What is a sense of humour? What makes people laugh and why?
People who take themselves so seriously that they cannot laugh at themselves tend to become one-sided and narrow in their views. Seeing the irony in situations is the humourist’s shtick, whether it is by writing or by drawing. A good wit is often in response to a hopeless situation. Think Monty Python, where everything was fodder for a laugh. We laugh at that type of humour because it seems a bit removed from our lives and the delivery is funny. Comedians play no favourites and life is food for their routines.
For example, cartoons are meant to garner a chuckle, make one laugh at the foibles of us all-too-serious humans. People get upset when the humour gets a little too close to the truth. It’s time to lighten up a little and laugh at ourselves and not be so hard-nosed that we can’t get the fun out of life. Life is hard and serious enough and a good laugh is a prescription for relieving tension. Just because someone pokes fun at a situation/person/event, it doesn’t mean that anyone, especially the paper it is printed in, is taking sides. Political cartoons are a way for artists to express their thoughts about current events in a comical manner. They look at the news sideways and bring out the absurd in it.
Let’s face it, we don’t all have the same sense of humour. If we can’t laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at? Let’s lighten up, enjoy a sense of ha ha and not take life so seriously that we forget to chuckle at the absurdity of it all. It does not mean that we shouldn’t be serious about our causes, it just means we need a good chuckle now and then, and sometimes it’s about ourselves. It relieves the tension.
