Humor

For the humor unit, we read comedic works and created our own original to perform to the class. First, we read Eugene Ionesco’s three act play Rhinoceros, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. As a class, we also experimented with various improv and comedic storytelling techniques and games. The unit culminated in an April 1st performance of student comedy. People did stand-up, produced satirical films, narratives, and animations, and did live sketches.

Humorist Study

As part of the humor unit, we chose to study two comedians that inspired us and analyzed their performances, thematic material, and comedy techniques. I chose Hassan Minhaj, a former Daily Show correspondent and host of his political comedy show on Netflix, Patriot Act, and Weekend Update, a Saturday Night Live segment hosted weekly by Michael Che and Colin Jost.

Hassan Minhaj and Weekend Update

Of the many comedians that I consume for my late-night satirical news and entertainment, Hasan Minhaj and Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update stood out to me as strong examples of work that have effectively used caricature, anecdotes, and irony among other comedic tools to tell sharply funny stories reflective of America’s current politics and culture. I often watch these comedians regularly and have found them as a source of relief and inspiration for my own comedy project for the humor unit.

Minhaj performs his “Saudi Arabia” episode in the wake of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s death.

Hasan Minhaj, a Muslim Indian America that grew up in Davis, California, got his career start working as a correspondent on the Daily Show under Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah’s tenure. Many of his segments involved interviewing people throughout the country under the pretense that Minhaj hailed from a legitimate news network. As such, he hilariously interacts with people, to make them blunder and to expose the problems in certain agendas or thinking. Since then, through his new Netflix show Patriot Act and stand-up special Homecoming King, Minhaj has used his unique and compelling experiences as a person with conflicting cultural identities and as a minority in the United States – alongside his notably millennial interests – basketball, sneaker culture, and Amazon shopping – to tell universal stories while maintaining his hold on more niche communities by telling jokes that specifically Asian or younger audiences will appreciate. In the Patriot Act’s first episode on affirmative action, Minhaj did a long-form comedy piece on the topic. Given that all students and parents often carry strong opinions regarding the topic, he effectively used defusing anxiety humor. Following accusatory sentences or statistics that would make one lose faith in the world, he lightens the situation with humor, poking fun at the people involved and the absurdity of the situation. However, as an Asian, he used his unique standing (no other late night hosts brought that cultural background to the discussion) to challenge fellow Asian Americans’ biases and compel them to empathize with the goal of affirmative action policies. He uses comedic techniques such as unspoken truth, anecdotes, and wit to achieve this.

Cover Art of Minhaj’s Netflix Show.

Unlike Hasan Minhaj, a singular comedian who goes in-depth on specific stories or topics through his stand-up and Netflix show, Weekend Update quickly covers a series of recent events, with quick setups and punchlines. Hosted by Colin Jost and Michael Che, the segment uses black and blue humor, exaggerism, irony, and satire to poke fun at recent headlines. Similar to Minhaj’s Patriot Act, Weekend Update is highly political, often featuring the most recent ridiculous statements and policy advancements made by President Trump. However, the show also brings on guest speakers, other cast members of SNL, to play humorous caricatures. For example, the “One-Dimensional Female Character in a Male-Driven Comedy” played by Cecily Strong or Stefon played by Bill Hader. Unlike the Patriot Act, Saturday Night Live also has the responsibility of appealing to a much wider audience, and thus often appears less far-left than some of its late night counterparts, at least during Weekend Update.

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: Colin Jost, Seth Meyers, Michael Che during “Weekend Update” in Studio 8H on Saturday, October 13, 2018.

For my own humor project, I hope to play off of the examples set by these comedians. I plan to create a comedy podcast with Mackenzie. The humor will be mainly satirical, but we hope to use exaggeration, caricature, anecdotes, and other techniques to make our piece effective and fun. I mainly consume political comedy and appreciate stand-up or satirical news that will challenge my beliefs or make interesting, witty connections. I also really enjoy when comedians highlight lesser known issues, such as John Oliver in his Last Week Tonight show or Samantha Bee. Because of this, Mackenzie and I want to pursue a podcast parodying fraudulent and pop science to unearth the dangers of fomenting conspiracy theories against the scientific community. Some subject material we have brainstormed includes discussing climate change, the anti-vaccination movement, and emerging pop science fads, such as skeptical miracle health foods. As hosts, we would lead a fringe podcast show, lightly resembling the dangerously false InfoWars Youtube channel, except this time about science. We would read humorously fake headlines from news articles. I also hope to follow the style of Saturday Night Live by inviting “experts” to speak with us during the podcast. They will bring their own odd life experiences and hopefully flush out our cast and presence. Given that I solidly side with the majority of the scientific community on most environmental, medical, and humanitarian issues (I believe that global warming is indeed real and caused largely by human activity, and that vaccinations can help to prevent disease) I think it’ll fun for me to play a character in opposition to my core beliefs, similar to Stephen Colbert’s former show the Colbert Report, in which he took on a Republican persona. It’ll also be challenging as I’ll have to try and understand the mindsets of those that believe such conspiracy theories. The most important part of effective political comedy, at least for me, is ensuring that you adequately and truly represent both sides. Oftentimes, people have the erroneous image of their opposition, in which they demonize them and consider them to be dumb, fully at fault, and undoubtedly wrong. The failure of a comedian to understand the motivations behind the people they satirize makes comedy lose its effect. I’m excited to pursue this topic as I think it’ll expand my view politically while challenging me to make a refreshing piece of comedy that incorporates satire, caricature, and exaggeration as some of its techniques.

Project Proposal

I submitted a project proposal to our English teacher Mr. Greco before beginning my comedic project. I chose to do a live stand-up performance, telling odd stories about my family’s road trip escapades and what it’s like to have five cats.

Are you working with a group?

  • No.

Which form of humor are you planning to develop? Will it be a LIVE or pre-recorded performance?

  • I plan to do a live performance

What is the subject (or, in the case of satire, the target)? Why did your choose this subject?

  • Stand-up piece using personal stories about my family and our road trips as well as my experience owning five cats

Which comedic tools/techniques do you plan to use?

  • Exaggeration
  • Satire
  • Anecdote

Why do you think this is the right humor project for you? (If you have a group, can you assure me that everyone is invested in this idea and you won’t have trouble getting everyone to contribute meaningfully?) What makes you excited about this idea? What are some potential pitfalls you wish to avoid?

  • I enjoy telling stories about my family, so I think this will be a fun project to connect with the audience. Potential pitfalls might be turning anecdotes into comedic material

If you get approval today, what’s your next step?

  • My next step would be to start collecting ideas for potential jokes and drafting a first script.

The Comedy Script and Performance

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I performed my stand-up set to our English class on April 3.

Something I would like to address is actually something I don’t like to tell people when I first meet them because it makes me come off like a crazy cat lady, but I own (well, not own, they’re people, too). I have five cats. I’m very stereotypically a cat lady. I’ve played piano for 12 years. I’m bookish, quiet, and I don’t like to go outside, but I’ve had five cats. I’ve had technically more than that but they’ve come and gone over the years. But It’s definitely something that has gotten out of hand. I don’t know why I have so many. They just come into my home.

The first cat that we got, I was seven, and I wanted one for my birthday. The next cat that we got was a kitten that my dad’s worker’s cat had a whole litter of kittens, and so we said, ‘okay, we’ll take one.’ And then the next cat that we got was a stray – she’s come and gone. The next cat that we got – there’s five so it’ll take a while. I came home from school one day and my mom had just taken two cats from the store. She didn’t plan it, but they were really cute. The most recent cat that we got was a small, stray cat. She was super skinny. You could see her bones. It was really sad so we started feeding her. One day we thought it would be really cute if we opened the door and allowed her to see the inside of our home. Eventually she got comfortable hanging out there, and we thought it was a cute experiment, but then she wanted to live there.

So now we have five cats. And I do definitely get the vibe from people when I tell them. They say, ‘Wow, isn’t that a lot. Don’t you feel like you’re overdoing it?’ Yeah, definitely, I do. I think the cutoff point for me was when we stopped caring what we named them. With my first cat, her name was Sweetpea. Then some of the other cats, we’d name them Dylan and it deteriorated to names like Tiger. But we got a little bit lazy, so that most recent cat, we just call her Kitty.

Every time we have to go on a family road trip, though, we have to leave the cats behind, and hope they kind of survive on their own. We’re a road-tripping family, so this winter we went on a California road trip. The plan was to do San Francisco and then John Muir Park, and finally Napa.

I just realized that I wanted to draw a geographic map, because as you’ll see in this bit, the whole point is that I’m not good at giving directions because I don’t know where things are, so I don’t know necessarily how to draw California.

*drawing*

I think it looks something like this, and that’s the Bay. We’re down here, and when you go to San Francisco you go up. John Muir is up here, and then Napa is way up here. Roughly.

So as we know, we’re going on a road trip. First of all, I’m the youngest in my family, so because of that I get relegated to the back of the car. If you were to model the car, I’ve always established that the least important seat is the back left, so that’s where I sit.

For some reason (I don’t remember why) I was designated to give directions, which is a really bad idea because I’m actually terrible at giving directions. After our escapades in San Francisco, we were going to go up to John Muir park, and so I put “John Muir Park” into Google Maps and we were driving up there. We were going through really interesting parts of California that we’d never been to, like really obscure towns that you never go to. The whole ride up, my mom thought, “Wow, this is really interesting. I’ve never seen this on my way to John Muir before.”

It was a bit long. It was like a two hour drive, but we went up like this. We had gone through all the weird passover cities, and we had gotten to this part that was “built.” And if you know John Muir park, it’s a huge national park. There’s usually lots of trees and not a lot of houses or people. I was a little confused, but I did see some trees far off in the background, so I thought maybe it’s closer than we think. It was about 10 or 15 minutes or so left into the drive and we parked right here, and there was this little patch of green, and it was John Muir Park.

But it’s actually called John Muir National Monument, and so I had taken us to this elementary school park in the middle of nowhere. So that was the fault of my family for letting me do directions. So that story was just about how I’m directionless, and this speech was a little directionless, so I hope you enjoyed it.