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Alt-text: Charlie actually delivered the Medicare line almost verbatim in the 1971 movie's Fizzy Lifting Drink scene, but it was ultimately cut from the final release.
I have to start this review with an admission: I don't live in the United States. I'm a European, so a lot of your political statements only make vague sense to me, and I have no idea who most of the well-known American politicians actually are. In other words: Ha ha, you are all dumb because you live in a different country than me!
So there are these "quizzes" that usually compare their authors' unfavorite politician to either a cartoon character or a hisorical villain (guess who the most common one is) through a list of quotes by both, that is supposed to show that said quotes are difficult to connect to the correct figure, and therefore the things they both said are basically the same.
Of course Randall, being who he is, immediately though that it would be unconventional to the point of Hillarity to do the same thing, but instead of comparing someone named Mitt Romney (seriously, who IS that?) to Adolf Hitler, use a fictional child, say, Charlie from that chocolate factory flick.
Do I even need to explain why this is stupid? Okay, here's the thing: Political satire usually tries to convey a message. It may be stupid, or even wrong, but it still says something the author deems significant. Here, the only message I can see is "The former Massachusetts governor is completely different from a child character from a kids' movie", to which I can only say "Well, DUH."
And that's the problem with today's strip. It has no meaning when it should. It is satire that satirizes nothing, except maybe for Randall's inability to come up with a good comic.
Oh yeah, and the alt-text is dumb. Heard that joke a million times, and a million times better at that.
Three possible meanings for you:
ReplyDelete1) It satirizes those political quizzes that, thanks to Randy's Superior Mind Skills (TM), make about as much sense as this comic. (Ha ha, these quizzes are stupid!)
2) It satirizes those quizmakers who are really cherry-picking two similar quotes by different people and comparing them to each other, so instead Randy takes quotes that aren't related at all to each other, as if the quiz-maker had been fair and rational with picking quotes. (Ha ha, people who make these joke quizzes are biased!)
3) It's suggesting that Romney's political beliefs are of the same intellectual caliber as the inane ravings of a fictional 9-year-old. (Ha ha, Mitt Romney talks like a child!) or (Ha ha, Charlie Buckett talks like a politician!)
The problem is all of these ideas are stupid. (1) is just obviously stupid, (2) would require some obsession with logical fallacies to even get the joke, and (3), though it has potential, just does not work in the quiz format.
I think you're overthinking Randall's motivations here. Most likely he saw one of these quizzes and went "lol, wouldn't it be funny if there was a quiz like that with two characters that didn't have similar quotes at all? Then it'd be all easy and shit!"
DeleteAnd now we know the answer to that question: no, it wouldn't be funny.
I consider it most likely that Randy actually intended to make a "good" political quiz and failed.
ReplyDeleteAny other explanation requires a degree of self-awareness that Randy demonstrably does not posses.
I'm wondering if there was supposed to be some subtext in that in the US a pair of people running for the offices of president and vice president is often referred to as a "Ticket" and Mitt Romney is the best of a group of terrible contenders the are battling for the Republican nomination... meaning there are no good choices for running mates and it will be impossible for Mitt to put together a good ticket... namely Mitt Romney doesn't have a "Golden Ticket".
ReplyDeleteBut like you say, I'm just not seeing anything funny here... well aside from the nominally entertaining notion of bad propaganda masquerading as a comic satirizing bad propaganda masquerading as satire, but that is more us laughing at Randall then us laughing at his "joke".
...and when I say "best of a group of terrible contenders" I mean "the guy most likely to win the Republican nomination"...
DeleteI say it's Tom's #2. Absurdity is Mr. Xkcd's backup plan when he can't think of a joke. He knows those "who said it?" blurbs are just rhetorical bullshit, but he can't think of a clever way to show it. So he thinks of a silly way to show it. He's a silly person.
ReplyDeleteThis is the awkward thing that makes xkcd compelling to me. Geekiness is about always being right even at great personal expense. But there's a Monty Python silliness lurking in there somewhere. A geeks is necessarily immature like a child who demands to be king of the party but really just wants to sneak off alone and eat the pretty pink cake. Mr. Xkcd says "look at this intrinsically unsound argument people often make" and when his audience says "ah! that sounds amusingly plausible! what about it?" he fumbles and blurts "poopy pants!"
Favorably comparing xkcd to Monty Python. Second warning.
DeleteYou mistook my meaning: The Monty Python silliness lies in the soul of geekiness, not in the form or content of Xkcd. None of the Flying Circus were or are geeks, but their use of social awkwardness and disconnected thinking in making stuffy Brits laugh seems to resonate well with geeks.
DeleteMr. Xkcd seems to understand that silliness can be funny but he uses it clumsily.
But I look forward to my third and---I presume---final warning.
Fucking up my gag by responding to it. Final warning, I guess.
Delete"an European"
ReplyDelete...
"an yur-oh-PEE-an"
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"an yur..."
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"an y..."
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Oh, whoops. Lemme fix that...
Delete