CSotD: Subversive Humor, As In The Best It Is
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As I’ve mentioned before, Red and Rover takes place in an indistinct past, one evidence of which is that Red can throw a newspaper from the sidewalk to someone’s porch. Well, that and the fact that most newspapers quit hiring kids as carriers because afternoon papers switched to mornings and sending kids out in the dark creates liabilities.
Today’s scenario reminds me of presenting to my son’s class when he was teaching in Colorado. I used the local paper but was joined by my colleague from the Denver Post, whose presentation addressed the intimidation kids felt, thinking they were supposed to read the whole thing.
She horsed that huge doorstop onto the lectern and started with “First thing I do is pull out all the ads, unless I’m shopping for something, which I’m not,” and tossed the inserts onto the floor. Then she went through the rest, reserving the A an B sections but tossing the others one by one, with remarks like “My husband and my son read the sports section, but I don’t.”
She ended up with two or three sections that, in fact, were about the size of the Colorado Springs Gazette that I was using.
These days, however, she has to walk down her driveway to the curb to pick up her Post, because it’s too flimsy to throw as far as the porch.
That wouldn’t matter if people were getting responsible news from other sources, but I have my doubts. The daily paper was once a fixture in homes, and I’m not sure any responsible medium has stepped up in its place, particularly with the TV networks showing signs of bending the knee to avoid confronting authority.
However, in these fraught times, gag cartoonists are stepping up.
Barney & Clyde has always had a social-commentary mission, but it seems more focused lately, going from a sort of “money isn’t everything” vibe to more direct commentary on Big Pharma and, here, on the rise of the oligarchy.
The subtlety of its sarcasm may whoosh over the heads of some people, but there is value in comforting the afflicted as well as in afflicting the comfortable, and if all it does is encourage a subset of people to step up, that’s part of what democracy requires.
Today’s Grand Avenue is a little more subversive, since the strip is generally about raising kids rather than raising hell, though Mike Thompson was an editorial cartoonist for years. The benefit of a gag like this is not that it represents a stirring call to action, since it’s a kind of bland message about how upsetting the news can be.
However, the fact that it’s unexpected means that it may reach people who are not politically oriented, and help create a sense that, yes, you’re right to be discontented and we’re all in this together.
That’s a helluva lot more valuable than a message about stepping on Legos.
Pearls Before Swine, like Barney & Clyde, always carries a little sting, but is more basic in how it voices its gags and so hits a wider swath of readers. When it turns from social criticism to more political targets, then, it has impact without necessarily issuing a call to arms.
Right now mocking Elon Musk can have serious impact, particularly since the gag points to Tesla drivers as wealthy, obnoxious, privileged elitists. Calls to punch a nazi are directly partisan and potentially divisive rather than persuasive, but knocking the top hat off the head of a rich snob has always been an attractive gag.
It’s a matter of punching up. Nobody wants to see a humble poor person hit in the face with a pie, but a wealthy, snooty matron in an evening gown is fair play. As is anyone driving an $80,000 trash can on wheels.
When I redesigned the comics at a paper where I worked, we dropped Mallard Filmore at readers’ request and then put Non Sequitur in its place on the editorial page along with Doonesbury.
Wiley wasn’t thrilled, sharing Garry Trudeau’s view that isolating this type of commentary on the editorial page weakens its subversive ability to infiltrate minds that aren’t actively seeking to be persuaded of anything.
It’s a reasonable point, but, first of all, the decision followed our established practice of having gag pieces on the editorial page, and if you look back at editorial pages from a generation ago, it’s hardly a new idea. Newspapers often featured Berry’s World and similar light commentary on those pages.
There’s also an argument to be made that scattering comics by theme — with sports strips in the sports section and business strips on the financial page — gets more readers to see more comics, but, granted, it removes the subversive element of hitting them where they ain’t.
Stepping away from newspapers, this Kyle Bravo panel from the New Yorker seems more directly political than the magazine’s normal jokes about fads and fancies and tiramisu. I kinda doubt the average New Yorker reader needs to be persuaded not to admire Elon Musk, but it doesn’t hurt to point out that there is an anti-Musk bandwagon building.
And Mort Gerberg finds a comical but persuasive way of reminding people that they have something at stake in the current change of administrations.
There are, of course, on-line cartoonists and commentators who have absolutely no hesitation in expressing opinions and, in cases like that of Steve Brodner and Charlie Sykes, offering specific citations to back up what they have on their minds.
Prickly City began as a conservative strip that was less strident than Mallard Filmore, but it seems lately that its lack of dogmatism has left Scott Stantis vacillating between messages. Today’s strip has the characters arguing over whether people should care, which is a debate over the nature and value of democracy.
Aesop addressed a related question in his fable of the wolf and the dog, in which the wolf concludes that lean freedom is preferable to fat slavery. The Contrarian reports that phone calls and letters are having impact, while people have been turning out to protest and resist the new administration.
YMMV.
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