Reflection – Presentation

Reflection – Leadership Spill

Reflection – Changes

Reflection – The Larrikin

Reflection – Final

That’s it, y’all. That’s the end of semester. I’m partly really glad it’s over and partly really sad that I will probably never have a class where I get to watch comedy news segments every lesson. (side note – thanks for a really fun semester, Ruth).

I’m really proud of the work we accomplished throughout and at the conclusion of The Right News. Considering we only had three people consistently present during our meetings (no shade – the others helped behind the scenes in their own way), we pulled off a really high quality final piece.

We really lucked out with the quality of our filming equipment. This eased a lot of the pressure and stress that would’ve been present, given the physical restraints on movement. We were able to produce something that I feel would not feel out of place on late night television. The graphics worked really well in adding to the dialogue, and I think we chose our cutaways well. Through clever writing, timing, and acting, we successfully satirised the right-wing media’s attack on Dan Andrews. The call to action and ‘change of heart’ of the anchor played an important role in emphasising the ludicrousness of the state of the media, and made it quite obvious that the piece was indeed satire and parody.

If we had the time and opportunity to rework this piece, the addition of some sound effects to reproduce the effect of a live audience may have worked well. This is an idea that we discussed, but in the end we felt the absence would work well given the majority of the piece is from the right-wing perspective. However, some canned laughter at certain points may have been beneficial in signifying and cueing jokes. I also believe the timing of the graphics could have been more tight, however that is just nit-picking.

As said, I’m really proud of the work we produced. I think it is funny, on topic, and well executed. It was a pleasure working with my group, and the level of organisation we had throughout the duration made the project far less daunting and far more fun. So thank you!

I was really intrigued by the points raised in Higgie’s article that we unpacked during week eight, on the topic of Australian news satire and politicians engagement with it. It raised some thoughts and questions that I had never really considered. I was particularly interested in the idea of the ‘larrikin’ as a character that is played out by Australian politicians.

I think I went on a bit of a tangent there, but I’ll end the reflection with this; this was probably my favourite article we have read all semester.

It’s interesting to consider how my thoughts on comedy news have transformed, changed, and developed. At this late stage in the semester, I feel like I understand the genre a lot more – obviously in part due to the fact that I have engaged in a semesters worth of content on the matter, but also because I have given myself the time and space to think about news, comedy news satire more critically.

As I said in my earliest blog post, I had not engaged with comedy news very often, if at all. I thought it to be a rather negative take on world affairs, through the tone and mannerisms that prolific satirists often use. However, over the course of the semester, I have seen my view shift. I can see the benefit of this approach and the predominantly good intentions behind the content. Upon reflection, I think my adversity to seeking out comedy news actually stemmed from a complete disinterest in political affairs, this stemming from a bad attempt at completing a politics degree and the state of mainstream media. Since watching and reading more comedy news, and the assigned articles throughout the semester, I feel like satire is the perfect way for me to stay informed with current affairs while still keeping my sanity. The fresh and funny approach to political drama and hard hitting news stories definitely makes the world seem more palatable. The combination of form and content makes comedy news an easy but informative watch (or red).

The way I keep up to date with the news has also changed dramatically since the beginning of this course. I have made a twitter account (lol) and I have turned on notifications for reputable news sources, such as The Guardian and The ABC. While these publications obviously don’t fall under ‘comedy’, I still find it interesting that comedy news seemed to be the gateway for me actively trying to keep up to date.

It’s interesting being able to recognise certain techniques within comedy news and satire, particularly as we move in to the final stages of the course. Although we watched this comedy sketch from The Feed around the mid way point of the semester, I found it SO funny. I thought it was worth looking at again given the nature of the content, particularly as we move into the preparation stages of our final project.

The piece sets itself up as a comedic skit from the outset and obviously points to what it is satirising – the Liberal leadership spill – through its content and its title. Putting this political affair in a school setting is a really effective way of communicating the point of the skit, which is to parody Australian politics and liken it to a school ground fight to point out the ludicrousness of it. The explicit references to specific moments in our political history, such as the same-sex marriage debate, is not only extremely clever writing, but was damn funny too.

This piece definitely serves as great inspiration for our final project, which is also centred around Australian politics. Though we may not necessarily be using parody much throughout the piece, it’s interesting to see the different approaches people take towards similar topics. This is one of the few sketch comedy style satire I remember watching throughout the semester, which is a nice change of pace from traditional news-anchor style segments. I like the way The Feed has utilised parody and combined two seemingly unrelated points of interest. Also, as a side note, you should read the comments on the video. They’re wild and funny in itself.

I was quite nervous about presenting our concept and pitch to the class, as is to be expected. I think this stems from a natural adversity to public speaking, rather than a lack of confidence in the content. What made this presentation even more anxiety inducing was the prospect of only have three out of five members of our group present. However, given the circumstances, I think we did a damn fine job.

We were quite well prepared when coming in to the presentation week. We had finalised the structure our piece would take and had written a rough draft, along with some mockup graphics to show to the class. This level of organisation definitely made the presentation smoother, but also put us in a really great spot to receive constructive feedback from Ruth, Paul and our classmates. The feedback we received helped us think through some potential technical issues that we may face during the filming of our segment, particularly in regards to the inclusion of other characters – dictators, the grinch, the Karens – and whether or not we should have assigned members act out these roles, rather than use voiceovers or utilise some deepfake techniques. Paul’s suggestion to consider the use of canned laughter is something we will take away, as it could potentially add to the comedic value (or at least let people know when they should be laughing).

It was also really great to see how the other groups had decided to approach their topics. I’m really excited to see how the Olympics segment will turn out, given that they’ve decided to speak to sports journalism more broadly. Their test shots and graphic looks great already, so I can’t wait to see their final.

Overall I believe the presentation went well – for our group, and for our classmates’. The feedback we received was particularly positive and left me feeling really confident about the task ahead.

Reflection #4

Reflection #5

Reflection #6

Pitch

Let’s talk about Marlon Bundo.

As a response to Mike Pence’s abhorrent ideologies, namely his staunch dismissal of LGBTQIA+ rights, John Oliver created and published a book remarkably similar to one written by Pence’s family. Releasing it the day before the other, Oliver announced he would donate all profits made by the book to the Trevor Project, a not-for-profit that works closely with queer youth to create a better life for them. This is a stunning example of the good that can come from the satire genre, and the kind of ‘call to action’ style segments that we’ve spoken about in previous weeks. Also, Marlon Bundo (the better bunny) is so damn cute.

It is mentioned in detail in Davisson and Donovan’s 2019 article that describes Oliver’s style of satire, labelling it as trolling. This is something that I had never really considered prior to this weeks class and reading. Of course, now that it’s been pointed out to me, Oliver definitely utilises the same techniques that online trolls do, albeit usually for a more prominent, important or useful reason. It’s weird to think of this style of comedy making a positive impact on the world, but I guess that kind of reflects my shift in thinking towards satire in general. Initially, as mentioned in previous reflections, I didn’t really see satire as anything other than a comedy style. But now, my mind has shifted to see that it encapsulates so much more than JUST the comedy.

The article details more examples than just that of Marlon Bundo. I’m curious to see whether many other well-known satirists utilise trolling techniques in the same way that Oliver does. Though they may encourage people to flood hashtags or crash websites, trolling mimics Oliver’s general style of presenting as well. It’s very in-your-face, loud and verging on obnoxious. Though perhaps that is what makes him so appealing to this community of online users.

Reference:
Davisson, A & Donovan, M 2019, ‘“Breaking the news … on a weekly basis”: trolling as rhetorical style on Last Week Tonight’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 36, no.5, pp.513-527

University fees set to increase for degrees that are not deemed ‘job-relevant’. This will affect degrees in the law, commerce, and humanities fields, with the former increasing by 28% and the latter almost doubling. As a second year media student, this is obviously extremely distressing. Though the payment of fees is put off until a certain salary is met, the added debt can only bring added stress. While this has definitely been a feature in the news, personally I don’t think it has gotten enough sustained attention as it’s clearly something that will affect countless young people. This could potentially work as a continuous segment as new information rolls in, however I imagine it would work more effectively as a well-researched, one-off piece.

Ideally this piece will work in the style of John Oliver’s Deep Dive, and will read like an expose on the policy makers personally and the decisions they’ve made more generally. It will use facts and figures – like the yearly budget and revenue documents as well as the politician’s personal lives – to make the case and highlight the ridiculousness of this hike.

The comedic potential in this will come in many forms. The segment will look into the background of the Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, who ironically was previously the Minister for Social Services, an interesting fact given he clearly isn’t concerned about the mental health of young people. He was also a student at the University of Melbourne where he completed a degree in – wow, would you look at that – Arts. He’s ridden the coat tails of an Arts degree only to target people looking to do the same. The segment will also play into the irony of politicians increasing university fees after receiving a free education in their early years. It will also collate facts around the contribution these industry’s make to the economy of Australia – arts, media, law.

Firstly, I just want to mention something. This week, I finally got around to watching the John Stewart’s Crossfire segment and HOLY it was a good one. I’d never seen/heard of Tucker Carlson before, so whenever he was mentioned in class it was very much a ‘I’ll just laugh along…’ kind of situation. The segment was amazing. I loved the attitude that Stewart armed himself with, but also the way he was unapologetically discrediting the hosts and the entire show that he was appearing on. It was amazing, and the criticism from the Crossfire hosts – being that Stewart wasn’t asking the right questions to guests – was just so off. As Stewart was saying, if mainstream media were doing their jobs correctly, there almost wouldn’t be a need for satire comedy news as it is today.

This ties in to the idea mentioned in the reading of the week by Baym (2005). Throughout, Baym lists examples of how political journalism has shifted in the era of popular comedy or “fake” news. The author details an idea called ‘discursive integration’, which he defines as “a way of speaking about, understanding, and acting within the world defined by the permeability of form and the fluidity of content” (p. 262). I think this definition rings true for satire, particularly when taking in to account its ability to take about serious topics – such as politics – and turn them in to a comedic sketch. The author also details the way in which political journalism differs in the era of Stewart-esque comedy and satire. He uses the example of soundbites, and the technical shift between journalistic eras, which is something I had never been aware of prior to these examples.

I did find issue with the authors use of “fake news”. Though perhaps not his intention, the latter half of the article read as though he was granting too much allowance to satirists by differentiating them from “real” journalists. Though I agree to a point, giving this margin could open the genre up to unnecessary criticism and potentially allow it to be viewed only as fake/comedy, rather than the well-researched news that it so often is.

Reference:
Baym, G 2005, ‘The Daily Show: Discursive Integration and the Reinvention of Political Journalism’, Political Communication, vol. 22, no.3, pp.259-276.