For the humor project our English class read the absurdist play “Rhinoceros” by Eugene Ionesco and “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. We also watched examples of standup comedy, sketch comedy, and did improve exercises. With all of this under our belts we were set the task of creating our own humor performance. The first step of creating this performance had us choose two influences to study. Since I wanted to go along the lines of satire I choose The Onion and the tv show Bojack Horseman as my influences. The following is my analysis of these influences.
The Onion and the popular T.V. show Bojack Horseman are both two excellent, popular, and current sources of satirical comedy. They also represent two different approaches to satirical comedy. The Onion gets straight to the point. All of the articles and pictures they put out are satirizing something fairly specific that is normally easy for the viewer to figure out. Bojack Horseman takes more time when satirizing someone, mostly since it is in a drawn out T.V. show format. Upon closer inspection it is easy to see how Bojack Horseman is a very satirical piece and that takes a more absurd approach to satirizing the same things as most other satirical comics. Both sources partake in a fair amount of political satire. The Onion does this often by sharing satirical headlines such as “Trump Base Celebrates President For Standing Up To Constitution” and then elaborating on this satire in a related paragraph detailing the action described. Bojack Horseman did a lot of political satire during its fourth season when a B-story followed a famous and aloof character run for governor. Memorable moments of this satire are when the campaign manager says that the election, “is about hope and freedom, and powerful lobbyists who pay me to elect a governor I can control, so that we can get legislation passed that builds private prisons on what we now call protected wetlands,” or when a newscaster says, “For the sake of fairness, we’ve brought on two experts with opposite opinions, who will now have equal time to just say those opinions, because that’s what news is.” A lot of the show might seem to stay invested in the characters and their individual arcs, but every once in a while they throw in a biting line, like those aforementioned, that reminds you of the satirical piece you are watching. Both The Onion and Bojack Horseman use absurd humor to communicate their satire. The Onion uses absurd situations that are obviously fake to satirize commonplace actions. Bojack Horseman infuses its show with a world of talking animals that are exactly like the humans to get in a lot of puns and to keep the general mood of the show lighter while they satirize the Hollywood lifestyle. A lot of what The Onion does is situational humor. It is a lot of satire based around what is currently happening in the world politically, or in popular culture. This grounds the satire in the present and plays off current situations, making the satire that much more humorous.
The cut and dry way The Onion presents its satire is something I really admire and would like to emulate in my work. Although most headlines are followed by longer, in depth articles, the headline is the most biting part of the satire and is the attention-grabber. It always gets right to the point and sits exactly on a boarder of reality and a fake event. The Onion always tries to make it fairly obvious that their headlines are fake, while modeling them as close to real life occurrences as they can. The satire ranges from quick light hearted laughs to dark humor that can really help shine a light on a problem. Examples of this range is one headline reading, “Lady Gaga Quashes Rumors That She Ever Thought Bradley Cooper Talented In Any Way,” to “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,” which is often posted after a mass shooting. The Onion has the ability to go from satirizing superficial pop culture to making serious comments on the state of our nation, and does this often.
I chose satire as the type of humor I wanted to do for my presentation and drew a lot of inspiration from my study of The Onion. I decided to create a slideshow of headlines that I created and that my audience of other Freestyle Academy students could relate to. Once I created a script, which was just the text of the headlines, I found images online to help visually support my headlines.
Here is the slideshow that I put together for the performance.
And here is the video of my actual performance.