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!