Funny Funerals + The Erie Canal
I really liked listening to these radio broadcasts. It offers a new, dynamic approach to rhetoric. This specific clip made me think of the movie “Death at a Funeral.” In the beginning, the mother was sort of rambling and I didn’t really understand what her point was, but she was definitely trying to make light of a very serious issue. As the narrator continues, she brings in a bunch of other sources to help her do just that. I thought a bunch of the sources were actually pretty funny, like the man that wanted to plan his own funeral, and the man that wanted them to play his favorite song. The narrator says, ‘It turns out, in the funeral business, humor can be a sticky subject.’ But after a while, she had more than she knew what to do with. It’s really interesting to see how she took a topic, a serious topic, and explored it to find funny stories. She didn’t make up the stories herself, or exaggerate them to make them funny. People genuinely had funny stories to tell about different funerals. It was an interesting show that I think anyone could find humor in. In “The Erie Canal,” they took a rather boring topic – in my opinion, anyway – and made it into a cute, engaging story. I think they found the right balance of music, information, and sarcasm, to make a funny video. They brought up points that I barely remember learning in eighth grade, when learning about the industrialization of America. But it really is something that I live right nearby, and never give any thought to the matter. The Erie Canal was a huge breakthrough in transportation and advanced movement and trade dramatically in America. Again, here she takes another serious, kind of boring, matter and makes it into a joke. From these videos I saw that providing light humor on serious topics isn’t really a bad thing – it can be a good thing. Sometimes people just need to laugh.
One response so far
Those were my two favorite “acts” as well. I just think that sometimes, we take ourselves too seriously and it’s okay to laugh at serious topics. Of course, there’s a time to be serious, but there’s also a time when there’s no need to. There’s nothing wrong with lightening up something very depressing and grim.