Koki on 13/7/2010 at 05:28
Quote Posted by Kolya
It seems to be humorous at first, but the readers are intentionally misguided by Youngbluth, only to slap the fact into their faces that the real reason for Clarissa's gloominess was being raped by her own father all along.
So what? Am I supposed to expect that? In a comic??
Is he trying to make me feel guilty? For what?
He's the one who made a comic of a rape victim, not me. He drew her from the attacker's point of view, by making this child act way more mature than she really is, by exaggerating her character and making her problems the subject of laughter.
I don't find this funny nor am I feeling guilty for smirking at Clarissa earlier. I didn't know better. But Youngbluth did, he planned this. And that just makes me think that he must be kinda sick.
What is the difference between Madeleine McCann and Madeleine McCann jokes?
[spoiler]Madeleine McCann jokes will get old.[/spoiler]
This is what Clarissa is, except in a comic form.
Deal with it.
DDL on 13/7/2010 at 07:14
I'm still wondering what the deal is with the crayon nose/face/monster thing. Thought it was going down some sort of "I can affect the world with my drawings" route for a minute, but I guess not?
Well, unless that IS the case, in which case she should really stop drawing pictures of her dad humping her.:p
PigLick on 13/7/2010 at 07:51
ok what i am saying is i think those cartoons are not funny, but they depict the horror of the situation very well. Do cartoons have to be funny?
Kolya on 13/7/2010 at 13:05
Quote Posted by Starrfall
What is perhaps more interesting than Clarissa is the fact that it has generated more conversation in this thread than any of the happier comics posted. MUCH TO MY CHAGRIN Maybe Youngbluth's on to something after all!
Yeah. He's on to the fact, that the extreme leaves an impression. And that a morally dubious depiction of an emotionally charged topic like child abuse will be discussed.
Let me show you this comic I made about a ridiculously ugly Chinese girl whose parents try to sell her into sexual slavery but they cannot find a buyer. Trust me it's a hoot! I made about two dozen variations too! :laff:
Stitch on 13/7/2010 at 15:00
Quote Posted by driver
I suppose the people objecting to the humour* of the Clarissa comic have never told/laughed at a 9/11 joke (or somesuch).
You'd have a point if Clarissa comics were written and paced for the "reveal" to have humorous payoff*. Justifying their existence as blacker-than-black humor is a bit of a cop out.
Clarissa comics fly a little too close to the flame to be funny, and yet they're too cartoony to actually resonate any sense of real-world horror. As such, they're just miserable and fucked up without being "true," and I've got to agree with Kolya's assessment.
*Koki's posted comic being the sole exception of a Clarissa comic written "to be funny," although even it lacks the wit to accomplish this.
Pardoner on 14/7/2010 at 01:07
Quote Posted by PigLick
ok what i am saying is i think those cartoons are not funny, but they depict the horror of the situation very well.
The horror of a situation contrived to be funny (and thus horrifying), you mean. But let's take a closer look at whether or not these cartoons are in fact funny using the works of a few key theorists on the subject of humor: Henri Bergson, Sigmund Freud, Carol Burnett, and PigLick.
[WARNING! YOU ARE NOW READING A BLOG BY PARDONER! IF READING OFFENDS YOUR SENSIBILITIES IT IS BEST IF YOU DO NOT CONTINUE DOING SO! IT IS GENERALLY A POOR IDEA TO READ! GO CUDDLE UP TO A NICE GUNSMOKE POST INSTEAD! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]
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http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/7638/bergson.jpg Henri Bergson: Henri Bergson was a famous French philosopher, who suggested that 'the comic' was "something mechanical encrusted on the living" and resulted from a "temporary anesthesia of the heart." He also laughed at hunchbacks, and giggled when people nearby tripped. He suggests that these things were behaving mechanically, and represented a distortion of organic behavior and modes of living, and that inorganic behaviors should be corrected through ostracization, but the real reason he laughed is because he was an asshole.
A Bergsonian analysis of this Clarissa strip would focus on the increasingly overt and forced attempts at colloquial interaction by Clarissa's guilty family, as they attempt to distance the molestation. Clarissa's fixed attitude and her periodic interruption of their charade with her sour expression, mesh perfectly with Bergson's notion of interruption at intervals and repetition and serve to enhance the tension between organic (family's wild avoidance) and inorganic (what they are avoiding) in the scene. We are distanced from Clarissa's rape by both the absurdity of her family's posturings, and the blunt monotone Clarissa uses to describe it. Humorous, indeed!
From Bergson's standpoint, Youngbluth deserves accolades. Four chattering teeth out of five! If Youngbluth had included a disabled person falling down some stairs, this might have gotten full marks!
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http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/3001/freudu.jpg Sigmund Freud: Sigmund Freud wrote one text on the subject of humor, and unfortunately it revealed a taste in unredeemable puns and awful jokes. Sigmund Freud will be of no use to us whatsoever.
Chattering teeth: Not applicable.
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http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/4674/burnett.jpg Carol Burnett: Carol Burnett was a prolific comedian who famously remarked that "Comedy=Tragedy+Time." This simple equation can be applied to Clarissa to see whether or not it is of comedic value.
First, we must account for the variables. Tragedy could refer to either Clarissa's molestation by her father, or the fact of Youngbluth's own feeble humor. Let us assume it is the former.
Time is more difficult to define, however. Burnett used 'time' to signify the space of reflection and understanding between comedy and tragedy. Could the number of panels before we find out about the molestation be a measure of time? The number of panels after? The characters' own sense of time? Burnett's framework is more meant to assess the way an individual creates comedy, than whether or not a given work is comedy. If I were to die and we assume this is a tragedy, at some point, sufficient time would elapse that this would be a source of humor to me, or those standing nearby. This describes why comedy arises, but not whether comedy is or is not comedy. However, tragedy is evident in Clarissa, whether by the author's design or not, so comedy will present itself eventually as well.
One set of chattering teeth of out five.
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http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/4512/notappearing.jpg PigLick: It was the theorist PigLick who first suggested that "A well played dick/ur mom/wife joke" was a inclusive defining characteristic of humor.
In Clarissa, we can see several elements that lend themselves to PigLick's thoughts at play. A wife is present, and wife related sexual banter is present as well. Clarissa's mother is pictured in the strip, but 'ur mom' humor is subtly left in the background, no doubt inviting the reader to 'insert it', as the reader's mother has suggested to me many times. Feel free to slap your knee at my funny comedy joke.
PigLick's axioms and Clarissa mesh surprisingly well.
Three chattering teeth out of five!
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http://media.bigoo.ws/content/gif/miscellaneous/miscellaneous_160.gifConclusion: So, what have we learned in the process of this comparison? Probably nothing. But what can we say about Youngbluth's strip or even comedy in general? First, that violence is immediately hilarious, and probably the only source of humor. Second, that picking hard targets like shallow, mawkish American Sunday strips and mocking them for being shallow and mawkish is edgy as hell, because Family Circus isn't going to deconstruct itself (cardinal sin). But what will we do differently, now that we know these things? Will we construct a novel basis for our humor, bent on humanizing ourselves though a characterization of those elements in our thought hostile to this aim, in the hope of making our own existences that much less drab and possibly even habitable? Obviously not, that would be ridiculous. Now let's all go find some elderly to laugh at, because they walk with canes.
fett on 14/7/2010 at 01:25
Eff this thing, indeed.
old toro on 14/7/2010 at 01:50
This thread needs a reshuffle.
Briareos H on 14/7/2010 at 08:49
two terrible thread awards in two days!
Stitch on 14/7/2010 at 14:20
Any thread that pulls me out of lurk mode is by definition not terrible :cool:
Edit: Also, Pardoner fucking BRINGS IT itt
(the "itt" there was for ZylonBane)
