Welcome back to another blog post! Humanties 10 latest project was called Hey Boomer! And it included many different aspects to the project, with the final project of a radio play with the entire class working together at once. This project started with watching the movie Pleasantville, an eye opening film that makes you question past inequalities and expectations of modern and past society. Pleasantville took place in a post World War II era, a era where life is often romanticized but this movie shed light on the unfair treatment of people who were seen as “different” or not fit into the cookie cutter American culture at the time.
I learned about the post WWII era, a commonly looked over one because of the significance of WWII over shadowing the 50’s. How countries reacted after WWII has shaped modern day society more than any other era. The globalization of world trade and innovation created the cut out for our present day society. After World War II, Canada went through a lot of changes its economy took off with big growth in oil, mining, and construction, and tons of new jobs were created. A lot of immigrants came in, suburbs grew fast, and people started pushing for civil rights and equality. Canada also started finding its own identity by getting more involved in peacekeeping and creating more of its own culture, instead of just following Britain or the U.S.
With my new knowledge of this era, I took a chance at a advertising role in our radio play. My group made two advertisements to fit into the play, advertised the play to the pubic, and got the permission of real companies to do a trade—we advertise for them and they put our poster up. Our group made two advertisements, one for Mt Seymour and one for Deep Cove Kayak. I mainly worked on the Seymour one, with my connection of previously working there I was able to communicate quickly through email to get there permission for our advertisement, and it was easy to make a short memorable jingle that fit into the play well. While I unfortunately couldn’t make it to the day of the radio play live streaming, my role in my group really changed the outcome of the advertisements and my knowledge of post WWII times helped make realistic ads.
The driving question for this project is how do we use a satirical radio play to communicate the shifts in Canadian society following WWII? I think the answer to this question is in our radio play. We communicated the shifts in Canadian society in a satirical radio play almost perfectly. So how were we able to succeed in this? Well taking inspiration from Pleasantville totally chaged the course of the project. Without the inspiration I think the whole class would be confused on different paths, and it would be really tough to get a good general consensus on what we should do.
In this project, I learned how powerful satire can be when exploring historical change. By using humour and exaggeration, we were able to shine a light on real issues from the post-WWII era, like gender roles, economic growth, and cultural identity. I also learned how important collaboration is especially when the whole class is working together on a single performance. From coordinating advertisements to shaping a unified storyline, everyone had a key role to play, and it showed me how creativity and teamwork can bring history to life in a new and exciting way.
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