Never Been Thawed

David Duneman

Expository Writing

Joe Serio

3/24/13

Never Been Thawed

            “Never Been Thawed” is an interesting movie that has its moments, but not enough to make me want to watch it again. The documentary style of film, that this movie uses, isn’t my first choice of film but it works pretty well with this film. This film plays on many stereotypes, which is a big part in its good moments. First off, the radio station entitled K-O-C-K the rooster, in which the announcer makes the guests wear a rooster hat and a gobbler on their chin. These sexual innuendos show us what kind of humor the audience will be seeing throughout the film. Another stereotype I found humorous was the homosexual firefighter. He plays the homosexual accent and motions very well to where we know right away that he is battling judgment from other people and that he is trying to hide his homosexuality.

            The main idea of the film, being about a group of enthusiasts collecting freezer entrees, is a humorous idea. Shawn does a great job at selling his enthusiasm for collecting frozen entrees. He describes his freezers as if they were supped up cars or the highest grade computer which is funny because nobody treats their freezer as Shawn does.

            Another humorous stereotype was Shawn’s deaf brother, Chris. While most deaf folk learn sign language to be able to communicate, Chris doesn’t bother to learn. The funny part of this is that people that know sign language come to him thinking that he’ll know it since he is deaf, but instead they discover a deaf asshole. Chris’s first scene was one of my favorite parts of this film, when a woman comes to him wanting him to teach her child sign language he teaches the child a sign of language but not a very nice one.

            A big part of the humor in this film is the subtle hints of irony in the background. For instance, my favorite one was probably Shawn’s shirt after one of their gigs in their Christian Rock Band. The shirt was an interpretation of the Clash’s album, London Calling, but instead of smashing a bass, Paul Simonon is in the midst of smashing a cross. This shows a kind of blind belief in religion, where Shawn will just put a cross where ever just to show a belief in Jesus, and in this instance the cross is put in a picture where it is about to be smashed. The Christian Rock Band presents some good humor as well. This shows a good interpretation of exaggeration in religious belief. Their concerts are the best example of this exaggeration. Shawn is up there saying ironic things that we wouldn’t expect a religious believer to say. My favorite was in between two songs, Shawn redundantly states “This next song is about… Jesus”.  This is hilarious because we all know the next song is going to be about Jesus, it is a Christian Rock Band, every song is about Jesus.