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Humorist Synthesis Essay

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The concept of humor inciting change continues to be disagreed upon globally. Whereas mordant humor demands mental depth to understand the purpose, blatant impunity messages are accessible and easily created by humorists. Thus, humorists that are vital to society often rely upon humor with an underlying message. As a result, de Botton’s claim of humorists serving society is true, provided that the message is dangerous to state blatantly.
Humorists revolve heavily around trending topics to help appeal to their audience. This practice lends itself to humorists often becoming politically focused. Ideally, humorists would remove themselves from appearing to be partisan but, as proven during the most recent presidential election, humorists relied upon blatant jabs at both candidates. This resulted with audiences that found comic relief through their dislike of candidates as opposed to the comedian’s message. These circumstances led to an election of the best of the worst, rather than electing candidates based on policy. This is an …show more content…

The first time in which humor served a social function in America was when the African Americans displayed “silent sabotage.” Although this form of peaceful revolt also relied on faking sickness and not working, humor was implemented by slaves in an act of cultural retention. Cultural blending quickly led to cultural oppression for slaves; slave owners prevented their slaves from acting dissimilar from whites. Thus, slaves relied on humor with underlying meanings as a form of preventing cultural oppression. The slaves created stories and songs that developed into African American folklore; this was allowed because it appeared to praise white people. This folklore ultimately made fun of white culture and served as a message of rebellion that was otherwise too dangerous for slaves to

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