I follow a lot of online comics, one of them being “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.” Before you go scampering over to check it out, be warned — the topics are usually very offensive. Part of the humour is in the dark and twisted switcheroos on dark and twisted situations. Adultery and murder are commonplace, as well as any number of sexual perversions. Usually it’s a one-two punch, with the comic itself implying a particular bizarre situation, then the caption switching it around to be something completely different (but equally — or even more — disgusting).
Okay, it doesn’t sound too appealing from my description here… but it really is quite funny and clever. You just have to appreciate dark humour and the cleverness of the switcheroos.
Today’s comic is one without a caption, the joke is entirely within the comic. It shows a graph measuring “Topics You’re Willing to Address in a Pickup Line” versus “Age” — indicating that as you get older, you’re going to use more and more bizarre topics for pickup lines. I guess out of desperation, is the implication.
The rest of the comic shows an example of this. A middle-aged man is approaching a woman on a bench. The woman has a baby in a sling and is nursing discreetly. The man says “I don’t believe in public breastfeeding, so… how about we go back to my place?”
I really, really like this comic.
First of all, in the SMBC universe, this man is definitely being portrayed as The Jerk. We are not supposed to be agreeing with him or sympathetic to him. His desperate pickup line is inappropriate and ludicrous. Therefore, the association is that “people who disagree with public breastfeeding = jerks”.
Secondly, as the foil, the woman is being potrayed as the “normal” person, the regular person just going about her day who gets set upon by this oddity. In other words, nursing in public is “normal”, and wearing your baby in a sling is “normal” as well.
I think part of what excites me so much is, in fact, that the baby is in a sling. Just a simple over-the-shoulder variety, possibly a pouch, possibly a tied shorty wrap. Whatever. Just the fact that it’s there means that the artist (who is just a regular joe, science student, young fellow) is aware of them. Where so many of us still get funny looks and “gee, that looks interesting, what is that thing?” it’s nice to see it just pop up like this in an online comic like no big deal.
It’s also notable that the woman is not portrayed as some super-crunchy hippie chick. She’s just a regular woman, nursing her baby on a park bench. Thanks, Zach, you just made my day!
