Black Friday is a dark comedy musical released late February on YouTube by Team StarKid. It explores the perils of capitalism, a system which has helped to bring an eldritch monster to Earth in the form of a children’s toy in time for Black Friday. This innocent-seeming toy is one that’s capable of manipulating adults to do its bidding, threatening to tear the town of Hatchetfield, and the world at large, apart.
With this musical Team StarKid is celebrating their 10-year anniversary of producing musical comedies for the YouTube platform, all free of charge and widely accessible. While they started with A Very Potter Musical, they’ve expanded since then to original storylines outside of any fandom. What’s incredible is how far they’ve come. As a production company, audiences have gotten the chance to watch them grow to now offer crisp video quality, production rights, and DVDs of their performances.
Not a fan of musicals? Surprisingly, there’s a musical for that too by StarKid. Black Friday takes place in a similar but alternate universe to a previous work entitled The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals. This predecessor focuses entirely on a protagonist who (surprise, surprise!) genuinely dislikes musicals. Ironically, a meteor strikes Earth, bringing with it an alien life form able to infect humans and cause them to erupt into song and synchronised dance — oh, the horror! This related musical isn’t necessary at all to enjoy Black Friday, although it does bring to light some inside jokes, references, and returning characters that the creators snuck into their newest piece.
In fact, after watching them back to back, this previous musical was far more cohesive than Black Friday . While it’s thoroughly entertaining with its Stranger Things themes, adult humour, and catchy songs, Black Friday also lacks much of the character development seen in The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals. Instead of focusing on a central protagonist, it chooses to jump between groups of survivors without lingering on one. Because of this, audiences have little time to feel invested in the characters, especially when they start dying off. Actors also play more than one character, making it hard to keep track of who’s who at any given time.
The last qualm with this honestly funny and very high-production musical, is that many questions are left unanswered. Who’s the man who seems to be producing these toys? Who’s Webby, a character’s imaginary friend from the same realm as the eldritch monster? There’s nothing to suggest a second part to Black Friday will be made, but by the end audiences have more questions than answers.
While Black Friday is a light-hearted sci-fi musical, its jabs at capitalism have never been more relevant. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, essentials like toilet paper, disinfecting alcohol, and certain medications are becoming alarmingly scarce. The pandemic has instilled fear into the masses that has resulted in hoarding and shortages. While buyers are urged to stay out of stores, major corporations are pushing lower delivery fees and free shipping under the guise of concern for public health. Personally, what it feels like they’re trying to do is salvage their sales now that foot traffic is slowing to a standstill, meanwhile laughing their way to the bank with the profit they’re making off the crisis.
Black Friday shows this insidious side of the markets under different but related circumstances. As one character puts it in the musical: “Swamped in student debt, credit card debt, medical bills, the people have been abandoned by everything! Everything except products.” During a time of global emergency, many citizens are under immense stress worrying about their livelihoods and the health of themselves and their loved ones. Critique is already rolling out that self-isolation is resulting in panic-induced retail therapy that gives buyers a false sense of control during these uncertain times. Black Friday doesn’t overly emphasize the stressful aspects of these themes, but it definitely questions them while sprinkling in jokes to lighten the mood.
Team StarKid has been putting out consistently hilarious musicals since the rise of the YouTube platform, and Black Friday is no exception. It’s a musical that touches upon the grip of capitalism on our society while also entertaining viewers with bursts of humour. It might not have all the answers to its plot-related questions, but it’s one hell of a distraction when Fridays prove black and COVID-19 shuts down the world.
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
