Comedy. Creativity. Courage. Democracy. — Laboratory of Form and Flow

Much has been made of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s role as a professional comedian before he was elected President of Ukraine. It is clear his comfort with cameras, his timing, his understated sideways glances, are greatly to the benefit of the Ukrainian people and the world during this torturous time.

I wonder, further, how Zelensky’s training and natural inclination in comedy has prepared him for this moment, and how it might help all of us. As I have watched a series of anecdotes unfold on Twitter in recent days, I’ve found myself fantasizing about Zelensky’s cabinet meetings, and his “war room.” My mind drifts towards scenes in the under-appreciated Aaron Sorkin series “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” broadcast in 2006-07, a fictionalized version of the production of an SNL-type show. Scenes of that writers’ room, where a team sat around a table seeking humor in the strangeness of daily news and culture, pass uninvited through my mind as I think about Ukraine’s leadership during this unfolding crisis.

Could it be that members of Zelensky’s community, supporting or infected by his humor, are tackling this excruciating moment using comedy and creativity, as well as extraordinary courage?

A few examples underscore my thesis. Though I don’t “tweet” I do follow Twitter and have picked up several sources focused on Ukraine. Like all things Twitter, these tweets are largely unverifiable. But that they exist as tweets is, in itself, a source of inspiration for me and for others. As Ukrainian heroes flip the script, we can begin to visualize David besting Goliath.

Here, on March 5, via @Visegrád24 we see an example of very quick thinking. Note the “commemorative photo” remark:

Also on March 5, we see what appears to be President Zelensky trolling Vladimir Putin. Putin had previously posted a suspicious video of himself improbably surrounded by airline stewardesses, in which his hand appears to move through a microphone—an apparent fake. Then, as President Zelensky ends of his own, subsequent broadcast, he very precisely moves his own microphone (though his motivation in making this gesture is unknown). Three sequential screenshots, from the Twitter account UkraineBuzz, @JackPadula2002:

In another example, an elderly Ukrainian woman, staying behind to fight the Russian invaders, reportedly knocked out a drone with a jar of pickles. The @KyivPost Twitter account shared the story. A later report corrected the record—it was tomatoes, not cucumbers.

There are other apocryphal stories, shared via social media. In one, Ukrainian soldiers, when ordered to surrender, defiantly told a Russian warship to f*!! itself. In another, a Ukrainian woman gave Russian soldiers sunflower seeds explaining that, when the soldiers are killed, sunflowers (the Ukrainian national flower) will grow where they fell. In a third, President Zelensky, when offered safe passage out of his country, quipped, “I need ammo, not a ride.”

Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein said that we laugh to keep from crying. Sigmund Freud, in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, theorized something related. He hypothesized that jokes are a way to surface thoughts we would otherwise keep hidden, even from ourselves. Comedy makes the unconscious accessible. Jokes, and comedy more broadly, give us a way to see circumstances afresh—that is the point. In the process, laughter releases our accumulated tension.

Similarly, creativity relies on seeing previously unseen connections. By seeing new possibilities, acting on them, and broadcasting them, Ukrainians have changed the narrative of the war. Zelensky and his team have recast Ukrainians not as victims but as tricksters.

As I have watched President Zelensky and his fellow Ukrainians these past few weeks, I have seen their humor and lightness--balanced by grim resolve—lead to a creative response we could not have imaged. The Ukrainians have stymied what the world believed was an unstoppable Russian war machine and revealed Ukraine to be a nation that is creative and courageous in defense of democracy.

At its best, democracy, too, relies on mental flexibility, lightness, and the ability to look at issues from different perspectives. While I hope their comedic approach will help Ukrainians win the war, it may also be the reason they are so committed to defending democracy in the first place. They have developed the cultural capacity to flourish amidst difference, to replace dogmatic rigidity with earnest, determined flexibility.

In the USA we face stiff challenges to our own democracy. I am inspired by the Ukrainians and hope that we can summon the comedic outlook, creativity, and courage they have shown as we confront our own monsters.