Funny Women

"Humor relies on the traditions of society. It takes what you know and twists it," cartoonist Liza Donnelly says in a TedTalk given in December 2010. Donnelly goes on, describing how cartooning is her mechanism in which to see and understand the world. From a young age, Donnelly noted the divide in gender expectations, and her way of working through it was to draw what she saw. She then incorporated humor into her drawings, creating political cartoons as a means of expressing herself. Liza Donnelly has since gone on to work with the United Nations and a group of female cartoonists promoting peace. According to Donnelly, "My work also has allowed me to collaborate with women cartoonists from across the world...we have sat together and laughed and talked and shared our difficulties."

In a blog post I did last November, I described three things I learned from participating in a comedic improv group at my school. In the time since I created that post, I worked with a group of five other kids to write comedic scripts to be performed in the Variety Show. One of the things I noticed was that the lines with the most creative references got the most consistent laughs. Our scripts, kept at a G level, played with pop culture references. If these pop culture references were effective, can't references to actual cultural issues be equally as powerful?

Humor addresses the obvious in non-obvious ways. Artists like Donnelly have keyed in on this fact, figuring out how to express what they wish to change in society in a light that almost everyone understands. Using humor as a means for social change might just be the new way of uniting groups of people, just as Donnelly did with her cross-cultural collaboration. It is difficult to talk about heavy social topics, especially feminism and racism, but tasteful humor seems to be an effective way to address topics.

I will leave you with Obama's take on incorporating humor:



Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Changing How We View the Arts

In 2012, study was done at Dartmouth testing the relationship between how the human brain perceives motion and how the brain perceives music. The researches designed a program that connects an animation of a ball and the movement to specific note intervals and varying dissonance, and students adjusted the animation until they found a movement and sound that they associated with a certain emotion. They then took their test to Cambodia, and found that even halfway across the world their results were almost identical.

In class and with college applications, we've talked a lot about personal voice: finding and establishing voice in our reading, our writing, our opinions. But what I feel we've failed to address is our voice as a collective whole. While I like being able to enrich our voice as an individual in the community, it's just as important to embrace a unified voice for our generation. We are a class of legal adults, and what are we known for? Being the generation that says "like" too often, that can't go more than an hour without some sort of technological stimulation (guilty)? We are the next generation of innovators and leaders, and we have to adjust to this society that is in an era never been seen before. And yes, it's crucial that we have these individuals to promote ideas, but our generation as a whole needs to be able to unify.

Our educational environment pushes a lot of emphasis on math and science. Project Lead the Way program! New innovators! Advancing our country! "What are you talking about? You'll use calculus every day for the rest of your life!" Yes, I realize the importance of jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math in our society. But it isn't simply the STEM programs that teach necessary skills through which to see the world. 

Our choral department has taken a serious hit with the recent transition to the block schedule. We are facing a freshman enrollment of 20 kids (as opposed to the usual 80). And why is this? Colleges want to see well-rounded kids and future employers want to see unique skill sets. So why are the arts being pushed away? The arts give a foundation of creativity that these innovation-centric jobs would not be able to thrive without.

With arts, we learn different approaches to solving problems, different ways to stretch our minds, different ways to see our world, our culture, ourselves. Exposure to the arts gives people creative mechanism through which to see the world. This exposure might make a creative thinker who, without a foundation in skills from the arts, never would have been able to change society. Particularly in this case, we see two completely opposite cultures unified through the way they think about music. If our brains, despite whatever differences we might have, are the same universally when it comes to perception, think of how many new doors that creates for future generations. (Doors that wouldn't have been open if it weren't for music, mind you.) We can connect intellectually, innovatively, and creatively on a global level. Perhaps this idea of a collective voice and collective identity may be exactly what our society needs to advance in the years to come.

This Post About Nature Was Written on My Computer

Growing up my favorite movie was The Lion King. (To be honest, it's probably still my favorite.) I owned at least three stuffed animal versions of each character, and was either Simba or Nala for Halloween for seven consecutive years. The music is wonderful and inspiring, written by Elton John and Tim Rice, the same composers of Aida and The Road to El Dorado. The musical has been the highest grossing musical of all time on Broadway. It's unarguably a classic in our generation and our culture.

But as for the portrayal of nature and the natural order, The Lion King should in no way be used to teach kids about nature. The movie starts out with the classic "Circle of Life": Elton John writes a beautiful song about how the world exists to serve the benefits of all the living creatures. At the end of this number, all the animals gather together to praise the birth of the new lion king as the cub is lifted up by Rafiki, the wise monkey.


Most confusingly, young Simba and young Nala leave their parents and go off to play with their babysitter, a hornbill named Zazu. Then this musical number occurs:


"I Just Can't Wait To Be King" is a wonderful example of how all animals can live harmoniously and worship a small lion cub. What a great song about all walks of life overcoming differences and working together! Yet a terrible representation of the actual food chain and way of life.

Later, when Mufasa dies in the wildebeest stampede at the fault of his brother, Disney implements the classic "dead parent" template so often seen in their animated films. It's the "Circle of Life"

Eventually, the small cub wanders into the wilderness to run away, when suddenly a meerkat and warthog come and save him. The three animals live harmoniously in near a waterhole, where they all share grubs and lie in the grass to watch the sunset.


The Lion King may be more of a Hamlet story than a story of the Tanzanian nature, but hey, Hakuna Matata.