I
actually had a very difficult time deciding the subject of my Fireside Chat. It
wasn’t because I lacked sincere beliefs; I simply struggled to think of anything
non-gospel related that I could productively explain for 3 to 4 minutes. I
wanted my chat to be insightful or at the very least entertaining, and a lot of
my initial ideas seemed heavy handed, obvious, or boring. After watching so
many awesome performances on Saturday, I now realize that the subject of my
chat didn’t need to be exciting as long as the performance was thoughtful and
sincere. I think on the offset I was just determined to follow a rather
TedTalksian pattern, and ultimately my final performance was shaped by the
conventions of that method.
I eventually
came to settle on the subject of farts for several different reasons. During our first brain storm in class, I was
speaking with several other students and I jokingly suggested that Keith do his
Fireside Chat about bodily functions and that his chat should solely consist of
him standing and making fart noises with his mouth and hands. I distinctly remember
a few people finding this humorous and for some reason I took a mental note
that fart jokes were decent material with this crowd. After tossing a few dozen
other ideas out the window, I entertained the idea of doing my Fireside Chat
about fart jokes. That’s when a flood of inspiration came to me. At Sundance I
had the pleasure to watch Swiss Army Man,
a film constructed to defy the crude conventions of body humor and show the
dynamic and versatile nature of fart jokes. I liked the idea of a brand of
humor being explored through an examination of context and a change of
perspective. I also was privileged to have extensive knowledge regarding
YouTube’s most famous farts. With some solid inspiration I began to watch and dissect
online farts to see when a fart was funnier and when it seemed less appealing.
Though
I’m not sure if my nerves got in the way on the day of the performance, I
actually had a fairly concrete system in place for judging the comic value of a
fart. By weighing elements like the Sound Dynamic and Duration of a toot
alongside contextual issues like Farter Awareness and Fart Casualties I found
that most farts can be placed somewhere along the spectrum of Gaseous Humor. What
interested me most, and perhaps what I believe most sincerely about fart jokes,
is that the fart truly needs to take center stage. The fart should not be
overused and abused, but strategically implemented and at times manipulated to
bring about the greatest positive response. Loz’s The Greatest Far I Ever Heard is truly a masterpiece example of
giving credit to the fart itself. The beauty of Loz’s compilation is that
without the sound of the fart, the joke would be non-existent. The melody
played by his rectum is only funny because it comes from a rectum, any other
instrumentation would be humorless. I really had great time learning about
farts, and I hope you had a great time hearing about them. This semester has
been fun. Thanks.
