In my final rendition of my project, I’ve added the dialogue for the scenes. For my research in my dialogue for the first slide, I listened to several narration videos on the Superb Bird of Paradise and similar bird species. I listened to the tone and emphasis in the narration, trying to imitate that tone in the first slide of the comic strip. I used factual accurate information about the species at the beginning of the narration but quickly turns into a comparison between human and this species sexual behavior.
Emphasizing the word “taunt”, and comparing the ritual to “A bad first date”, represents the tropes we apply to these species. We as humans often draw conclusions from our own experiences and are pattern-seeking creatures. We’ve built these tropes about species, anthropomorphizing them. The next slide is about breaking those patterns that we see when we compare species.
In the second scene, the male Superb Bird of Paradise pauses the video narration about their mating ritual. He and his partner are sitting in a scene discussing the video they just saw, and the unfairness in the comparison. This puts the viewer in another perspective, that of the Superb Bird of Paradise if they were in their shoes. The last dialogue “It’s like they seem to think we’re cartoons or something”, is a joke to the comic itself, because they are cartoon characters. This reminds the viewer that it’s okay to laugh at the comedy of this species and others, but not at the expense of using sexual tropes.
