Introduction
The Humor Project is our last unit of English class as Freestyle seniors. It’s a great chance to have some fun at the end of High School, while still learning new things!
We started our humor unit by leading about Kurt Vonnegut, and then reading his book Slaughterhouse Five. While reading, we analyzed the various comedy tools used throughout the book. Then, we practiced more humor rhetorical analysis by writing a short essay analyzing a piece of humor of our choosing. Finally, we got to propose, script, create, and share our own humor production.
Rhetorical Analysis
After reading Slaughterhouse Five, we were tasked with choosing a piece of humor and writing an analysis of how it uses humor to tell a certain message.
I chose to write about an episode of the sitcom Superstore. Superstore is a show about the daily lives of employees working at a huge store like Walmart. In the episode I wrote about, the workers attempt to go on strike. When analyzing, I chose to focus on the use of satire. It was used very heavily in Slaughterhouse Five, so I was familiar with how it could be used to communicate messages.
Read my rhetorical analysis here
Superstore is a sitcom TV series about a group of employees working in a large retail store, similar to Target or Walmart, called “Cloud 9”. The show follows their daily struggles at work and throughout the series we see their many attempts to stand up to Cloud 9’s corporate office to gain better working conditions.
Superstore season 2, episode 2, is titled “Strike”. It continues a plot from the previous season in which many of the workers have walked out to protest the firing of their store manager. In the previous season, their manager was fired for attempting to give an employee paid maternity leave by suspending her with pay.
After a brief flashback to the events of the previous episode in this arc, we see the employees celebrating their supposed victory against corporate. Soon after, one of the employees asks “So do we just go home now?”. The idea that the workers consider their protest “over” after the simple acts of walking out of the building and celebrating is absurdly humorous, and serves to establish just how inexperienced the workers are when it comes to protesting. It’s very clear that the workers are going to face a lot of struggles to get what they want, many of which will seemingly come from their own inability to protest effectively.
In an attempt to organize themselves a bit better, the employees start to argue about what exactly their demands are. At first, the proposals seem reasonable, such as wanting paid overtime and healthcare. However, things go off the rails fast. Employees begin to propose things that seem ridiculous, such as an employee who wants to vape in the store, and another who wants the store to be “closer to [her] house.” The illogical proposals provide further absurd humor to viewers that show how the employees don’t even know what they are going on strike for. The power that they gained from going on strike is causing division among the protesters, and it’s starting to look like going on strike was a bad idea overall for the workers. This line of thinking feels like something a corporation may use to dissuade its employees from striking, unionizing, or generally protesting. Here, the show is making a satire of this idea and presenting viewers with a group of protesting employees who are absurdly incompetent.
In this episode, Superstore also presents an opposite satire. When Cloud 9 corporate appears in the episode via the presence district manager, its actions are clearly a satirical critique of large corporations. It is revealed that Cloud 9 corporate would be willing to re-hire the store’s manager if all of the employees sign an apology letter for the “disturbance”. This concept is humorous because it feels both like a hyperbolic representation of a corporation, but also very in line to how one might act. The two employees leading the strike refuse, and inform the other employees that they are going to protest even harder the next day.
When the next day comes, the workers are faced with more difficulties and organizational struggles, such as when they order a huge inflatable rat to put up but mistakenly receive a cute teddy bear. It’s revealed that employees from a neighboring store have been sent to replace the protestors, which prompts them to give up one by one. The strike fizzles out and is over by the end of the episode.
When presented with the constant failures of the protesters throughout the episode, it feels like the show wants us to think that the strike failed because of their missteps. Cloud 9 corporate literally gave them a way out, which they refused. Of course, it doesn’t make sense that a TV series satirizing the often evil actions of corporations would push such an obviously harmful message. Instead, the satirical failure of this episode’s protest asks viewers why it’s even up to the workers to campaign for their rights in the first place. If the strike was doomed from the start because of the inexperience of the protestors, then it’s probably Cloud 9 corporate’s fault in the first place for suppressing their rights so much.
Humor Production
Finally, we used what we had learned from analyzing humor to create a humor production of our own. I decided to work with my friend Blanki. Based on both of our rhetorical analyses, we decided to implement a lot of absurd humor into our project. We also wanted to use a bit of satire.
Our humor production idea was to create a short excerpt of a mock-five year anniversary documentary for the animation that Blanki made for their Zenith Project. We wanted to include things such as testimonials, behind the scenes footage, and fan tributes. Of course, all of the things featured in the video would be completely made-up, untrue, and full of absurd humor.
Once the idea was approved, we created the script. We had gotten a lot of brainstorming done, so it was a pretty simple process. Because we had limited time, we wanted to avoid any excessive filming or complicated scenes. Our goal was to have most of the final product be able to be achieved using editing only.
Our humor project script
INTRO SEQUENCE
- Dramatic/sentimental music playing
- Intentionally low quality title screen with some sort of powerpoint animation
- “Training Practice: 5 year anniversary”
- Opening narration
- Starts with random unrelated stock footage + dramatic inspirational music
- “Five years ago today, Training Practice premiered at Freestyle Academy’s yearly exhibition. Stellar cinematography and impressive set design shocked audiences nationwide, and it goes without saying that the world has never been the same. Today, you will witness never before released behind the scenes footage and exclusive interviews. Up first, is the creator themselves, Blanki Fernandez-Miranda”
- The last clip shown is a highly sped up version of training practice. The music volume grows at the end as to drown out the last words of the narration
TESTIMONIAL
- Word salad Training Practice summary
- Sped up training practice continues, starts with Blanki being greenscreened over the footage but the green background slowly fades in over the course of the summary
- Blanki: Two QUIRKY pals flabbergast their friends with impressive collaborative legal and ethical responsibilities
- Freestyle Mascot Somebody: “The filming of training practice was quite the endeavour”
- Maybe overlays to make it looked filmed underwater
- INTRO SEQUENCE IS CUT OFF TO CONTINUE THE TESTIMONIAL
- Hannah Somebody else: “Training Practice trained my life…I practiced being a person….by train-” General Quirks
- Powerpoint transitions for each cutaway
- Freestyle mascot is doing one of the interviews
- Filmed in a chair over like stock footage in the green screen room.
- Hannah “You can even say training practice is a part of me now” (background turns into training practice)
- INTRO SEQUENCE IS CUT OFF TO CONTINUE THE TESTIMONIAL
- INTRO SEQUENCE CUTS BACK IN
BEHIND THE SCENES
- A bunch of cameras and lights set up, but they’re filming Blanki drawing
- Weird sped up freaky footage effect to make it seem off
- Same clip repeats a few times
- Footage of Blanki reverses and goes back and forth
- “It was very hard to film the film. We had to use the lights. And also the cameras.”
- “The filming of training practice was quite the endeavour” (use audio from the interview)
- Maybe weird echos and audio glitches
- Glitches out
- A shot of Blanki in the dark maybe like ripping stuff apart, throwing scraps away. Weird lighting with just one light, weird bad-lighting. Very omn(e)ious. Implies the creative DISTRESS
- Alarms, “assignment due soon” repeated some times
- Just as the desperation starts to set in, there’s a very abrupt cut to the fan testimonials
- Fan tribute intro
FAN TRIBUTES
- Gacha life music video
- Video with the Bewilthered dolls
- CANVAS ASSIGNMENT JUMPSCARE
- Fade to similar scene of the ripping stuff apart scene, but it’s well lit. Blanki is organizing the pieces, putting them back together.
- I come to the EPIC realization…that WE are training practice…
- Line up ripped up notes to be WE ARE TRAINING PRACTICE and it zooms out and fades to black
Then, we had to actually create the project. There were only a few scenes to film, so we got it done in just one session. We got to use the Freestyle mascot costume to record one of the testimonials, which was fun. We also used a few props such as fake candles, torn paper, and we had various lights as a background setting. Most of the work was the editing. I started by getting the clips in and adding placeholders for where various title screens would go. I also added some sound effects to start. A few days later, we got together to finish the rest of the editing. This involved adding in the rest of the clips, greenscreening out the testimonials, recording voiceovers, creating the fan tributes, adding captions, and putting in the rest of the music and sound. It took a few hours to get everything finished, but we had a lot of fun.
Finally, our production was done! You can watch it here