Introductory Reflective Essay
Ass-holes running through the Serengeti. Jimmy Fallon playing basketball. Douche-nozzle fraternity boys giving up respecting women for Lent. These are prime examples of why hyperbole is key in a quality comedy.
Hyperbole is an exaggeration to make a point, which we know because the government makes sure to include it in the standards of every English class we take throughout grade school. But, not only is hyperbole useful in point making, but it also is beneficial to making a joke funnier. When looking at all three of my projects from this semester, I found this to be prevalent: Hyperbole establishes and amplifies comedy.
Prior to this class the only comedy I was familiar with was that of my parents dry sarcasm and dad jokes. I found it difficult to analyze all this new comedy at first. I also was was unfamiliar with writing research papers. My comfort zone fell within the boundaries of narratives. In high school, I was very restricted to following outlines and everything was very fill-in-the-blank. Coming into this class, I was very taken back by how free it was. We, the writers, were give a chance to write what we want, how we want, and then were given helpful tips along the way. The creative freedom that embellishes this class, has taken me out of that comfort zone and been very beneficial to my writing. The use of journal entries helped me work through my ideas and see how they would flow together as a whole. I also used journals to practice analyzing comedies. A typical journal entry would go as such:
“Ellen jokes about toilet paper but, unlike Ali Wong, she doesn’t go as far as to talk about her finger slipping up her butthole. Instead, she talks about how hard it is to rip off the toilet paper and how its not even one-ply any more but more like a “sheer suggestion of toilet paper.” Her jokes are pure but he portrayal of them is what makes them funny…”
These journals perfectly exemplify the processes that go on in my mind as my thoughts progress. Writing multiple journals and having a peer evaluate my essays resulted in stronger, more established final outcomes. By the second paper, I had figured out my plan of attack. I would tackle my biggest challenge first: finding a funny video. Then, I would analyze the video in my journal entries to see if I could passionately write about it. My motive was, “If I’m not passionate about what I’m writing, my readers will hate it as much as I do.” Whether you enjoy a topic or not becomes very clear in how well your writing is. If I couldn’t write about a video, I found a new one. If I did find myself enjoying writing about one, I began my research. I dug deep into the script to figure out what exactly is being satirized and why. What are the comedians trying to bring light upon?
Project 1 was the foundation for my process; my guinea pig. I found it challenging to develop and narrow my points of focus, so I wrote a journal for all the comedies I wanted to choose between. This method helped me to see which stand up I was more interested in. Some of my journals were significantly longer and more detailed than the others, and I also found myself writing multiple journal entries for one stand up, so it became clear to me which I was more passionate about. I ended up choosing to analyze Wanda Sykes bit on waxing. If you haven’t seen this, I highly recommend it. Wanda’s sarcastic twang and her build up of suspense makes the audience laugh. But her use of hyperbole is what really captures the raw comedy of the moment she first got a wax.
“That kind of pain should happen out in the wild somewhere. It shouldn’t happen to humans. You know when you watch those nature shows… I pictured my ass-hole running across the Serengeti. I’m like, ‘Run ass-hole. Run ass-hole, run. Come on ass-hole. Ah!!’ Hot lion teeth on my ass-hole. That’s what it felt like.”
She hyperbolizes the pain of waxing by having the audience picture her ass-hole getting bit by a lion. It doesn't get much funnier than that.
Trying to find a comdey skit to analyze for Project 2 was more of a hill than a mountain, but I still had to climb. I have a tendency to overthink whether or not a video is actually funny or if its just me. The thought of presenting a video to the class and getting no reaction was traumitizing to me. I vetoed every video I watched that didn’t make me hunch over with laughing pains. I was floundering, then I came across SNL’s “Basketball Scene.” The skit features Jimmy Fallon and Mikey Day as background actors in a dramatic sports movie. The scene satirtizes the predictability of every sports movie: dramatic lighting, the player ignores his potential, and the coach becomes a father figure. The underlying point being made, however, draws attention actors lying about their skills to get parts in movies. This is a far stretch from my previous essay on beauty standards.Hyperbole, nonetheless, is still present here in the ridiculously over-the-top portrayal of horrible basketball skills
Project 3 was the most unique exhibit I’ve done. I had the opportunity to make and present my own comedy skit. In order to make this successful, I referred back to popular Comedy Central and SNL skits. I needed a topic that was relatable, but also raunchy. I started thinking about what kind of things we college kids joke about. These words came to mind: Greek Life, juuls, and downtown (how millennial of me). In my journals, I was able to narrow my focus to stereotypical douche frat guys. We all know at least one. In my individual analysis of my process I wrote:
“I didn’t just want sub-par douche, though, because, while a subtle douche is funny, you can easily amplify it to be funnier. I wanted to hyperbolize the stereotypical frat guy…”
Comedy is successful when it surprises your audience. You can never go wrong with being a little risky. If you look at the most successful comedies on SNL and Comedy Central, there’s no holding back. I went back and edited our original script to make it more vulgar. Cuss words are sentence enhancers that make stories funnier, we shouldn’t always be afraid to use them. It’s the fucks and shits that really throw people back in laughter, because there’s little censorship in great comedy. The over dramatized “Douche Detector” character and risky diction was key to making our skit work well.
Professor Simrill had my group for feedback on my participation and performance. They said some very kind things about how I made the skit funnier. I added in words like douche-nozzle and “dick slip,” and ultimately hyperbolized the douchiness of the frat guy. One of the members also mentioned how I did well with acting and that I was able to take the project seriously.
My sense of humor could be described as a unique oxymoron of innocent-vulgarity and hyperbolic-dryness. Dealing with my fathers mix of sarcasm and horrible dad jokes for 19 years has molded me into the weird humored human that am today and it finally paid off.
