In Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk, “Your elusive creative genius”, she proposes a new way of thinking about human creativity. Gilbert encourages her audience to humor the idea that everyone in the world has a disembodied “genius”, an ethereal source of inspiration and insight that lets humans create extraordinary things. By doing this, she hopes to create a cultural shift in which we credit an artist’s creative “genius” instead of the artist themselves. Gilbert skillfully employs humor, imagery, and relevant historical context to convince the audience that these “geniuses” do exist.
First, Gilbert uses humor to make her points memorable and to relax the audience during the speech. For example, she asks why people are more concerned about the mental health of creative individuals than people in fields like chemical engineering, and then with a smile on her face she adds, “But to be fair, chemical engineers as a group haven't really earned a reputation over the centuries for being alcoholic manic-depressives.” This …show more content…
She talks about how the Greeks and Romans defined a creative genius, a “sort of magical divine entity, who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist's studio, kind of like Dobby the house elf, and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work.” By correlating the evolution of how the ancients viewed creativity with the rising death count of talented artists over the years, she establishes a logical train of thought for her audience to follow. Gilbert’s ethos is also affected by how she introduces historical facts. By connecting them to modern topics such as “Dobby the house elf” or joking about how a bad piece of work could be blamed on a “lame” genius, she provides common ground and humor to which her audience can relate and grab
First, Gilbert uses humor to make her points memorable and to relax the audience during the speech. For example, she asks why people are more concerned about the mental health of creative individuals than people in fields like chemical engineering, and then with a smile on her face she adds, “But to be fair, chemical engineers as a group haven't really earned a reputation over the centuries for being alcoholic manic-depressives.” This …show more content…
She talks about how the Greeks and Romans defined a creative genius, a “sort of magical divine entity, who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist's studio, kind of like Dobby the house elf, and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work.” By correlating the evolution of how the ancients viewed creativity with the rising death count of talented artists over the years, she establishes a logical train of thought for her audience to follow. Gilbert’s ethos is also affected by how she introduces historical facts. By connecting them to modern topics such as “Dobby the house elf” or joking about how a bad piece of work could be blamed on a “lame” genius, she provides common ground and humor to which her audience can relate and grab