Rain Gear - Sight Gag
It’s been awhile since we have seen a sight gag in For Better or For Worse. Little Elizabeth, who started walking yesterday, is now able to wear oversized boot, hat and coat; and still stand upright. I think the appeal of the joke is the same as when you see kids dress up in grown up clothing. I used to get great delight in seeing my daughter wear my old shirts as night shirts which dragged the ground.
The parts that don’t work about today’s strip are:
a. Kids who have just learned to walk are still pretty wobbly, and such an outfit would cause most kids to be back on the floor in the crawling stance.
b. The sainted Grandma Marion sent the world’s ugliest rain boots, hat and coat for an age obviously older than Elizabeth and then is more interested if it fits than Elizabeth’s walking.
c. Your baby just learned to walk and you put her in rain gear.
Unfortunately all the parts that don’t work are required in order to set up the sight gag. Not only that but the sight gag doesn’t really go along with the theme of Lizzie learning to walk. Those little nagging things spoil what might have been a nice little strip had it been done after Lizzie learned to walk.
The parts that don’t work about today’s strip are:
a. Kids who have just learned to walk are still pretty wobbly, and such an outfit would cause most kids to be back on the floor in the crawling stance.
b. The sainted Grandma Marion sent the world’s ugliest rain boots, hat and coat for an age obviously older than Elizabeth and then is more interested if it fits than Elizabeth’s walking.
c. Your baby just learned to walk and you put her in rain gear.
Unfortunately all the parts that don’t work are required in order to set up the sight gag. Not only that but the sight gag doesn’t really go along with the theme of Lizzie learning to walk. Those little nagging things spoil what might have been a nice little strip had it been done after Lizzie learned to walk.
posted by howard at 10:59 PM
10 Comments:
There's a good reason that Lynn can't see that those three things are wrong; she's thinking like she's 61. As a woman in late middle age, she'd, for instance, be more concerned that a gift fit than be useful or not-butt-ugly.
Lynn's abuse story ruined Grandma Marian for me. There, I said it. I know, Marian was never portrayed in the strip that way, but whenever I see her or see a reference to her in the strip, I can't help thinking she's a seething, controlling, rage-aholic off-panel. And when Elly calls her, I think, "Why the heck do you even talk to her?!?!?!"
april_patterson,
It isn't just Marian that got ruined; whenever I see Jim, I think of the weak, gutless father who never stood up for her and never admitted he failed her.
aprilp_katje,
Lynn's abuse story ruined Grandma Marian for me. There, I said it.
I also can’t help but think about Lynn’s abuse story whenever I see Grandma Marian, and it makes me look for signs or hints of the abuse in the strips. After all, there are bits of Lynn’s story in most every character or story situation. However, I have had a hard time seeing it with Marian of the strip. Now, Grandpa Jim is a different story. Lynn had a number of stories with Jim talking about how he was a stern disciplinarian in his day, and even had Elly point out how she resented it. To me, because Lynn’s story of abuse and her portrayal of Marian in the strip do not mesh, it makes me wonder about the validity of the story in the first place. After all, this is the same woman who had no fear of accusing her husband of unfair hiring practices in her strip, when they had been married only a few years. Why would Lynn hold back on Marian, who did not live anywhere near her, and certainly could no longer threaten her? Why wouldn’t Marian come across as a seething, controlling, rage-aholic unless she never really was that way?
In I've Got the One-More-Washload Blues, there is a sequence where Elly goes to Vancouver by herself for a weekend while John stays behind and minds the kids. When Elly returns from the trip, he asks her how it went. She says something like, "Wonderful. Mom always knows just what to say to put things in perspective." When John asks what she said, Elly replies that Marian had called her a "spoiled brat." This doesn't quite line up with the seething-rage-aholic premise, but it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. However, like you, I've had misgivings about whether the abuse story has veracity. I don't know what, if anything, I can believe from any given interview or essay from LJ.
Honestly, I think people in general tend to treat their abusive parents with more reverence than they do their abusive/jerkish spouses. I think it's because of the programming to honor thy father and thy mother...no matter what. I have no trouble writing off any other kind of abuser or jerk, yet still I feel compelled to maintain a relationship with them. I know people who were abused even more than I was who are still waiting hand and foot on their now elderly abusive parents.
Also, I have found that if you tell people that your parents were abusive, frequently the response from people is to be disgusted and angry with you. The most striking example in my life came when my friend Val, whom I had known for about 15 years, told me her grandmother abused her. I then revealed some of what had gone on with my parents when I was growing up. Mind you, Val knew my dad was a nut and often made jokes about it with me. But labeling him an abuser was over the line for her. She got very upset and kept telling me that it wasn't right for me to cut him out of my life because he's my father. Grandmother, fine, but since she had a good relationship with her own parents, she couldn't identify with me at all.
I have been told by a couple of people that I should write a memoir about something that happened to me, but I feel that I can't do it while my parents are alive. It seems too cruel to my mother (who participated in the abuse, and would not stand up to my father), and I don't want to enrage my father for some vague reason.
So it seems to me to be pretty normal for Lynn to refrain from even hinting at childhood abuse in the strip. There just seems to be some kind of reverence for the institutions of fatherhood and motherhood that 1) keeps the abused from criticizing or breaking free, and 2) makes other people angry with the abused when they try to talk about it. Certainly my attitude has always been, why bother, when it will bring more trouble than it's worth?
Interestingly, for me, Jim and Marian aren't ruined. I have always assumed they were abuse-free. Not only did Lynn want to avoid confrontation over the issue, but Jim and Marian read like her fantasy of what parents would be like. Totally normal for an abused kid.
That said, the last couple of strips have been dull as dirt. Is she planning to bore all her readers to death?
aprilp_katje,
I don't know what, if anything, I can believe from any given interview or essay from LJ.
A lot of times what is stated in the strip is the true story, even if it doesn’t make sense within the context. For example, when Elizabeth left Mtigwaki because she said was homesick for Milborough. She gave no consideration to Paul’s feelings and just said that she was moving and if he loved her he would follow. From the little she has talked about this in interviews, this appears to be an extremely accurate depiction of how Lynn got Rod to move to Corbeil from Lynn Lake. As snarkers, we can point out how the way Lynn wrote it made it look like Elizabeth was chasing after Anthony Caine once he got divorced. However, if I think of it as a lift directly from Lynn’s life (and having nothing to do with Elizabeth), then it makes sense with what I know about Lynn.
Taking your example from I've Got the One-More-Washload Blues, we have Lynn going to visit her mother by herself, leaving her husband at home to handle his job and the kids. She returns with having been called a “spoiled brat”. This seems believable to me. Lynn is pulling in 6 figures with a 10-year contract and she’s married to a man making good money with a dental practice who apparently is not so incompetent he can’t handle the kids. Compared to her mother’s situation (and most women in Canada for that matter), Lynn has it very well. I can imagine it would be very difficult for Lynn to complain about anything in her life without coming off like a spoiled brat. Reading this strip, Lynn’s mom may be one of those moms, who doesn’t mind letting her daughter know what she thinks even it if it isn’t polite. Of course, this could simply be as nasty as Lynn’s mom can get after her seething-rage-aholic days, since Lynn is full-grown, married and has children.
qnjones,
So it seems to me to be pretty normal for Lynn to refrain from even hinting at childhood abuse in the strip. There just seems to be some kind of reverence for the institutions of fatherhood and motherhood that 1) keeps the abused from criticizing or breaking free, and 2) makes other people angry with the abused when they try to talk about it.
From this perspective, it’s interesting that Grandma Marian in the later strips achieved some sort of revered Farley-like state, to the point where even Iris was bowing to her; while Grandpa Jim was constantly portrayed as cranky, lecherous, ignored by his family, and was shown to suffer from a host of illnesses. And yet, when Lynn talked about her parents, her father was clearly the one she liked the most, and she blames him for not stopping her mother.
That said, the last couple of strips have been dull as dirt. Is she planning to bore all her readers to death?
It’s sad to say, but Lynn’s best new-run strips have been the ones where she takes swipes at her ex-husband. She doesn’t have it in her to make an interesting young parenting kind of strip anymore.
Except for Lynn's sister-in-law, I can't think of any Lynn HASN'T trashed in an interview.
Mom was abusive; dad was weak; husband (both)was a cheater; kids are ne'er do wells who haven't procreated, friends grandchildren are brats---really hard for me to read the strip without thinking of the author as being a bitter, judgmental person.
debjyn,
Mom was abusive; dad was weak; husband (both)was a cheater; kids are ne'er do wells who haven't procreated, friends grandchildren are brats---really hard for me to read the strip without thinking of the author as being a bitter, judgmental person.
There was the one magazine article where she praised Rod Johnston’s father for being able to suffer without complaining. However, I take your point. Lynn has not been shy about trashing her family in public.
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