Non-Sequitur

A few months ago, as an experiment in "random noise humor", I asked the posters over at Lookout Landing to indulge in a "non-sequitur only" conversation thread. There was a healthy response, and some fun reading that came out of it. You can see the results here.

A couple of things stood out to me... first: it's damn hard to make truly random responses. Most attempts at random thought generation are actually based on abstract (or hidden) neural connections. If I say "angry" and you reply "popsicle" it may sound random, but there's probably a connection in that grubby little mind of yours. Sometimes these hidden connections reveal something about the writer... sometimes they reveal something about how the reader fills in the gap. Either way can be entertaining from a psychological perspective. Sometimes the most humorous posts are the ones where a secret meaning emerges purely by accident. This can be entertaining in the same way that the Garfield Randomizer is. I wish there were more venues to continue this kind of experiment.

Secondly, I encountered this graphic, which was posted as a non-sequitur response to a previous post, but also includes an attempt at absurdist humor based on a non-sequitur within it. I've been ruminating on this cartoon far too much over the last month so I need to write about it.


This brought to mind an old routine by George Carlin. He once said that anything was funny, even rape. To prove his point he told his audience to picture Bugs Bunny raping Elmer Fudd. You were supposed to laugh. You were supposed to concede the point. The problem, for me, was that Carlin's routine wasn't actually funny. He didn't prove anything.

Now to my confession... When I first read this cartoon I contorted with laughter. In fact, I revisited it the next day and LOL again. How is it that this four panel cartoon succeeded where George Carlin failed? My conjecture is that the humor in this cartoon has nothing to do with actual rape (unlike the Carlin bit) but instead relies on shocking the reader with massive changes of tone. To begin with, Doug (a Nickelodeon cartoon about a sixth grader) should never be talking about date rape. This juxtaposition alone is like much of the humor found at the Garfield Randomizer site I linked to above (where Family Circus characters are made to quote HP Lovecraft.) But it's the final panel that hits hardest: when we are suddenly pulled back into the typically goofy cartoon world after reading through a scene involving serious emotional gravity. It may actually be the beads of sweat on Doug's brow that sells this cartoon more than anything else. It's those drops of sweat that reinforce that this isn't just a random panel mashup... Doug is still freaking out, but Doug's friend has suddenly reverted to 6th grade shenanigans.

So... is it funny? If it is, does that mean that rape can be funny? Or can I rest assured that rape is still unfunny, and this cartoon cracks me up for other reasons?