follow the instruction finish the Process Post #2

Choosing a Primary Source

A primary source is a cultural artifact, meaning it represents the culture in which it was produced. Comedy contains cultural cues, and must communicate these cues to its audience in order for humor to happen. For example, Homer Simpson, along with Peter Griffin, Ray Romano, and Louie are all versions of a recognizable type: the schlemiel. In another example, Tim and Eric often sets up recognizable scenes and types, only to subvert all expectations.

In this way, your primary source will say much of its culture. In performing a rhetorical analysis on your primary source, you will identify expectations, stereotypes, similarities, and anomalies, as well as identify the intended audience of the work.

Good primary sources:

episode from TV show (ie “The Gang Wrestles for the Troops” from Always Sunny), character from TV show (ie Eric Cartman from South Park), commercial (ie Miller Lite commercials), print advertisement, memes (ie College Freshman meme), video game (ie Pikmin), music video (ie “Gangnam Style,” Weird Al, “Call Me Maybe,” “Thrift Shop”), humor writing, political cartoon, stand-up bit, comic strip (ie Blondie)

What makes a poor primary source:

-things that are too broad: novels and films (although single characters work)

-entire forms of comedy (slapstick, prank)

-things that are too simple (a single GIF or meme, a 10 second loop video)

-things that have not been translated/captioned in English

-ideas, rather than a specific visual and/or text and/or audio

-home videos, events that happened to you, memories, etc.

-something that doesn’t interest you

Your source must be something you can easily share with me––a link, or a citation, or a print-out, etc. I need it to be translated/captioned in English so that I can be as familiar with the source as possible. Please choose a source that interests you, as you will be working with this one source for the rest of the semester!