Hope Is Emo
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| Hope Is Emo | |
|---|---|
 Title image from podcast |
|
| Host(s) | Hope (played by Crista Flanagan) |
| Website | http://www.hopeisemo.com/ |
| Video format | Quicktime/Flash |
| Launch Date | June 12, 2006 |
| Genre | Podcast/Comedy |
| Language(s) | English |
Hope Is Emo is an internet, comedy podcast that satirizes the life of a struggling emo girl named Hope. The series was created by Crista Flanagan and the Ask a Ninja team at Beatbox Giant Productions, whose popularity with Ask a Ninja has been phenomenal. Comedy actress, Crista Flanagan of MADtv fame, plays Hope. Like the style of Ask a Ninja, Hope answers emails from viewers of the podcast and gives a little insight into the life of a high school emo girl who cannot endure "all of the misery in the world". Like Ask a Ninja, much of the scripting for the podcast is improvised, giving it an almost random and bizarre feeling. Most of the episodes revolve first and foremost about events in Hope's personal life with any viewer emails being a supplement. This is in stark contrast to the format of "Ask a Ninja" which revolves around answering questions from viewer emails.
The theme music was composed by Billy Reid.
Contents |
[edit] Hope character profile
Hope is an American teenage girl who attends Thomas Edison High School in an unnamed city and state. Her MySpace page gives her age as 18, though she is apparently presented as a sophomore. She is a deeply morose girl, perpetually on the brink of tears, and feels that she "walks in the shadows" and has a rare empathy, which she considers a mixed blessing. Her family is apparently middle or upper middle-class. Hope is rather bratty to her father and throws tantrums often, but despite her glumness she is apparently rather close to her family; they play badminton together (they're not in a league, but she says they've won some prizes) and often go out for pizza, she proudly displays a large and rather clunky calculator her grandmother sent from Japan, and when her brother suffers a three percent hearing loss she is reduced to wretched bawling. She also refers to her brother being left-handed when she's talking about left-handed people being unfairly persecuted. Hope has a rather artsy sensibility, miming the word "hear" when she's dicussing deaf people and filming herself awkwardly hiding in the corner of the screen when she's discussing how people can't hide from the truth. Her more artsy moments are usually interrupted by her family, which bothers her greatly. Hope appears to be rather gifted academically, having attended science camp in seventh grade, having stated that she takes three AP classes, and more recently earning an "I'm proud of you" note from her mom. Hope is lonely and awkward at school and never mentions any friends, and her attempts to be friendly with others usually end in disaster. She is bullied at school, with other kids calling her "gothtard" or spray painting "zombie freak" on her locker. Hope has apparently lived in the area her whole life, has known many of her schoolmates since kindergarten, and is especially hurt to be shunned by them in favor of newer kids. While Hope is overflowing with despair, she also seeks out beauty in everyday or ugly things, becoming transfixed by a brick wall and taking a cockroach for a pet. Hope values honesty very highly, and holds up her pet cockroach, Gregor, as the most honest thing she knows. Hope is extremely appreciative of people who write in to give her advice, although she usually only briefly considers the advice before dismissing it. When one "advice" giver writes that Hope is a terrible person and should just die, she simply says "Okay" brokenly and then moves on. While she tries to rise above the petty social realities of high school, she is miserable about having small breasts and seems quite concerned about who is and isn't allowed to go to school dances. She begins almost every entry with some variation on the phrase "I'm really hurting right now", responds to most email advice with "Thanks. Maybe I'll do that. Or maybe I'll...", and usually shuts off her webcam mid-sob.
[edit] Episode list
[edit] 1 - The Words Are Dying
In this episode, Hope explains why she feels that chalkboard dust is nothing more than dead words which she cannot help but feel sorry for. She finds herself in tears, imagining how many poems and how many "loves" were erased, never to be read again. What has provoked this flow seems to be that someone at school has called her a "gothtard". She also complains about how her classmate, Merna, should not be allowed to go the senior prom because she is not a senior. She gets her first piece of email advice: "Teach overseas. That's what I'm doing. I was sitting around all emo, so I took a course and I'm on my way to teaching English in another country. HORRAY, Bobby"
[edit] 2 - Hiders And Seekers
This episode is about Hope's theory that there are only hiders and seekers in the world. She also mentions how embarrassed she is in the gym locker room, seeing as she does not have large breasts. She also bursts into tears while she is recording her message because her dad interrupts her asking if she wants anything from the store, and she settles on the Go-Gurt-type yogurt in the red striped squeeze tube. She gets this advice: "You should change your name to something happy and positive like Sarah. -Mark"
[edit] 3 - CH4NG3
This episode sums up Hope's inability to cope with the changing world around her. She explains how the pizza box in her trashcan reminded her of how excited her family was to have pizza the night before, and then saddens her when she sees that the box was repaid by being thrown away. Inside, she found a cockroach which she named Greggor (an obvious reference to The Metamorphosis) and keeps in a jar, claiming it is the most honest thing she owns. She also despairs about how a guy in her math class shared a calculator with her for several weeks, until he changed and started to bring his own. Even worse, he drew a smiley face on a paper which he passed to another girl. At the end of the episode Greggor escapes. The advice given is "Listen to Bon Jovi. Lots and lots of Bon Jovi. Good Luck, Snake"
[edit] 4 - True Self
In this episode, Hope does not like the fact that people are not always what they seem to be. Hope receives a note from her mother Barb. Hope has difficulties accepting the note as it is written on a legal pad with a teddy bear. Her mother is a "butterfly" type of person. She also describes the stigma associated with left-handed people. Hope also has problems with her school's newest twins, Kristi and Kylie Lance from the school's dance team. She feels one of the twins is nice and the other is mean, and she does not know how to tell the two apart. One of the girls spray painted "zombie freak" on Hope's school locker. Hope gets the advice,
"One: Go to the zoo.
Two: Find the monkeys.
Three: Try to make them yell.
Wade"
[edit] 5 - Priorities
In this installment, Hope grieves over the fact that no one wants to make a documentary about small buildings. She believes that society's priorities have rendered small building into non-existence, because large buildings are more interesting. She also complains that she had to drive her mother to drop off cookies for her brother's bake sale, so he can raise money to go on a camping trip. She feels left out because she only got to go to 7th grade science camp, but that did not count because it was not even "outdoors". She compares herself to a smoke alarm, saying that nobody bothers to stop by and check her batteries and whenever she screams, people run away. The advice for this episode:
"You should try baking Strawberry Cupcakes. They always make me feel better. Although people think I'm gay.
Jonathon.
P.S. I'm not really gay!"
[edit] 6 - Empathy
Hope despairs over her innate ability to feel what others are going through. She also discusses Badminton. Her family uses a certain type of shuttlecocks (imark x12 4.73 long tip) in Badminton games. The type they use have real feathers, and Hope did not feel right playing with shuttlecocks from an animal that had bird-flu. She goes on to discuss a badminton accident her brother had with his best friend. Leroy Burkman hits back the shuttlecock, and it hits Hope's brother in the ear, claiming it was an accident. The doctors at the hospital said he would have a 3% hearing loss. Hope despairingly displays her feelings, empathizing with people who "aren't able to hear", mouthing the word "hear". As she mouths the words, her father calls her once more. She later returns with ice cream from a pizza parlor she went to with her family, where she ran into LeRoy's friend. She gets the advice:
"Do not despair. Everything can be fixed with ice cream.
Greetings,
Eric."
Hope decides to mark off 2 square feet of her garden and call it a park instead.
[edit] 7 - Dinosaurs
After yelling at her dog "Dr. Pooper" to leave the room ("dogs are a complete indictment of our species"), Hope starts explaining how there should be a day when everyone just "stops", and does not do anything. Except maybe eat. Then this would help everybody realise they are turning into 'dinosaurs'. More importantly, SUVs are "mechanical dinosaurs" that we have made, and it is revealed that Hope is upset because someone parked an SUV next to her so she could not leave her car.
The advice given to hope is:
Bonjour!
Everyone is a duck
Ducks quack
You should quack too
Later days,
Kayla
[edit] 8 - The System
Hope starts the episode quickly with her crying. She explains that she has received a progress report from school, and wonders whether the 'unsatisfactory' mark will go on her permanent record and eventually prevent her from going to the university she wants to. She then tells a story about her brother, in which he puts a carved wooden penis into a teacher's desk, and runs home early to remove the detention slip from the letterbox. Later, Hope gives the audience a multimedia presentation of one of her poems, "The System". The presentation shows Hope in many different positions: standing, crouching, sitting on the floor, sitting on her chair, shouting at another emo etc. The poem is as follows:
The System
The system that is broken
Is not for joking
You foolish fools
[Other Emo] You toolish tools
Are mis-appropriated, the undereducated
Are rewarded and re-instated into the system that is broken
And all the unspoken daily decrees of peace and ease
The disease is attrociously spreading
[Other Emo] I can see where we're heading
Am I the only one dreading?
Another day in the system that is broken.
The episode ends with an advertisement for the movie Step Up using Hope's voice as a voiceover.
[edit] 9 - I Don't
The episode begins with Hope sitting on a stump in an unknown location and declaring she can't go home because, 'things are horrible and weird'. Her cousin got married recently, something Hope can't imagine herself ever doing. She talks about how awful the reception was before holding up a bouquet of fake flowers that she caught and a garter that her brother caught. Hope tells about having to sit on a chair in the middle of the room as her slightly drunk brother, Mark slipped the garter on her leg. As Mark got to the thigh he realized what he was doing and vomited in her lap. She says the will never be able to live at home again. The advice for this episode is from Ally.
Go and hug a tree. It helps.
[edit] Reaction
While the Hope is Emo skits have been popular, they have also been somewhat controversial. The skits are widely available on Youtube (although the official Hope is Emo website specifically requests that the skits not be reposted there) and new episodes typically spawn a deluge of comments, many positive but many others attacking the skits for making fun of "Emo kids" or for not being funny. A surprising number of Youtube viewers are apparently unaware that Hope is a character, and they attack her for being whiny, offer her encouragement or even proposition her. So far, the creators of the Hope is Emo skits have declined to comment on the reaction, although on the official site they have written negative comments about Lonelygirl15 and other online characters who are presented as real people.
[edit] External links
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