26 000 likes on YouTube, I can conclude that this is the opinion of the majority.

The song and video resemble the creativity of the greatest musical works, something that is very difficult to achieve. The girls are shown wearing loads of makeup (not bad for skin at all) and skimpy clothes, partying in a limo for the entire duration of the video. They are obviously having fun, dancing to a catchy beat, and being carefree like the teenagers this generation should be like. 

 “Hot girls, we have problems, too.

We’re just like you,

Except we’re hot.”

In addition, these inventive lyrics are reminiscent of songs such as Justin Bieber’s “Baby”, and Rebecca Black’s “Friday”, which are both favourites of listeners. 

The best of the Biebs:

“Baby, baby, baby, oh!

Baby, baby, baby, oh!“

RB’s creative and educational lyrics:

“Yesterday was Thursday,

Today is Friday,

Tomorrow is Saturday,

And Sunday comes afterwards.”

When it comes to recognizing the inner material of the song, we know that Double Take is wise in their advice. They believe that hot girls should not care about wits and should only want to have fun. Again, like the beloved Rebecca Black in her song “Friday”, the importance of partying plays a major role. Clearly, this has influenced teenagers of our time in a positive way. Combining their prodigious musicality and genius lyricism, “Hot Problems” could very well become the milestone in the evolution of music.

In conclusion, this song and music video have the potential to become a perpetual number one in the billboard charts. This masterpiece has definitely beaten out all composers and musicians of before. My recommendation to you is that musical taste is important in your lifestyle, so make sure to have this song on your music player (only costs $0.99 and takes a few seconds to download). I myself even bought seven (7) copies of the song on iTunes to put on my iPod. I assure you that listening to music of such talent is worth it.