Elly the Christmas Martyr
I opened up my paper today to look at For Better or For Worse. The version there always clips off the first few panels of the strip, and oftentimes that does not matter. In this case though, it did. The first 2 panels show Elly noticing that everyone is occupied and then at the end she declares she got everything done she wanted to get done while they were occupied. This actually makes a little sense with small children in the house. When my kids were young, I or my wife had to keep them occupied while present-wrapping occurred. Actually, the same happened this year. My mother-in-law is in from Texas and while she and my wife kept my children busy, I got to wrap presents. I must admit that normally, I am the one who occupies my kids; because my wife hates my wrapping. However, she wanted to spend time with her mom, and so everyone will have to suffer with my sloppy present-wrapping. Even the addition of the baking and the cleaning works within this idea. Elly wants the kids out-of-the-way so she can get all those things done.
Now, if you take away the first 2 panels, as they did in my paper; the sequence starts with Elly baking. Viewed from that perspective, Elly is doing all the work, and we find out later Phil and John are watching TV with the kids. In other words, it is strip #7824 in the “Elly is the martyr who does all the work” series and reflects what has to be the most popular theme of this strip. Judging from John’s punch line, that is exactly what Lynn Johnston intended with this strip. His punch line is intended for the reader to look at the John, Phil and the kids not being busy, contrast with it with Elly’s slavish working and you can laugh at the irony of John thinking he was the busy one.
“Elly is the martyr who does all the work” is a theme so prevalent in this strip, not only do I fail to find it funny, I consider those strips to be among the worst that Lynn Johnston produces. It falls into a category along the lines of “Leroy and Loretta Lockhorn hate each other” or “Marmaduke is a freakishly, large dog”. You see this joke over and over again. I think it shows up often enough, that the casual For Better or For Worse reader could take years off from reading the strip and come back to read it, thinking “Oh, that Elly. She always does all the work and no one appreciates its. Ha ha ha!” It is like the reassurance of knowing something that has always been and continues to always be.
Now, if you take away the first 2 panels, as they did in my paper; the sequence starts with Elly baking. Viewed from that perspective, Elly is doing all the work, and we find out later Phil and John are watching TV with the kids. In other words, it is strip #7824 in the “Elly is the martyr who does all the work” series and reflects what has to be the most popular theme of this strip. Judging from John’s punch line, that is exactly what Lynn Johnston intended with this strip. His punch line is intended for the reader to look at the John, Phil and the kids not being busy, contrast with it with Elly’s slavish working and you can laugh at the irony of John thinking he was the busy one.
“Elly is the martyr who does all the work” is a theme so prevalent in this strip, not only do I fail to find it funny, I consider those strips to be among the worst that Lynn Johnston produces. It falls into a category along the lines of “Leroy and Loretta Lockhorn hate each other” or “Marmaduke is a freakishly, large dog”. You see this joke over and over again. I think it shows up often enough, that the casual For Better or For Worse reader could take years off from reading the strip and come back to read it, thinking “Oh, that Elly. She always does all the work and no one appreciates its. Ha ha ha!” It is like the reassurance of knowing something that has always been and continues to always be.
posted by howard at 2:06 AM
2 Comments:
howard,
How odd it is that the throw-away panels shouldn't have been. John is doing what he's told and keeping the children occupied while Elly does things in the insanely labor-intensive way she loves to do them. Is his obeisance to bee-grinding recorded, though? No. Lynn loves her "Elly the martyr" theme too much to show him being an unwitting enabler when she prefers him as the monster who chained Elly to the house.
Dreadedcandiru2,
Lynn loves her "Elly the martyr" theme too much to show him being an unwitting enabler when she prefers him as the monster who chained Elly to the house.
You would think, after all these years, even Lynn Johnston would be sick of these kinds of strips. And yet, it shows up again and again. It's like reading Cathy and getting tired of her saying, "AACK!" Too much!
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