1930s Humour in 1979
The reprint strips are still going in reverse order in For Better or For Worse, so after Elly confronts John about his insults and tells him she is taking it personally, he continues to insult her. Except that the insult is really the line, “Hurry up, you can’t take all day, for heaven’s sake!” We never actually get to see John call Elly a klutz and a dummy. What we do see is that Mr. Shadbolt is concerned about the way John treats his assistant, and John tells him that it’s OK to abuse her, because she is his wife.
There was once a time when “wife” jokes were popular. The old standard joke was “Who was that lady you were with last night?” “That was no lady. That was my wife.” When I look back at these old For Better or For Worse comic strips, it makes John Patterson look like his style of humour was developed on vaudeville stage, and I sometimes forget that this strip was written in 1979, when this style of humour would have been considered to be highly offensive. Lynn Johnston obviously finds it funny, because she repeated a wife joke just last year.
There was once a time when “wife” jokes were popular. The old standard joke was “Who was that lady you were with last night?” “That was no lady. That was my wife.” When I look back at these old For Better or For Worse comic strips, it makes John Patterson look like his style of humour was developed on vaudeville stage, and I sometimes forget that this strip was written in 1979, when this style of humour would have been considered to be highly offensive. Lynn Johnston obviously finds it funny, because she repeated a wife joke just last year.
posted by howard at 10:31 PM
10 Comments:
howard:
When I look back at these old For Better or For Worse comic strips, it makes John Patterson look like his style of humour was developed on vaudeville stage, and I sometimes forget that this strip was written in 1979, when this style of humour would have been considered to be highly offensive. Lynn Johnston obviously finds it funny, because she repeated a wife joke just last year.
Her taste in humor does tend towards the juvenile, I've noticed. She never met a joke about an embarassing body function that she didn't like, she thinks big noses are funny and she approves of the revolting habit of spitting watermelon seeds onto people instead of into napkins. Therefore, what looks to us like Elly getting humiliated must look to her like the opportunity for a rimshot.
Things that are more interesting than flashback strips: I did this race this morning. :)
dreadedcandiru2
Therefore, what looks to us like Elly getting humiliated must look to her like the opportunity for a rimshot.
That must be it, but it doesn't work for me. Even back in the days of The Flintstones, the husband might be a jerk to his wife, but there would be a humourous payback that would make it work and the husband would appreciate his wife, even in a 1950s kind of way. Wilma Flintstone would fail doing Fred Flintstone's job at the gravel pits, while Fred would nearly burn the house down doing housework, for example.
Looking at this entire strip sequence, you have John being a jerk over and over again, and the only payback is the sympathy the wife is trying to get from the reader with her exasperated expressions when he is a jerk. It may have been very satisfying to Lynn Johnston to write it, and it may have appealed to women whose husbands are jerks, to know that they had a soulmate with Lynn; but aside from that audience, there is not much appeal.
aprilp_katje,
Congratulations on the run. How did you do?
Re: the strip you linked: Who is Mrs. Feggmutz? That's the ugliest name I ever heard.
And I don't think we need 1930s humour in 1979 OR 2008.
howard:
(I)t may have appealed to women whose husbands are jerks, to know that they had a soulmate with Lynn; but aside from that audience, there is not much appeal.
That's right. For the rest of us, it's simply an irritanting bring-down to see all this shortsighted nastiness. The man's arrogance and selfishness is responsible in one way or another for all the chaos we've seen over the last 29 years.
Thanks, howtheduck. I believe I did the race in about 30:26 (this based on looking over my shoulder at the clock right after I finished and seeing 30:27; I figured it took me about a second to do that!). If that's correct, then I did about two seconds better than when I ran the same course for Race for the Cure back in October.
Today's race was somewhat frustrating--there were more than 3400 runners, and we were asked to group ourselves according to our projected finishing time. This put me quite a ways back from the actual starting line--maybe a quarter of a block. When the race started, only the people way at the front were able to run. The rest of us were forced to do a slow jog to the start and we even had a bit of a traffic jam where we ground to a halt for a moment (nearly tripping ourselves!). Much of the first mile I just sort of jockeyed for position--and when I got to the first mile, I was disappointed to find I'd done it more than a minute more slowly than I'd done that first mile in October. But then my second and third miles, I was able to pick up my pace. Given all that, I'm kind of glad I was able to shave down my finish time at all.
Oh, well--I'll do better in October when I do Race for the Cure. It's a much smaller race and I can start up front if I want to. I'll get passed by a bunch of people, but at least I'll be moving! :)
Muzition
Re: the strip you linked: Who is Mrs. Feggmutz? That's the ugliest name I ever heard.
I don't ever remember seeing the name in any other place. Nevertheless, Lynn Johnston likes to do the ugly name as a shorthand to tell the reader this is an ugly person, like the villains Kortney Krelbutz and the Melville Kelpfroth.
dreadedcandiru2
That's right. For the rest of us, it's simply an irritanting bring-down to see all this shortsighted nastiness.
I suppose the limited audience must have been enough, or the fact that not every single strip in the first year concentrated on John's bad behaviour, even if most of the reprints show this aspect of John.
aprilp_katje,
When the race started, only the people way at the front were able to run. The rest of us were forced to do a slow jog to the start and we even had a bit of a traffic jam where we ground to a halt for a moment (nearly tripping ourselves!).
I've been in races like this and they can be pretty frustrating, even moreso if you are in that kind of race on a bicycle. Spending most of your time in the race trying to get to the point where you can actually feel like you are running is an unfortunate characteristic of a lot of the really big races.
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