The Ebola In Our Everything
Sara Nostrant
The Ebola in Our Everything
Spoofs in the mass media are for the purpose of making light in topics found in films, videos, political issues, or songs by exaggerating the issue with comedy. Spoofs take the form of videos, and sometimes even pictures that touch up on humorous or even tough topics. In 2014, Saturday Night Live took on the task of making Ebola, a fatal virus, funny to the mass media. Saturday Night Live took the popular romantic comedy “The Fault in Our Stars” and added a twist to it: Ebola. Coming out in the summer of 2014, “The Fault in Our Stars” was a huge success. The film followed the story of two cancer patients falling in love. Their illnesses only drew the two teens closer together and opened up the media to all the processes and hardships cancer patients go through. In short, the two sick teenagers meet through a support group and are inseparable from then on. This is opposite of the spoof. Saturday Night Live makes topics funny by imitating their targets and pairing it up with commonly a sore subject. In this case that subject was Ebola. Ebola is a fatal disease caused by the Ebola virus and spread through bodily fluids, much like how HIV, mononucleosis, and Hepatitis B are spread. Its factors include fever and severe internal bleeding that leads to death (Oxford). Ebola is an issue that has Americans worried for their health because of its fatal statistics. The outbreak can be traced back to African countries where the virus has effected 9,000 people 4,500 in which lost their lives to the battle. Ebola is also an issue in Nigeria but has been recently declared Ebola-free. In The United States, the Ebola worry is seen as an overreaction because of the fact that “you can count the number of documented cases in America with two hands – and still have fingers to spare (CNN)”.
The spoof created by Saturday Night Live is a movie trailer that changes the female character, Olive’s, illness of cancer into Ebola. The skit shows
The Ebola in Our Everything
Spoofs in the mass media are for the purpose of making light in topics found in films, videos, political issues, or songs by exaggerating the issue with comedy. Spoofs take the form of videos, and sometimes even pictures that touch up on humorous or even tough topics. In 2014, Saturday Night Live took on the task of making Ebola, a fatal virus, funny to the mass media. Saturday Night Live took the popular romantic comedy “The Fault in Our Stars” and added a twist to it: Ebola. Coming out in the summer of 2014, “The Fault in Our Stars” was a huge success. The film followed the story of two cancer patients falling in love. Their illnesses only drew the two teens closer together and opened up the media to all the processes and hardships cancer patients go through. In short, the two sick teenagers meet through a support group and are inseparable from then on. This is opposite of the spoof. Saturday Night Live makes topics funny by imitating their targets and pairing it up with commonly a sore subject. In this case that subject was Ebola. Ebola is a fatal disease caused by the Ebola virus and spread through bodily fluids, much like how HIV, mononucleosis, and Hepatitis B are spread. Its factors include fever and severe internal bleeding that leads to death (Oxford). Ebola is an issue that has Americans worried for their health because of its fatal statistics. The outbreak can be traced back to African countries where the virus has effected 9,000 people 4,500 in which lost their lives to the battle. Ebola is also an issue in Nigeria but has been recently declared Ebola-free. In The United States, the Ebola worry is seen as an overreaction because of the fact that “you can count the number of documented cases in America with two hands – and still have fingers to spare (CNN)”.
The spoof created by Saturday Night Live is a movie trailer that changes the female character, Olive’s, illness of cancer into Ebola. The skit shows