Crazy Connie Breast Grabber
In yesterday’s Blog entry I examined the strip from the perspective of removing the dialogue and looking at the pictures to see what story would appear. The story that appeared was a nice, little reconciliation story with distinct Lesbian undertones. Looking at today’s new-run for For Better or For Worse, I realize I should have saved that for today. We have panels with Connie grabbing Elly’s arm, leaning into Elly’s body and getting within inches of her face; and then, grabbing Elly’s breast in the final panel. Is this still a family strip? Howard Bunt was less aggressive with Elizabeth than Connie is with Elly. Of course, in Elizabeth’s case, the aggression was unwanted. With Connie and Elly, who knows? Certainly not me anymore.
It appears that Elly has taken up Connie’s request from yesterday to “happen to talk to him (Phil)” and has called him up. It is interesting the format that Elly’s conversation takes:
1. A question or a response to a question: How’s it going in Montreal? What’s happening with your work? Oh, the kids are fine.
2. A one or two word response to a response to a question (usually one): Yeah? No kidding…Really? Cool! Yeah,
3. 2 Uh Huhs.
4. Connie says, “Ask him about me.”
Lynn has set up this format, so that it can be repeated for comic effect. The humour of the strip is based on Connie’s increased desperation to get Elly to get to the point of her call to Phil in the first place. In this respect, it is very similar to old-style humour where the bachelorette’s plight of finding a husband is played for laughs. To Lynn Johnston’s credit, I could easily see this strip coming out of her pen back in 1980. The style of humour does not play as well today and in fact, back in 1980, it would have been antiquated. I remember the TV show Laverne and Shirley used to have jokes along those lines, because the series was set in the 1950s; but it kept its modern 1980s sensibility about the independence of the female leads. Lynn Johnston writes like her humour is from the 1950s with 1950s sensibility.
Even though the humour is old, Lynn Johnston gets it wrong. The threatening character would take the other character by the shirt or the lapels of a jacket when they got frustrated, not by the breast. Looking at this strip, I can’t see Connie’s hand anywhere but firmly in the bosom of Elly Patterson. No doubt, Lynn intended it to be the collar but goofed up the drawing and then couldn’t be bothered to fix it, due to her extraordinary artistic laziness. You would think when the drawing came out to look like Connie grabbing Elly’s breast, that would inspire Lynn to pull out her long-neglected eraser, but that does not appear to be the case. Is there no drawing error so heinous it would cause Lynn to erase?
It appears that Elly has taken up Connie’s request from yesterday to “happen to talk to him (Phil)” and has called him up. It is interesting the format that Elly’s conversation takes:
1. A question or a response to a question: How’s it going in Montreal? What’s happening with your work? Oh, the kids are fine.
2. A one or two word response to a response to a question (usually one): Yeah? No kidding…Really? Cool! Yeah,
3. 2 Uh Huhs.
4. Connie says, “Ask him about me.”
Lynn has set up this format, so that it can be repeated for comic effect. The humour of the strip is based on Connie’s increased desperation to get Elly to get to the point of her call to Phil in the first place. In this respect, it is very similar to old-style humour where the bachelorette’s plight of finding a husband is played for laughs. To Lynn Johnston’s credit, I could easily see this strip coming out of her pen back in 1980. The style of humour does not play as well today and in fact, back in 1980, it would have been antiquated. I remember the TV show Laverne and Shirley used to have jokes along those lines, because the series was set in the 1950s; but it kept its modern 1980s sensibility about the independence of the female leads. Lynn Johnston writes like her humour is from the 1950s with 1950s sensibility.
Even though the humour is old, Lynn Johnston gets it wrong. The threatening character would take the other character by the shirt or the lapels of a jacket when they got frustrated, not by the breast. Looking at this strip, I can’t see Connie’s hand anywhere but firmly in the bosom of Elly Patterson. No doubt, Lynn intended it to be the collar but goofed up the drawing and then couldn’t be bothered to fix it, due to her extraordinary artistic laziness. You would think when the drawing came out to look like Connie grabbing Elly’s breast, that would inspire Lynn to pull out her long-neglected eraser, but that does not appear to be the case. Is there no drawing error so heinous it would cause Lynn to erase?
posted by howard at 11:08 PM
13 Comments:
howard,
You would think when the drawing came out to look like Connie grabbing Elly’s breast, that would inspire Lynn to pull out her long-neglected eraser, but that does not appear to be the case. Is there no drawing error so heinous it would cause Lynn to erase?
Probably not. If I were to speculate on why, I'd say that she might be worried that she'd be so busy fixing things, she'd risk missing her deadlines. Elly's love of pointless busywork has to come from somewhere, after all. Lynn has simply adopted a stupid way to control it.
By the way, congratulations on getting on Coffee Talk; that was a good point you made. Elly does seem to mean "shame" when she says "guilt".
I see the sweater's stretch lines and shading, and Connie's hand rotation, and I don't have problem interpreting it as a big fistful of stretched sweater, starting at the collar, which is pulled down. Not the world's best execution, but far too much vertical distance is taken up for the grabbed part to be a breast. Also, the hand is rotated, so not grabbing above (onto the breast), but rather grabbing below to hold a handful of fabric.
I'm still stewing on the retcon, though. Connie didn't know what Phil was up to in Montreal, and certainly wasn't sending him cards, as she didn't have his address until she was almost walking out the door to travel to Montreal.
InsertMonikerHere,
Given what we've seen, it's not hard to imagine that Connie used a similar means of persuasion to get Elly to 'volunteer' Phil's address.
"Is there no drawing error so heinous it would cause Lynn to erase?"
Nope. And no storyline disaster, either. Even when it was pretty evident that not many readers liked the Lizanthony storyline, LJ never veered from her course. Damn the readers, full speed ahead!
And my first thought upon looking at today's strip was "Howard is going to have a great time with this one!"
DebJyn
DreadedCandiru2,
If I were to speculate on why, I'd say that she might be worried that she'd be so busy fixing things, she'd risk missing her deadlines.
That could be the answer. Better to have junk for the deadline than nothing at all.
By the way, congratulations on getting on Coffee Talk; that was a good point you made. Elly does seem to mean "shame" when she says "guilt".
It made sense to me. After all, the Pattersons are known for never saying “Thank you” or “I’m sorry.” “Shame” seemed more likely to me.
InsertMonikerHere,
I see the sweater's stretch lines and shading, and Connie's hand rotation, and I don't have problem interpreting it as a big fistful of stretched sweater, starting at the collar, which is pulled down. Not the world's best execution, but far too much vertical distance is taken up for the grabbed part to be a breast.
I suppose so. However, if I were to go up to a woman and grab her sweater and twist it in my hand near that area of her body, I don’t think it would go over very well, breast grabbed or not.
Connie didn't know what Phil was up to in Montreal, and certainly wasn't sending him cards, as she didn't have his address until she was almost walking out the door to travel to Montreal.
New-run Connie seems a lot more organized than the reprint Connie, who ran up to Montreal on the spur-of-moment. Reprint Connie seems flighty, while new-run Connie seems more premeditated and violent.
DebJyn,
Even when it was pretty evident that not many readers liked the Lizanthony storyline, LJ never veered from her course. Damn the readers, full speed ahead!
Not exactly. She kept putting things in the strip to try to convince the readers to like Anthony and to believe Thérèse was even worse than before. She wasn’t going to change the direction of the story, but she was concerned the readers didn’t like it. With the art, I see no attempt at correction.
howard, it's definitely a Bad Idea to grab like that, bosom involved or not. It's aggressive and a sane person wouldn't be inviting Connie over to chat again.
Unless you're a Patterfoob and it's normal behaviour, because I think Elly's used that shirt grab in some "steamed off" poses. (Maybe the "what do they say about keeping a woman barefoot and pregnant?" strip during the pregnancy with April?)
InsertMonikerHere,
The classic comic threatening move is the lapel or collar grab. I think that’s what Lynn Johnston is after. If Connie’s hand were higher, it wouldn’t have bothered me as much. As it is, I can’t get any humour out of the strip because of this distraction.
About Lynn's aversion to erasers. I submit, as Exhibit A, the strip from the November 18, 2005, from the notorious "zits" story arc. This is the one where April is drawn about the size of a five-year-old instead of a fourteen-year-old.
April, that's nuthin' compared to the "Francie's cage" strip. Look carefully at Liz' legs and posture... she's an adult on teeny baby legs.
IMH
Look carefully at Liz' legs and posture... she's an adult on teeny baby legs.
That is freaky. I'd never noticed that before as I was just too busy being horrified by the idea of a baby cage. Perhaps if Anthony didn't keep his spare coffee mug on the floor (look next to the waste basket), it might have been safer for Francie to wander around.
My favourite is the one where Lynn slowly turned April into a werewolf complete with pointed ears.
Post a Comment
<< Home