For my final assignment I chose to do a parody of the US Weekly magazine but with Collingwood topics inside. My assignment included several types of comedy such as, satire, comedy of manners, and slapstick. My project is funny for anyone who works, studies, or just simply knows Collingwood School. In this project I poked fun at the “lavish” lives of the Collingwood student, made fun of people who we all know (in a nice way) and created a mock magazine of US weekly. It is funny because everyone can relate to the jokes that are written in this magazine. My project was fun but hard at the same time. It was hard to make jokes about people while keeping in mind to not hurt the feelings of those being made fun of.
My project included satire because it was a parody of the famous magazine US weekly. For a parody to work, people must know the original. That is why I chose to copy this magazine, so it is easy to compare my project with the real magazine and see the similarities and the differences between the two. My project has elements of comedy of manners and another form of satire, exaggeration as well. I joined the two types of comedy in one of my articles called Collingwood Student’s First Cars and I posted pictures of Range Rovers, Maseratis, BMWs, and Porches. This is an example of comedy of manners because I am making fun of the rich lives of the students. It is an example of exaggeration because it is not true that all students receive these expensive cars but I decided to make it seem like that to make a greater impact among the readers. Finally, I also have examples of slapstick comedy in my magazine. The article Collingwood Hot Spots included jokes stating that the asians play Ping Pong in Mr Mclean’s room and you can find younger girls in the Courtyard.
My project was funny because everything I wrote was easy to relate to, and everyone knew the original so it was easy to compare the two together. For example I mocked the lives of the Collingwood student in the advertisement Stitch It, Need your Kilt Hemmed?. As the readers would mostly be students themselves, it is easy to relate to the joke about girls kilts being shortened and hemmed so it would be funny to read. The actual idea of the project was also funny because it mocked the magazine US weekly which everyone knows. Finally, the magazine also made jokes about people that everyone knows. For example the article Collingwood Hot Spots poked fun at the stereotypes within the school. Because the readers knew the people and had first hand experience with the matter being discussed, the articles became even funnier. These following things made my mock magazine even funnier for the readers.
It was easy to do my project because I just had to copy the style of an already existing magazine, that saved a lot of time and I didn’t have to come up with my own template. My project was also fast to do because many topics came to mind as soon as I decided to do a magazine on Collingwood School life. On the other side, it was difficult to make jokes within the articles and poke fun at people without going too far. I tried not to make fun of anyone directly but instead made jokes about bigger groups of people. For example, I said that all the asian kids played Ping Pong and worked on Math during lunch in Mr Mclean’s room, this way hopefully no one got hurt personally.
CS Weekly my parody of Us Weekly is a funny magazine that has comedy of manners in articles such as Students First Cars, satire in my overall project, and slapstick shown in the jokes about student stereotypes. Because of the different types of comedy there is something funny for everyone. My project was fun and helped me learn how to make jokes about people without going too far. I had difficulty creating the jokes but I had fun making a mock magazine. Overall, I liked doing the project and learned about creating something humorous on the way.
