Humor and being creative

Everybody laughs, and everybody has some sense of humor. John Cleese and many other writers and performers have used humor or satire to get across a serious point. Though satire isn’t always comical, it can have a bit of humor to it. When being creative, it’s great to have a good sense of humor about whatever issue the writer is writing about.

                Humor gets the audience engaged in what the writer is trying to say. Making people laugh makes people happy, so an effective way to address an issue is humor. If a performance has a serious meaning behind it, yet still adds humor it achieves several things. It keeps the show interesting, but it also makes the audience sit back and think about what they just watched. Many TV shows use this strategy to promote political, socio-economical, and moral views. Many popular hot topics in television today may be shown in a way that is indirect, yet still effective. South Park, for example, is a hilarious adult cartoon show. One may only see a group of swearing fourth graders on the screen if the viewer had only watched the show. However, South Park has been known to address many current issues in almost every single episode of the show. Issues such as Immigration laws, legalizing marijuana, gay marriage, abortion, socialized healthcare, world poverty and many more have been greatly highlighted in the course of the series. Even if the show doesn’t come out and directly state “legalize Marijuana!” it pushes the agenda in a humorous fashion that makes the audience think about the issue after the show is over.

                Many times throughout history have great writers used humor to get a point across, or even just to keep an audience engaged. William Shakespeare, for example, used humor in even his darkest tragedies. One such example would be King Lear. Shakespeare highlights on issues such as the monarchy system, abandonment, trust, and family in a very tragic way, yet still adds in the Fool to help lighten up the play every couple scenes. More recently in novels humor has been a bit more direct, as it seems with each generation literature becomes duller and less meaningful. Creativity can be just fine without humor, and there are many examples to show that point. However, John Cleese and many other well humored performers have impacted people’s lives in a very special way. Humor takes creativity to be successful, and successful humor leads people to understand how creative a great writer or performer actually is.