Humor
Introduction:
In the last months here at Freestyle Academy, we were introduced to a unique and entertaining unit called the Humor Unit, which tasked us to create a humorous project using a variety of comedic techniques and through a medium of our choice. This unit was inspiring and engaging because we were able to practice our public speaking in addition to learning different comedic techniques that allow us to create more engaging pieces of work in the future.
Proposal:
What I wanted to create for my humor project was a spoken word poem about stereotypes and prejudices against the LGBT community and satire them. To do this, I studied two LGBT comedians, Shawn Hollenbach and Fabrice Fabrice.
Shawn Hollenbach and Fabrice Fabrice use very different styles of comedy while both have elements of LGBT issues and satire. Shawn Hollenbach is an American comedian who works for Comedy Central. Many of his stand-up routines revolve around starizing gay issues, commonalities, and homophonia. He uses these in his comedy by making commentary on them or agreeing/disagreeing with them. One example of this is when he was called a fudge-packer on a live radio show. Hollenbach was upset, but not for the reasons one would assume he is, but because the person doesn’t acknowledge the fudge-packees. This incorporation of LGBT issues through humor is one of the things I want to bring in my spoken word poem. Hollenbach also uses many comedic techniques in his performances such as: black humor, anecdotes, absurd humor, exaggerisms, and more. Anecdotes are very present in each and every one of his routines and they’re usually presented with a twist. For example, in one of his acts, he retold the story of how he was going to brunch for the Super Bowl. He lamented how much he didn’t want to go because he’s gay and then proceeded to be hit by a car. It’s unexpected and hilarious because it’s what he got what he wanted but not in the way he’d hoped. Additionally, the element of satire is present in the anecdote that makes it funnier where he satirizes gays. He makes the assumption that many/all gays hate waking up early or hate going to brunch, both of which are true in my experience. These elements of satire are equally present in his routines because they add more elements of humor by satirizing what people think of gays and how gays act. One example of his satire is when he bought his niece a sweater. The sweater had a rainbow across the top and read “Precious”, but his sister-in-law didn’t like it and Hollenbach assumes that it’s because he’s pushing the Gay Agenda on her 1-year-old daughter. He satirizes it here because there’s no attempt to push the gay agenda, it’s just a sweater, and he’s calling out people that wildly throw accuse members of the LGBT community of forwarding the gay agenda in daily lives. However, in contrast to Shawn Hollenbach’s style of satire, anecdotes, and exaggerisms, Fabrice Fabrice uses a lot more black humor and hyperbole with many wisecracks spread within. Fabrice Fabrice is a fictional character played by Nick Kroll who uses very exaggerated speech that is reminiscent of a mixture of stereotypical gay and pimp speech patterns. It’s very flamboyant and very heavy on the accent which only goes to further the comedic effects of satire that this is how they act. Fabrice Fabrice also relies on their appearance to satire pimp and gay stereotypes, for example, in one routine he wore a crop top outfit with a copious amount of bedazzlement, pink, purple, and numerous sunglasses. Another comedic technique Fabrice Fabrice uses is heavy amounts of black humor. In the example that I’m using, they compare intellectually disabled peoples with celebrities and call out a number of similarities between the two. They do this in order to satirize and mock celebrities who act in ways that are deemed questionable. Fabrice Fabrice and Shawn Hollenbach are different but also similar in a number of ways, for example they’re similar in that they both use anecdotes and some forms of black humor to convey humor or satire. They both also use satire often in their performances and sometimes through black humor. However they’re also both different in that Shawn Hollenbach relies heavily on anecdotes and humorous takes on events, opinions, or the likes, while Fabrice Fabrice relies heavily on black humor. This is shown often through their portrayal, mannerisms, and performance which are considered taboo.
What I want to do in my spoken word poem is to make LGBT humor while also satirizing certain aspects of people against the community, people within the community, and typical stereotypes. I will achieve this goal through the use of comedic effects and techniques used by Shawn Hollenbach and Fabrice Fabrice. Some of the techniques that they use in their comedic routines I find are very effective at conveying satire and comedy through the lense of mockery, wisecracks, and wit. For example, I want to use Hollenbach’s LGBT humor and satire in my spoken word to maintain interest and humor while also conveying a message. However considering that this project must remain PG, I will cut down on the jokes and black humor to focus more on wit. A lot of LGBT humor revolves around *ahem*, and as such are typically not suited for children. However, some humor does revolve around suggestions, wit, and references which is what I will use instead. For Fabrice Fabrice, they are a perfect example of a stereotype that I can use in my piece. I can use their accent and mannerisms in the play at certain parts using black humor. Another part of Fabrice Fabrice’s act that I want to use is the way he talks, not as in his accent but his pattern. He rhymes sometimes and speaks like it was a spoken word poem, which is exactly how I want it to sound. I want the spoken word to be powerful but also in a poetic style like a previous senior, KatelynB, did in her spoken word poem. Spoken words are characterized by changes in the tone and speed to emphasize certain aspects of the poem. Fabrice Fabrice does this naturally in his comedy routines and this is something I’d like to mirror in my own. To conclude, in my spoken word poem, I’d like to convey humor and satire through an examination of LBGT issues and common actions using a variety of comedic techniques. These techniques include: black humor, satire, wit, exaggeration, hyperbole, and more. I hope to use these techniques by examining and learning from the comedians Shawn Hollenbach and Fabrice Fabrice. I will use Shawn Hollenbach’s use of anecdotes, narrative, satire, and humor for the more comedic aspects and some of the darker humor. I will also use Fabrice Fabrice’s use of dark humor and speech patterns in my poem to give in some depth and a deeper level of satire.
Links for Comedians:
Fabrice Fabrice (Warning, not suited for children)
Humor Project Script:
Hello, hi, hey, hiya, hmhm, yes, hello, welcome
To my apology video,
to everyone,
I’m sorry
I’m sorry Karen, Deborah, Susan, Carol….Jill, that I’m gay
It’s like when you sign up for something and you forget to uncheck the “sign up for our newsletter?” box;
I forgot to uncheck: “likes boys a lot” when I was in the womb
It is also my obligation to apologize
for turning your collective children gay
I wasn’t aware that anyone within a 5-foot radius of me, would suddenly become a homosexual,
it wasn’t my intention, even though
your sons, are very cute
I’m sorry, that my crop tops,
and flannels,
and chokers make you uncomfortable,
It must be so hard seeing someone
Who looks sexier than you, effortlessly
It must really difficult seeing me in my sequin gown
Because of your cataracts
You boomer
I’m very sorry to everyone, for corrupting the youths with our Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Whitney Houston, and our Gay Agenda, which at every opportunity, we push onto you
“I’m sorry Jessica, that this is your mother’s wake, but did you know about the lack of gay rights in our schools?? I can’t come to school clad in only tighty whities with rainbow paint over my tits because of ingrained homophobia”
Sometimes you act like there’s a barrier between my life and yours that makes it so we’re incomplete
Like maybe I can’t understand you
But little do you know
That I was straight until I watched The Princess Bride
with Cary Elwes as Westley
Like gay guys can have girlfriends, just whenever they wanna cuddle we’re just like
“oooohhhhh, sorry babe I’ve got…tinnitus”
And it works
because we’re in 7th grade and no one knows what tinnitus means
But there are times, where I am what you claim for me to be
Instead of toy guns
I had my extensive collection of
Lalaloopsies and My Littlest Pet Shop
that I married and divorced so often they were Glynn Wolfe
But I’m sorry, soccer moms and nascar dads,
That you think I’ve failed you
When it doesn’t even matter
Because in twenty years your children have deposited you in a retirement home
And I’m dancing with my husband to Killer Queen
While making this I had a lot of references like Shawn Hollenbach and Joel Kim Booster who are incredible comedians who leverage lgbt issues in their bits for good comedic effect. But there’s a lot of stuff that I couldn’t use that they used like “fudge-packer”. Yeah, that’d uh, that’d be really hard to justify using or trying to explain to someone who doesn’t know what they mean. But I did use a lot of their satirical elements that I hope were conveyed through my spoken word, and I hope you enjoy this overall. Thank you.
Humor Project Final Video:
>Video will be added when available<
Honors Satire Essay:
In a world so polarized and altered by change may struggle to find an individual identity, however, this endeavor to find one’s identity and establish it are fruitless! In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut and Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco both examine and satarize what it means to have an identity and retain this identity in a post-WWII world. In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, we follow a man, Eliot Rosewater, who grew up wealthy and has access to an enormous pool of wealth, but who uses it to help the “little people” of society. In contrast to Eliot is his father, who represents the wealthy and well-off, who despises what his son has become after being traumatized from WWII. As for Rhinoceros, we follow a small town in France where people who conform to a certain idea or thought begin inexplicably transforming into rhinoceroses! In both of these novels, the theme of identity is strong, where in Rhinoceros it’s about trying to retain an identity and not conform, and in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater where it’s about the futility of identity. Both of these together present a line of reasoning that there is absurdity in trying to change or retain your identity, and that inherently, it is a folly to do so.
In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Rhinoceros, both examine efforts to change or retain an identity and the inherent folly of this endeavor. There is folly in trying to change one’s identity because the pursuit of a new identity always has consequences and inevitably ends in failure. A prime example of this is shown in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater with the main character Eliot Rosewater. Eliot Rosewater grew up on the banks of the Money River as he puts it, leading a lavish and high-end life. However, upon returning from WWII after suffering from a mental breakdown, he’s shown to have become a changed man. His personality and identity have been changed, most clearly shown when he moved to the city of Rosewater, Indiana to live among the “little people” and help them live their lives. He acts as a therapist and banker for the citizens of Rosewater and anyone else who calls him asking for help, doling out advice and cash to those in need. However, while Eliot is living his life in Rosewater, Indiana, his father, Senator Rosewater, is increasingly agitated and angered by his son. Eliot and his father are portrayed as opposites, where Eliot believes in the little people and giving to the poor, while the Senator believes in people getting what they deserve with extremely few exceptions (Aeronet). Senator Rosewater raised Eliot Rosewater to become the next head of the Rosewater Foundation in order to secure and maintain bloodline for the foundation, this expectation being placed on Eliot at a young age as well. However, as threats to the Foundation begin to emerge, Eliot is forced to give up his identity and conform back to what his father and the company expect of him. His journey of changing his identity to become the person he wants to live as and then having to give it all up demonstrates the folly of identity. Through the experience of Eliot, we see that attempts to change or reshape one’s identity are futile, because there are barriers to this progress that will prevent any change from happening. In the case of Eliot Rosewater, his company and his family were threatened if he did not conform to the role that was laid out for him, preventing him from having an independent identity. Another example of this struggle and eventual failure to change an identity is shown in Eliot’s distant cousin, Fred Rosewater. Fred Rosewater lives Pisquontuit in a very poor neighborhood and in a loveless marriage who quickly comes to represent the “little people ” Eliot Rosewater represents. He lacks any semblance of self-esteem and lacks any backbone, letting anyone walk over him. However, an accidental discovery of his father’s manuscript about his family’s history soon invigorates him. He begins reading the manuscript’s first page and discovers that his lineage is full of potential, so much so that he believes that he can rise from the ashes he’s lived in. However, when Fred tries to continue onto the next page he finds, “The manuscript was hollow. Termites had eaten the heart out of the history. They were still there, maggotty blue-grey, eating away” (page 105). This turn of events for Fred Rosewater is a metaphor for Vonnegut’s message about changing one’s identity. Fred Rosewater was about to be inspired and change his identity, however he was quickly halted by the unexpected challenge of his inspiration being destroyed. Vonnegut’s portrayal of this event shows that you cannot change your identity because there are forces against you that prevent it from coming to fruition. This theme of trying in vain to change one’s identity is not limited to God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and can be seen in Rhinoceros as well through the main cast and Berenger in particular. In Rhinoceros, people who conform or change their ideas and beliefs begin to turn in rhinoceroses. In the beginning there are few rhinoceroses, but throughout the book, people begin to change their opinions about the rhinoceroses and are thus transformed into rhinoceroses (Compass Rose). The only person who doesn’t conform is Berenger, a town drunk who refuses to capitulate or surrender. However, Berenger’s situation also presents a unique argument that people who also try to retain their identity also lose, “‘I should have gone with them when there was still time…Now I’ll never become a rhinoceros, never, never! I’ve gone past changing…people who try to hang onto their individuality always come to a bad end!’” (page 112). Using Berenger, Ionesco conveys that people who try to hold onto their identity still lose. Berenger tries so hard to hold onto his identity throughout the play and suffers heavily for it. He pushes people away and loses his friends, only for him to succeed and become the last person left in the town who hasn’t compromised or conformed. However, he soon realizes that this is a burden rather than a boon. He has lost his happiness and lost the things that were meaningful to him in the process of retaining his identity, which is what Ionesco conveys through Berenger’s experience (Rose Compass). Together, the experiences of Berenger, Eliot Rosewater, and Fred Rosewater demonstrate that there is inherent folly in trying to establish or change or maintain an identity, because of the inevitable failure and impossibility of this endeavor. In some way, they all tried to modify or retain their identity, but in every case they all failed at their task and end up back where they started or in a situation far worse. The pursuit of identity is not only meaningless and foolish, but also completely devoid of logic and full of absurdity.
Though God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Rhinoceros both contain satirical elements about the inherent folly of identity, both also expose the absurdity of identity and the extent to which people go in the name of identity. Vonnegut and Ionesco both criticize the pursuit and retainment of an identity, though their methods of satirizing them are different. In Rhinoceros, Ionesco criticizes this retainment of identity through Berenger’s last moments of the play. As he grows increasingly distraught and frantic, he laments how his retention of identity has caused him pain and anguish, “‘Now I’m just a monster…I’m so ugly! People who try to hang onto their individuality always come to a bad end!’” (page 112). This attitude of Berengers is a representation of the author’s viewpoint on the absurdity of identity by demonstrating through Berenger that there is absurdity in the pursuit of identity. Berenger’s slow collapse of sanity and logic show through his actions that it is foolish to pursue or retain an identity. There is no reason to pursue something meaningless that will only cause pain. While Rhinoceros examines the absurdity behind retaining an identity, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater examines the questionable and illogical logic people make in the name of identity. Throughout the book, there is a clear distinction drawn between the characters Eliot Rosewater and Senator Rosewater, even though both come from the same background. Eliot has rejected the upper-class lifestyle he was raised in, while the Senator fully accepts his social status and fervently believes everyone gets what they deserve, whether it’s their social status or economic state, and that they shouldn’t be assisted in any way. Both also have different views on Eliot’s current situation while living in Rosewater, Indiana, “It was the Senator’s conceit that Eliot trafficked with criminals. He was mistaken…But Eliot…was almost equally mistaken about who his clients were. He would argue that the people he was trying to help were the same sorts of people who, in generations past, had cleared the forest, drained the swamps, built the bridges…The people who leaned on Eliot regularly were a lot weaker than that–and dumber, too” (page 40). This interaction and beliefs held by Eliot and the Senator reflect a message about the absurdity of logic people have when they try to pursue identities. The Senator mistakenly judges the people Eliot helps as criminals when they aren’t, but Eliot also misjudges the character of those same people by assuming they are the foundation of the country when in reality they were just the ground upon which the foundation was laid. Both misunderstanding the nature of these people conveys a message by Vonnegut that people’s logic behind their beliefs and identity are often full of mistakes and completely illogical. In this case, Eliot’s identity is centered around him trying to help the “little people” who have been stepped on and ignored because he believes they are the backbone of his country, when in reality the people he actually helps did nothing to help or to shape the nation. And for Senator Rosewater, he despises what Eliot Rosewater has become because he believes he’s helping people less fortunate than him, which is a concept he makes a clear stand against. The Senator believes those people are criminals and the scum of the Earth, however in reality, these people are spineless and too stupid or too lazy to actually accomplish any of the felons the Senator accuses them of having performed. Both the Senator and Eliot’s identities here are shown to be ludicrous because both have based their identity on facts and opinions that are completely wrong. The Senator and Eliot Rosewater have conflicting viewpoints about the same group of people, however both are mistaken about that same group, and as such have their opinions and beliefs tied to their identity equally wrong and illogical. This demonstrates that trying to create and maintain an identity is meaningless due to the utter absurdity of one’s logic behind their identity. Even though God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Rhinoceros go about exposing the fallacy of identity using different methods, both do establish a line of reasoning that there is a folly in trying to establish and maintain an identity. The logic used behind one’s identity and one’s opinions is often wrong, and the results of trying to maintain this identity often lead to pain and grief as shown in the situation of both Berenger and Eliot Rosewater.
In the novels God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut and Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco, both examine and critique the efforts to establish, maintain, or change one’s identity through the experience of multiple characters. They critique these efforts by pointing out the illogical logic behind it, and the inherent folly of this pursuit. However, these two novels also share a common theme of scrutinizing and satirizing the relationship between one’s individual identity and social and cultural norms that prevent them from achieving this. There are many obstacles that characters in both books face that prevent them from maintaining an identity or from having any benefits from possessing an individual identity. In God Bless You, Mr Rosewater, the efforts of the Senator and the burden of his social norms prevent him from having a unique identity, and in Rhinoceros, Berenger is burdened with having a unique identity because of all the suffering it causes him. These circumstances and restrictions all work together to act as a satire on efforts to re-establish one’s self in a post-WWII. Both books were written post WWII by authors that had some experience with the horrors of it, and in both books they criticize the effects of the war. Post-WWII, many struggled to find their identity in this seemingly post-apocalyptic world where millions died and no one was sure about their future or safety (History Campus). This direct result from the war is what both authors commented on in their book, using the theme of fallacies of identity as a lens from which to view it. To conclude, in both God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Rhinoceros, they examine the folly of trying to maintain an identity and the absurdity behind it in order to satirize WWII and its effects.