Honestly, I don't get it. Anyone?
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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The Far Side
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Hello fellow Far Side fans!
About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.
The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side
Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s The Far Side!
Ps. Sub to all my comic strip communities:
Bloom County [email protected] https://lemm.ee/c/bloomcounty
Calvin and Hobbes [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/calvinandhobbes
Cyanide and Happiness !cyanideandhappiness https://lemm.ee/c/cyanideandhappiness
Garfield [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/garfield
The Far Side [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]
Fine print: All comics I post are freely available online. In no way am I claiming ownership, copyright or anything else. This is a not for profit community, we just want to enjoy our comics, thank you.
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The guy lost his snake so he put up a lost pet poster. The lady sees the poster and the viewer can imagine she is concerned - a 30 ft snake is dangerous. If the snake is loose for long there will be a lot more "lost pets" in the neighborhood.
Thank you.
Those are a lot of dots to connect. What about the guy with the hammer?
The real explanation is a lot of far side strips just suck
The real explanation is a lot of far side strips just suck
Eh, this strip makes plenty of sense when put in to context, which @[email protected] did above and @[email protected] did below. Let's also not forget that Larson was in a whole genre by himself back in 1982, and (IMO) was still experimenting and refining his style, with almost zero direct competition at the time. I do think this strip makes perfect sense back in the day in a sort of mild 'haha, that's a bit crazy' way, and it was certainly unique and 'good enough' to be published in 1982.
But... what's interesting to me is that from my reading of his stuff, Larson got a lot sharper and hit a peak of brilliance from roughly the mid-80's to the end of the decade, then fell off a cliff after that, meaning IMO his stuff really did suck on the whole, in to the nineties. The way I see it, he'd basically exhausted most of his premises of humor, and IIRC new strips began to pop up occupying the same realm, which were arguably funnier and more inventive.
Not trying to put down Larson at all (I love the Far Side), but I can completely understand that after doing thousands of strips, many of them genre-defining, he ran out of gas / inspiration / dedication. So yeah, for sure some of his stuff "sucks."
Bah, didn't mean to write an essay. :S
I think you mean @[email protected] but I like the explanation @[email protected] gave much better.
Sure, but I meant in the response to the commenter above saying "a lot of Far Side strips just suck" that 'sometimes that's true, but not THIS one, really.'
Probably just caused confusion by tagging you and the other bloke; sorry about that, and lesson learned.
He's the one who put up the flyer (hammered the flyer up with a nail)
Thank you
I had no idea, so i asked my AI overlord to explain the joke to me.
"Ah, that sounds like a classic Gary Larson twist! Without seeing the specific comic, I can offer a general interpretation of what the humor might be in a Far Side comic featuring a lost 30-foot long brown snake named Ginger.
The humor here likely lies in the absurdity and contrast of the situation. On one hand, you have a potentially menacing, large snake, which people would typically find intimidating or even frightening. On the other hand, it's being treated as if it's a harmless, lost pet with a cute, non-threatening name like "Ginger." This juxtaposition of a dangerous creature being treated in a domestic, almost tender manner is a common type of humor found in Far Side comics. It plays on our expectations — you'd expect a lost pet poster for a small dog or cat, not a huge snake!
The comic might also be playing with the irony of how a 30-foot long snake could possibly be "lost" given its size, making it a humorous commentary on how we sometimes overlook the obvious.
Far Side comics often have these layers of humor, where the situation is exaggerated or presented in a way that's contrary to what we'd expect in reality".
So Umm, har har
Just to add another layer to this. I uploaded the image to the AI and asked what was funny. It insists the snake is wrapped around the telephone pole, the fence or the man's waste.
waste
Waist or waste?
Waist
The idea of someone having a pet snake in 1982 would have been so bizarre that it would be deemed comical. That said snake is called "Ginger," a typical name for a harmless cat, not a 30-foot python reinforces that. This would probably have raised a sensable chuckle back in the day, but I don't think it really stands up to the test of time.
Came to the comments for an explanation. I still don't get it
I don’t find the Far Side funny at all. Is it supposed to be?
Could it be poking fun of Thomas Jefferson as he was a red head and the snake's name is Ginger? The comic is from 1982. How long has Ginger been a term for red heads?
I remember reading these in the 90s and thinking they were funny. It's amazing how humor changes over time. It helps put other cultures humor into context considering these were written at a time when my culture was very different.