Hello friends. Here's an old Far Side comic that I saw yesterday... when I first saw it, it stumped me. Gary Larsen, creator of Far Side, often tossed in esoteric humor. He'd made his readers work for some comics, really making people think to get that "aha!"
Well, this one is FAR OUT on the Far Side, lol. I think I have it now, but I'm putting it out there to see who can come up w. the best explanation of this comic: here it is just as originally printed, no caption or explanatory notes.
I've enabled comments for this post. Fire away!
If someone can beat my explanation, I'll send them 20 dollars in dollar coins. Note: I've emailed my explanation to myself, so it is timestamped on email, for verification.
Enjoy! :-)
33 comments:
Here's my stab at it:
The bowl on the coffee table has chicken legs and slices of beef, but one "chicken leg" has "beef" around the bone.
How close did I come?
Becky
Keep trying, Becky! :-)
That was a good effort, but it focuses on the bowl to the exclusion of the room! Hint there, lol.
Have a wonderful night and God bless,
Loy
Does it have anything to do with the tattered lamp? Is that a broken window pane, or is there something outside the window? I'm still thinking, but so far it's too far out for me.
Becky
Anything relating to the "where's the beef?" commercial?
sherri
We're too lazy to get up and eat at the dining room table?
Sherri
Antimacassers on the chair are a stab at gentillity, but why bother, is it worth the effort when you think you are comfortable in your own world ?
Su
All these are good! Nice, Su... and not directly, Sherri -- though one might see a correlation! and yes, Becky, the tattered curtains and broken window are clues. Now take them all together, lol.
There's gonna be a collective groan when we finally figure it, lol.
:-)
Excellent guesses. I'll give what I think is the answer after 7:00 p.m. Monday.
Loy
The bowl IS the focus, but I can't figure the shabby state of the room. The doilies on the armchair stand out to me but I can't put it together. It looked like the bowl of meat was a carnivore's equivalent to a decorative bowl of fruit. But that leaves out the rest of the room. I had to enlarge the picture to make sure there wasn't a fly up by the tattered lampshade. THAT would've put a different spin on things (fly came in through the broken window, man is waiting to swat fly with paper - no...).
I'm losing sleep over this one.
Victoria
Guess #2:
There was a fight in the room last night. All of the shabbiness is actually damage, not just general run-down condition of the items. Now that it's morning, the raw steak is to put on the ogre's black eye. The cooked chicken legs are from a rooster that crowed too early.
Victoria
This is a tough one. It strikes me a a contrast in lifestyles, of sorts: the man seems to be an ogre, or something of the sort - he has hairy harms and enjoys raw meat.
The bowl is important only insofar as it is the equivalent of (as someone else noted) a fruit bowl, or perhaps a bowl of potato chips.
The ogre is living in a house, not his normal environment, and doesn't really fit in, or know how to deal with living there - hence the torn curtains, lampshade, broken window, etc.
OK, NO! I'm over-thinking the whole thing! The ogre took over a little old lady's house (doilies on the arms of the chair) - the meat on the table is her remains. That's my final answer.
Good guesses, Victoria and Ben!
Some excellent analysis there. Yes, I agree the bowl is central, Victoria. And yes, it is definitely a contrast of lifestyles highlighted, Ben.
But still not there yet!
Someone asked if there was a caption with the picture, but no -- this one had no caption or explanation. Just out there: Faaaaaar Side! :-)
One friend has even been researching the Far Side trying to figure it out, lol. Kinda drives a person crazy! :-)
Maybe the "aha!" moment will hit at any time, lol.
Loy
This is a lazy man who doesn't go to work, so his house is run down and they turned off his electricity (black under lamp shade), so he has to eat raw meat.
Becky
My mom (Dorothy) says there has to more to it than that! We're both stumped.
I think there's something significant about the one piece of meat (if it is meat). The sliced end reveals the meat in a symmetrical circle around the bone, whereas, the rest of the sliced meat is more oval shaped. You're right--this is driving me crazy!
Becky
Excellent guesses, Becky! You're getting warmer, lol.
And don't go crazy! Answer to be posted in a couple hours, lol.
:-)
Ok, ok...
The suspense is killing some people.
So, here goes:
drumroll...
...
...
...
...
He was a lazy slob around the house, but at least he still put meat on the table!
:-)
Or, a variation along this line, if I were writing a larger caption:
"Harvey was a notorious slob. His wife couldn't get him to do a single thing around the house, but she kept him around because at least he still put meat on the table."
grin!
Enjoy and let me know your responses!
:-)
Sorry, Loy, your explanation is not as good as some you received...unless you're in touch with Mr. Larsen. I really expect something funnier than that from the Far Side. I think we all need to keep digging.
(I know I just sound like a poor sport)
Victoria
No TV? Home is what we make of it. The atmosphere of the room leads one to believe the PERSON is poor. However, the meat in whatever dish that is leads one to think the PERSON may not be poor (financially) at all.
Is there another clue given in terms of the dollars in coins? Susan B. Anthony dollars? Kennedy silver dollars? How about everyone is worth his/her weight in gold?
Paul says it's "fresh meat in a stale room."
Hi everybody...this is fun:)!!!
Sherri
I still think everybody is way off...according to what I read about this guy, Gary Larson, he was very into political satire and his comics were sometimes border line offensive so...I am thinking that this is way more political or societial then anyone is thinking so far
lol to Victoria:
Are you a good loser? :-)
lol, seriously -- the FAR SIDE isn't always about haha funny, it's often irony... which is humor on another level.
This is one of those -- and the explanation has to make sense on a caption, including all facts.
Facts of this one:
1. Meat on Table.
2. Unkempt man in armchair reading paper, while...
3. House is in general disrepair
a. window needs repaired
b. curtains are shabby
c. lamp shade ripped
d. windows seem dirty
So the larger facts are met. Lesser and more subtle:
4. Doily or antimacassars on armchair.
This one leads to the woman's touch: he's definitely not the kind of man to care about hair or skin oil on furniture!
All the facts are met in my explanation, as well as all layers of irony. As well as being FUNNY in a Far Side quintessential way, lol.
Slightly twisted: takes a popular phrase: he still puts meat on the table [and variations] and makes it ludicrous, lol.
I'm still open if a person can meet all facts and layers of irony though -- I'm definitely not in touch w. Larsen. He's a modern recluse and curmudgeon, by most accounts. Maybe that's him in the chair! lol.
Loy
To Anonymous stamped at 4:47 --
That's not true about Larsen.
He was not a political cartoonist. At least not in the sense of his cartoons having a necessary political point.
His humor was demented and definitely not "politically correct" but it was not political in nature. Pick up a few old Far Side books and page through several hundred cartoons and you'll see what I mean. Obscure? yes, sometimes. Zany? Slightly demented? Always. We used to go through Far Side books seeing who could get most of them.
Now you know why my sense of humor is so crazy! :-)
Loy
Oh no! I was trying to read way too much into fine details--being too concrete and not conceptual.
Mum & I both lol! This was a great brain exerciser. Thanks.
Becky
Wow! Hardly know what to say after all this... I just know I thunk on it for all of yesterday and today and couldn't come up with even the slightest answer. Guess I need to brush up on my Far Side.
I did find this though: (guess more folks need help with this one than I thought)
Well, no matter what it actually means some of these explainations on here made me laugh...I'll have to start checking out the far side cartoon a little more often and see if any of them make sense to me...and you are so right about your twisted sense of humor, Loy...lol...I'll stick with family circus...
Nice find, AP! Maybe you could go over there and enlighten those poor folks, lol.
And to Anonymous 6:33 -- you can vouch for my sense of humor? yay! :-)
This was fun, tossing it out there and just seeing what you guys did with it. Pretty neat.
Have a wonderful night, all.
The meat in the bowl is what is left of the man's wife's (hence antimacassars)former cat whom he killed after getting tired of it shredding the curtains and various other destructive behaviors. The cat meat in the snack bowl is a statement to his wife and all onlookers that he has conquered the annoying beast. There is no more poignant statement of victorious conquest than to eat what one has conquered, like the cannibals did to their enemies. If you eat it raw, it is the most primal statement possible. In its death struggle, the cat managed to bust the window and gouge out the man's eyes. However in typical macho fashion, he refuses to admit that he was fazed during the fight, and nonchalantly sits down pretending to read a paper which a sighted person would realize had no words on it. Oh, the other kind of meat? That's the wife. When she reacted strongly to his act of savagery, he, being a man and needing to win every argument at all cost reduced her to the same state as her former cat. Now he sits alone and blind in a destroyed house, stewing in his testosterone, trying to convince himself that he feels much better now and that he is enjoying his snack.
George off the top rope!
I might have known you'd have a creative and radically funny interpretation of this comic, lol.
I have to admit that yours is the funniest! Not sure if it is the correct one, but definitely funny... with apologies to all the nice wives out there who often might need to correct their husbands, lol.
I don't know... if everyone votes you the winner you might just win on creative points alone!
Good stuff and thank you, lol.
Loy
I have to say, Loy, I'm rather unconvinced of your interpretation. But I still don't have much of a clue, myself. I do still like my "ogre kills old lady, takes over house" interpretation best.
By the way, is there any significance to the fact that the newspaper is entirely blank? No words? Or is that just a typical characteristic in Far Side cartoons?
Ben,
It is clear: the blank newspaper represents the blank look on the reader's faces!
:-)
And ogre! No, no, no!
This was before Shrek, lol.
Although I must say that George's interpretation is genius, in a macabre sort of way, lol.
Actually, it could be a visual interpretation of postmodernity and Nietzche's death of God: people are still living in the benefits of faith, reaping the benefits of Judeo-Christian civilzation, living in it but not as caretakers of it, going on with daily life while killing the genius of the abode.
The blank newspaper then would reflect the blankness of their replacement God: what they consider erudition is just the event on the way, the calamity yet announced.
The darkened lamp would then represent the broken lantern of the madman prophet. The tatters and broken windows and disrepair the lingering, unmaintained benefits of divine belief: postmodern man and the need of uber-man [without realization].
The meat: the carcass of belief and living off another body of belief.
The doilies: lingering culture, not understood.
The poor house: dying Judeo-Christian civilization.
The slob/ogre: postmodern man in rejection of uber-man.
The blank paper: the bankruptcy of philosophy and false erudition.
Ipso facto: Gary Larsen was a Nietzschean!
lol.
top that, ogre Ben! :-)
Loy
Loy,
With all due respect, I think you're incorrect. "He still put meat on the table," isn't a common enough expression to be the answer - the more common expression is "still put FOOD on the table." It also just doesn't seem like a Far Side thing to do.
I could be wrong, but my interpretation is that it's one of the many Caveman Far Side comics. This is a caveman at home, and (as an earlier commenter noted), he's got a bowl of meat on the table rather than a bowl of fruit.
Simpler than you might like it to be, but I'm pretty sure that's the answer.
You could be right, Mel. I didn't even think of the Caveman theme.
Good stuff, and thanks!
Loy
All are wrong. It's a mans version of potpourri....instead it's "pork"-pourri!! Porkpourri!!
I like that one, "Porkpourri!" Smells like cave-man, ugh! :-)
Maybe he had a cat and it tore up the house and now it wont anymore?
Post a Comment