Monday, 4 February 2013

My satire years

So 4 years ago I felt we had too much going on in our class that we needed a news letter, I made a satire 2 page newsletter in which I made fun of most of our teaching staff, and my friends where included of course. this was supposed to be a regular issue but I never got to do it more than once because I didn't have the time nor the energy.. too bad because it got out to other classes, and even some of the professors and TAs mentioned here heard about it.. I guess academia never really went well with satire.
A year later I still thought they were good material for our critical work, so I took a photo of every professor during his lecture at the most intense part of his talk, then later made some comics from these photos, then a year later a quirky photo about a professor, and then finally a play that ridiculed all of our famous professors and even the infamous cafeteria man "3am 7ossny"...
It all seemed to fit most of my friends comfort zones, the newsletter however didn't. Some of my friends expressed concern that this was too offensive to some people and it could get to them someday... not that they will do anything, but they will be offended.
Well back then I was more like Bassem youessef's view of things "it's free speech, if they don't like it, they can suck it", now I'm more concerned about offending them not because I think this is wrong, but because I think they might get the wrong idea.. it might actually convey a wrong message of how we felt about our teachers.
So I assure you, we had no bad feelings for our teachers, except for the pet peeves here and there, the weaknesses that we thought they had, but we still respected them. And ridiculing them doesn't change that fact...
That view however doesn't change the fact that I still think satire isn't wrong (I wouldn't personally do it on people who can't take a joke well, but it's still not wrong), and abiding by this view I hereby re-share all of my 'critical' work during my college years...

Starting with the infamous news letter:


Then the staff comics: http://bit.ly/CECUComics

And finally the play that I co-wrote and starred in: (script) 
http://bit.ly/CECUPlayScript
(I seem to have lost the video, but I'll try to look for it and put it here):