Thursday, December 21, 2017

cartoons I don't get #27

I only get it when I have something to say, otherwise I don't.

I have a set of discs of the complete New Yorker cartoons. Only problem is that in order to fit all the cartoons on two discs, you can't have the highest resolution or size, so you can't see all the detail. Charles Addams was one of the greatest gag cartoonists of all time and there's obviously some kind of gag here, but I have no idea what it is.
New Yorker December 15, 1956
Robert Day
New Yorker December 15, 1962
Perry Barlow
New Yorker December 16, 1961
I've got a lot of cartoons where the punchline is that somebody turns out to be gay. Not necessarily homophobia per se when the idea of two men being a couple wasn't an occurrence in everyone's frame of reference, more of an absurdity than anything else. I don't know if that's what's being intimated or if maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe I'm the bigoted one and what the boss had been holding in all this time was that the file cabinet in the lower right is transparent.
Mischa Richter
New Yorker December 17, 1960
Claude Smith Playboy, December 1967
Playboy, December 1967
Robert Kraus
New Yorker December 18, 1954
Charles Elmer Martin
New Yorker, December 19, 1959
Eldon Dedini
New Yorker December 23, 1961
Perry Barlow New Yorker December 24, 1955
Barlow
New Yorker December 26, 1954
I guess after seeing a bunch of cartoons I can't make heads or tails of, when I see an obvious joke I just don't get it out of habit, and that's why it's here. But just because the joke about a toy turning out to be real is so painfully obvious doesn't excuse the head-scratchers here.
Otto Soglow
New Yorker December 27, 1952
Playboy, January 1968

4 comments:

  1. The one with the multiple pics of all the singers is easy once you realize that it isn't the same three singers in each panel. There are FOUR singers! In each panel, one is "visiting" the woman inside the house. After each has had a visit, she waves goodbye to all four of them.

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  2. The first one, the Charles Addams , is that as the snowman is melting you see a human hand and sleeve revealed. Basically the snowman was built over a corpse.

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  3. Smathers is plowed and telling his boss off, and his boss is going to lower the boom on him.

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  4. 2) They are proto-hipsters, and Dad and Kid want a real tree, not an artsy “tree”
    3) Home recording equipment was then what cell phone video is now. She’s imposing on the singers for her personal gain.
    5) She was spreading more than “Christmas cheer” with the carolers.
    6) He’s a dead ringer for Chris Kringle. So of COURSE he got the job. It would be like Mantue Bol calling his mom and saying “Hey! I made the team!”
    7) She’s bargaining on the tree price. It’s the season of giving, but he’s NOT going to give away his trees.
    8) Hardworking boss has power over secretary?
    9) Christmas is associated with cold, and this at a BEACH, which is hot. Contrasts are funny.
    10) Men are bad at gifts! Dad’s don’t know a THING about kids. He was probably told “get a bike” and DID, but it was the wrong size. AND he left the tag on, which wouldn’t be something Santa would do.
    11) I don’t get it. He doesn’t like it? But…WHY?
    12) LOL
    13) They are keeping him drunk and happy.

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