Friday...A Pure Comedy

After thinking long and hard I decided to do my second artifact analysis paper on the movie Friday. It is one of my favorite comedies so I decided to approach this film under the guidelines of generic criticism. More specifically, I want to critique this film using the option of generic application. First off, I have identified the movie as a comedy. Comedy film is a genre in which the main emphasis is humor. The events that take place in these types of films are often unrealistic, and are not taken seriously. Also, comedies typically have happy endings. In this film, the main character Craig, played by rapper Ice Cube is fired on his day off for allegedly stealing boxes. His father tells him to go out and look for a job, but instead he sits on his front porch all day with his best friend Smokey, a pothead. Smokey gets Craig involved in an altercation where both of them end having to pay Big Worm back his money for smoking the marijuana that Smokey is supposed to sell. Along the way, the two have run ins with the neighborhood bully, Deebo, Craig's crazy ghetto girlfriend, and the neighborhood crackhead Ezell. At the end Big Worm's henchmen perform a drive-by shooting when Craig and Smokey fail to pay back the money, and Craig ends up beating up Deebo. In my opinion, this film is one of the funniest of all the comedies in its genre. The events are hilarious and keep the audience laughing on the edge of their seat.

Fantasy-Theme Criticism

The late great pop icon Michael Jackson and his music serve as a perfect example of fantasy-theme criticism. Michael played the roles of many alter egos in his music videos. Although he was said to be a very shy and timid man in person, he often played the hero or the guy that ultimately got the girl in his videos, like in "Smooth Criminal" and "The Way You Make Me Feel." In my favorite video by him, "Remember the Time", he and all of his background dancers were dressed in traditional Egyptian clothing and he was a magical stranger that wooed the Egyptian Queen (Iman) right in front of her husband the king (Eddie Murphy). In the extended version of the "Bad" video, he plays a guy named Darryl who has left behind his gang banging friends to go to a prestigious prep school but is returning home for the winter break. His friends soon see that he has changed but he proves to them that he is still bad, and dons the black leather outfit and does his whole dance routine in a subway station. Finally, in his most popular video, "Thriller", after being cornered by a crowd of zombies, Jackson also turns into a zombie and chases his girlfriend through the streets and into an abandoned house where she wakes up finding that everything was all a dream.
Michael Jackson was very creative and didn't just use his vides as a way to entertain audiences. Almost all of his songs and videos sent very powerful messages directed towards the media and the endless rumors about him, and also positive messages about people getting involved in helping the planet and becoming aware of what is going on in the world.