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'Fat Jokes' is short comedy sketch show created by myself and Juliette Scarborough for Juliette's 3rd year IPaR assessment about 'being fat' and the stigmas and fatphobia that surround it. The devising process began with Juliette and I conversing about how it is to not be societies 'ideal body type' and discovered the themes of diet groups, medical fat phobia, and the governments twisted views on obesity kept re-appearing. We therefore decide these would be the three main themes of this sketch show. We also discussed what we wanted the lasting feeling and message for the audience to be, which "is not to make to make members of the audience who are not fat feel guilty or uncomfortable, but instead [is] to highlight the issues we face daily and give them permission to laugh along with us"..."I hope that this piece will empower audiences in a different way, not to love every part of themselves like the movement often suggests that they should, but to reject the idea that we need to. I want to empower audiences to simply exist and allow others to do the same". (Scarborough, 2022: 2).
It was important to us that this piece was a comedy as it's a genre that showcased our strengths as performers and allowed us to experiment with satire to make the message more powerful.
Satire - "A way of criticizing people or ideas in a humorous way, especially in order to make a political point" (Cambridge Dictionary, 2022)
A heavily satirical section of this performance was 'Fighting Fat', a scene focusing on Prime Minister Boris Johnson's hypocritical views on weight and the joke that is the Conservative party (see clip 3 below). The government began a new 'War on Obesity' scheme, which included the following strategies:
"Ban on TV and online adverts for food high in fat, sugar and salt before 9pm
End of deals like ‘buy one get one free’ on unhealthy food high in salt, sugar and fat
Calories to be displayed on menus to help people make healthier choices when eating out – while alcoholic drinks could soon have to list hidden ‘liquid calories’
New campaign to help people lose weight, get active and eat better after COVID-19 ‘wake-up call’" (Gov.uk, 2020)
These 'strategies' are extremely damaging. For example, putting calories on menu's could be extremely triggering for those with eating disorders, however that issue seems to be neglected by the government. Also, the use of the term 'war' makes us, people who aren't societies ideal body type, the enemy which therefore allows us to be discriminated against and mistreated for our size. We decided to transform our anger into comedy to ridicule the government, which proved to be highly successful due to the audience reactions of loud laughter and 'booing'.
Although this piece was mostly autobiographical and was born from our personal experiences, we also wanted to gather experiences from others so Juliette completed some primary research to ensure the piece would be relevant to the wider population. From this, we discovered the same topics we had discussed came up, meaning our work is extremely relevant and should be well received by the audience - to which it was.
Drawn by Juliette Scarborough.
This piece was a roaring success, which was shown by the eruptions of laughter from the audience all the way throughout. And although my future career will not be as a performer, this work is still connected as it involves exploring current issues and broken systems (our government). It was also just great fun to create work with Juliette around a topic we are both very passionate about, and I will never forget this experience.
Please watch these clips below to see snippets from our show!
Bibliography:
Cambridge Dictionary (2022) Satire. Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/satire (Accessed 11/05/22)
Gov.uk (2020). New obesity strategy unveiled as country urged to lose weight to beat coronavirus (COVID-19) and protect the NHS Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-obesity-strategy-unveiled-as-country-urged-to-lose-weight-to-beat-coronavirus-covid-19-and-protect-the-nhs (Accessed 12//05/22)
Scarborough, J (2022). Fat Jokes, Juliette Scarborough IPaR.
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