Brush Up Your Humour
Today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse
The Humour: Elly brushes Farley without realizing the dog fur is going on her neighbour’s clothes on her clothesline. Laughter ensues as the neighbour swears at Elly for ruining her wash.
The Logic: The reader must believe that the wind is strong enough to carry Farley’s hair over the fence from Elly’s yard to her neighbour’s yard.
The Problem with the Logic: There is a fence in the way. To solve this problem, Lynn Johnston moves from showing Elly picking fur out of the hair brush to showing Elly waving the brush around in the air, so it can gain the height necessary to scale the fence.
Why This Doesn’t Work: You don’t wave a hair brush around in the air to get hair out of it. It is usually so tightly lodged in the bristles of the brush, it has to be pulled out.
Why the Humour Doesn’t Work: In order for the joke to work, you have to be surprised that something happens to Farley’s hair. Lynn draws in the wind in 4 panels and draws Elly doing her hair brush dance with giant volumes of airborne air in 2 panels. Therefore you know that wind is going to do something with that hair and Lynn repeats it to make sure you know it, so when something does happen, there is little surprise.
The Humour: Elly brushes Farley without realizing the dog fur is going on her neighbour’s clothes on her clothesline. Laughter ensues as the neighbour swears at Elly for ruining her wash.
The Logic: The reader must believe that the wind is strong enough to carry Farley’s hair over the fence from Elly’s yard to her neighbour’s yard.
The Problem with the Logic: There is a fence in the way. To solve this problem, Lynn Johnston moves from showing Elly picking fur out of the hair brush to showing Elly waving the brush around in the air, so it can gain the height necessary to scale the fence.
Why This Doesn’t Work: You don’t wave a hair brush around in the air to get hair out of it. It is usually so tightly lodged in the bristles of the brush, it has to be pulled out.
Why the Humour Doesn’t Work: In order for the joke to work, you have to be surprised that something happens to Farley’s hair. Lynn draws in the wind in 4 panels and draws Elly doing her hair brush dance with giant volumes of airborne air in 2 panels. Therefore you know that wind is going to do something with that hair and Lynn repeats it to make sure you know it, so when something does happen, there is little surprise.
posted by howard at 10:13 PM
9 Comments:
Not that I like to defend Lynn Johnston by any means, but my experience with brushing my dogs is that there always seems to be vastly more soft under-coat hair coming off the dog than the brush can easily hold in its bristles. If I brush a dog indoors, I swiftly generate a pile of fluff all over and next to me. If I do it outdoors on a windy day, the stuff just blows everywhere.
The dog brush does get full quite fast, and I have to pull fluff-clogs off it frequently for it to keep being effective - fluff which easily goes airborne in the wind if I let it go instead of stuffing it in a paper bag.
No clue why Elly seems to be "dancing" or brush-flailing, though - the stuff is light enough to blow over a fence all on its own.
I don't really care about the logic or lack thereof of this particular strip because I'm too upset by Elly's anger, Farley's terror, and Elly's abuse of Farley. You can brush dogs so hard you hurt them, and Elly is definitely doing that here. Poor Farley is scared and, at the very least, extremely uncomfortable -- and the fact that Lynn Johnston intentionally drew Elly and Farley like this, thinking it would be humorous, tells me things I did not want to know about Lynn Johnston's psyche.
I have to agree with Clio here; the anger in the strip destroys any humor it might have. Not only is Elly angry enough to deliberately injure Farley, she's angry enough at the world to force other people to deal with the mess she made. Not only that, Annie is way too angry about laundry she could just as easily re-do,
The anger is what leapt out to me, too. Elly is furious at Farley for being furry and she wields that brush like a weapon. Not only does she appear to be hurting him, but that look of terror on his face suggests that this is a regular occurrence.
Anonymous,
No clue why Elly seems to be "dancing" or brush-flailing, though - the stuff is light enough to blow over a fence all on its own.
Lynn has clearly not had your experience and I think is using the brush-flailing to show how the hair got over the fence. As for me, in Tucson, Arizona, it is pretty common to have very high fences to keep out coyotes and javelinas and the like. The fence is usually pretty good about keeping hair in too, but I suppose it all depends on how windy it is where you live. When we have had very high winds, it is not uncommon for things to blow over our fence. Of course, we don’t usually pick those times to brush animals or do anything outside that’s going to put something up in the air which could just as easily get in our eyes.
Clio,
Poor Farley is scared and, at the very least, extremely uncomfortable -- and the fact that Lynn Johnston intentionally drew Elly and Farley like this, thinking it would be humorous, tells me things I did not want to know about Lynn Johnston's psyche.
She has shown Farley or other dogs with a similar reaction to getting a bath or going to the veterinarian, so I think that is what she was after. However, the situation is the same. The dog knows something uncomfortable is going to happen.
DreadedCandiru2,
Not only that, Annie is way too angry about laundry she could just as easily re-do,
This part is definitely true. Annie is reacting the way Elly would react and not Annie; but even Elly would never react this strongly to a neighbour. Elly usually limits her shrieking and screaming victims to her husband, children and animals. Anyone who has done any outdoor drying with clothes, knows that if the wind picks up, anything could end up on their clothes. In high winds, you usually take your clothes off the line for fear they will be blown away.
Of course, we don’t usually pick those times to brush animals or do anything outside that’s going to put something up in the air which could just as easily get in our eyes.
Quite true. :) It's frequently quite windy here, and so I almost always brush the dogs indoors for that reason (and on a non-carpeted floor for easy sweeping). :)
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