The Marx Brothers :: Research Papers

The Marx Brothers In his book entitled Creating Minds, Howard Gardner (1993) engaged in a thorough study of creativity. He did this by studying the lives of exceptional creators in seven different domains in search of trends that could be readily identified and, perhaps, even help to paint a clearer picture of what the ingredients for creativity are. After examining these creators' lives he came to some conclusions based on the trends he identified and formed a model of creativity. In order to test both his model and his findings, it is necessary to extend the search (and study) beyond his initial seven great creators. In doing this it becomes possible to refute or add credence to his conclusions. This extension also allows for further questions to be asked. During the reading of Creating Minds I happened upon an interesting thought: Could Gardner's model for creative individuals be applied to the study of a creative group? Furthermore, would a group show similar trends in their creative development? If I was going to attempt to answer this question I decided I would have to qualify what a creative group was. I defined a creative group as a group of individuals producing a single creative work. The creativity of this work must be a result of the combination of the individuals' strengths being pooled (as equally as possible) to produce an output that could not have been produced by any of the individuals on their own. The group would be analogous to Gardner's individual creator, and the group's combination of mental talents would parallel the individual creator's personal array of intellectual strengths. Having defined what a creative group was, it became necessary to ask perhaps an even more important question: Could such a group exist? If so, could an example be found? The answer to both questions, I decided, was yes. But who? My ponderings on this subject invariably brought me to the Marx Brothers, kings of comedy. My Method In his study Gardner had followed the lives of his chosen creators and examined the progression of their works as a function of the creator and his or her surroundings. It would be difficult to treat the progression of a group in precisely the same manner. If I chose to treat the group as a single unit and reported on its progress and surroundings, the workings of its component creators could be lost.