humour in gamsat

[mayoraasei]

I think the GAMSAT writing section markers like politics. The two themes this year (after digging through the internet because I frankly can't remember them - even though I can remember last year's very well) were "humour" and "nature versus nurture". (Just for reference, last year's were, more or less, "politics and society" and "like mother like child".)

The humour section was really wishy-washy, the prompts referred to it being a source of strength through adversity, being a desirable characteristic, with only one pointing out the cruel side of it.

The good thing was this section is free writing. They're not so much marking you on criteria of viewpoint as on your presentation of them. This is probably one of the reasons why it's actually so much more enjoyable than, say, the HSC Advanced English creative writing tasks, where you had to incorporate the strict paradigms of your Area of Study.

It's probably also the best time to take risks with your subject matter. Don't just simply expand on the quote, but rather, go for a lateral interpretation. No one wants to read 200 essays all agreeing that humour has led them through a time of great adversity, or all discussing the balance of nature and nurture.

Use the prompt as a prompt, use it as a door to other ideas and issues, rather than using it as the one key issue.

This is the time to show off your grasp of general knowledge, and your insight into matters of humanity, history and society.

I think if I was writing for the HSC, I wouldn't have taken the risk I did, which was to point out all the ugly sides associated with the concept of humour, because almost all the quotes had been exceedingly positive. Yes, (as one of the quotes said), it unifies us through adversity (apparently a lot of people wrote about New Orleans *rolls eyes*), but (as the quote did not say) it also unifies us into a fallacious sense of superiority against the "butt of the joke".

"Humour" is one of those things that contribute to the perpetration of discrimination against certain (particularly minority) groups of society. Unsurprisingly, it's also used as an effective weapon by those with political agendas to appeal to their supporters and demoralise their detractors.

For example, the Nazis were well-known for publishing caricatures of Jewish people during their campaign. In recent years we've had a surge of demeaning comics about Islamism and Islamic people published in western countries. Black jokes, racist jokes, misogynist jokes, religious jokes, jokes about the disabled and disadvantaged...these all serve to alienate a subpopulation that is often under-represented, for the amusement of the rest.

Yes, a flash of humour can make a miserable day better, but it is important to remember that it has been used as an effective political weapon, often as a means to justify prevalent bigotry in society.

(I can't remember what I wrote about "nature vs nurture". I think it was very political as well ==; Maybe I should have studied political science Orz)