Compulsory service played for comedy, and what the tone choice tells us about a shared national experience
10 May 2027
Before the screening#
Watch the assigned episodes. Bring one moment of barracks hierarchy that reminded you of an institution from an earlier week.
In the screening#
Our last screening closes the semester’s running thread on hierarchy by tracing it through its most compressed, universal version — conscription — and asking what a comic tone does to a mandatory, sometimes harsh institution.
Afterwards#
This is the last screening. Your final comparative essay, due at the end of the teaching period, is where all twelve weeks’ hierarchies — court, corporate, familial, military — should start talking to each other.
The spec
What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.
- you have watched the assigned episodes before arriving
- you can name one way the show's hierarchy echoes an institution from an earlier week (family, school, workplace)
- you can say what playing conscription for comedy, rather than trauma, does for the audience
Teaching team
- May Rhee — convenor