LMT - Feb 8, 2021
All of the other cartoons so far this year were very simple and innocent, I think. One about Mick Jagger, one about American politics (a bipartisan joke, mind you), and one about the GameStop/stock market fiasco. The cartoon last week employed the word ‘abroad,’ and I assume that is the one that upset one reader—just the one, from what I can tell.
The definition of Abroad is: beyond the boundaries of one’s country; in or to a foreign country. The definition of A Broad is: slang, often offensive; Woman. The definition of Pun is: the usually humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more of its meanings or the meaning of another word similar in sound. Finally, the definition of a Joke is: a. something said or done to provoke laughter - especially: a brief oral narrative with a climactic humorous twist. b(1): the humorous or ridiculous element in something. (2): an instance of jesting: Kidding.
The interesting part is why they thought it was offensive. They called it ‘Misogynistic,’ which it didn’t intend to be. If it wanted to be misogynistic, it might say something like, “’misogynistic’ is such a complicated word, a woman must have spelled it.” A person easily offended might think, “that’s implying women are complex! that’s rude.” I might argue women are not better described as ‘simple,’ and taking either word as an insult is your decision. Conversely, it’s insulting to men implying they are too simple to come up with that spelling. Men would have called it “Lady-Hatey.”
Merriam Webster, who were three men, and not one woman, by the way, defines misogynistic as “feeling, showing, or characterized by 'hatred' of or prejudice against women.” The February 8th Cartoon read: “...he told me he was born abroad. It was impressive, you couldn’t tell, just from looking at him...” I hardly think this implies anyone has a hatred for women. If anything, it’s ignorant, transphobic, if not perhaps racist. But the question is, who is offending? and who is being offended?
Consider this: there are at least five parties involved in this cartoon caption.
- The Writer (gender irrelevant),
- the man sitting in the cafe, let’s call him Ned. Historically this character is a man, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be a woman. Women can be overweight and drink coffee too. It’s 2021, after all.
- The person, a stranger, who was born abroad.
- The person he is telling the story to, And
- you, the reader.
The Writer (1) could choose to offend thousands of readers at once, potentially. But in this case, they wanted to do a play on words, a pun, on the word ‘abroad.’ However, they wouldn’t necessarily condone this type of language, despite it existing.
Ned (2) tells someone a story about something he heard and how he felt about it. Much in the same way WR from Craven is doing with their critique. Ned hears a stranger say the word/phrase ‘abroad’ and thinks either; a. “this stranger is a bit rudely referring to women as ‘broads’” or b. “I, Ned, call women’ broads’ so I’ll blindly, and without clarification, assume this Stranger means ‘a woman.’” What Ned doesn’t do is hear ‘abroad.’ There is also an option c, which I’ll get to later.
The Stranger (3) is either formerly a woman or born while his parents lived outside of their home country, or maybe just on a lovely vacation. Probably not as fun as their vacation three trimesters previous, however.
The audience of Ned’s story (4), this ‘Stock Character,’ is just there to hear Ned, which in turn allows you, the reader, to overhear Ned. It’s a bit Meta, really. They, in turn, might be judged just as they are judging Ned. They can think Ned a fool for misunderstanding this Homonymous Verbiage (That’s my Shakespeare name. Nobody steal that!), or they can themselves misunderstand the topic just as Ned does. Overhearing two morons have a dumb conversation is objectively funnier to the reader than witnessing a person of average intelligence have to listen to a moron tell a story that, unknowingly, exemplifies his ignorance.
Finally, you (5) the reader. You are overhearing Ned tell someone, or maybe no one (he may have gone mad in that dark cafe), something he overheard. There is not enough context to say whether the Stranger was speaking to Ned directly or if Ned just heard someone, somewhere, mention that they were ‘born abroad.’ Not having context is part of what makes this format funny. If you heard a posh Englishman saying it, it sounds more like ‘abroad.’ If you listened to a typical native New Yorker magazine vendor saying it, it might sound more like ‘a broad.’
Note: If either of those two characters were to say it and mean the opposite, that would be quite the humorous twist. #Jokes.
You can choose to be offended by the Writer for being aware that some people speak rudely of women and exploiting a fictional character to shine a light on poor social skills. Or you could take issue with Ned being rude by inferring that he does, in fact, mean ‘a woman’ when he says ‘a broad.’
This brings me to Option c. for Party #2. The things we don’t know about these characters could fill the funny pages. How do we know that Ned wasn’t expressing his confusion about the Stranger’s skin colour? Ned may know perfectly well the meaning of ‘abroad.’ But his confusion might lie in the fact that the Stranger looked just like him. Maybe Ned is Xenophobic, and this was his profound moment of realization that all humans can be equal “...you couldn’t tell, just from looking at him...” That could be Ned’s social epiphany. He’s enlightened.
Ironically, the critic says the cartoon often doesn’t make sense, but, in this instance, they couldn’t have been offended without first deciding how the joke makes sense to them. The critic being aware of the derogatory word ‘broad’ and its similarity to the word ‘abroad’ means it’s in their vocabulary. Somehow, they’ve concluded that by putting it in the mouth of a cartoon character, LMT is disparaging women and setting a low bar for the attitudes of not only LMT’s readership but “rural Saskatchewan” in general. They characterize the cartoon with a word, misogynistic, that implies a hatred for women. It seems a tad harsh, considering there weren’t any women involved. No one was calling a woman a ‘broad.’ The Stranger never called himself a ‘broad,’ and was never a woman. That was the twist. That was the misunderstanding. That was the joke.
By the way, for those paying attention, we recently published an RM Report wherein two different Councillors used two different and terrible derogatory phrases to describe ACTUAL PEOPLE in the community, and NO ONE said anything about it. Only LMT came to the defence of a real Woman, and a real Person of Colour who were really being spoken rudely about in a public venue. The only thing to come of these events was the threat of litigation and this RM preventing us from recording meetings rather than holding their tongues when their questionable personalities bubble to the surface.
Jokes are jokes. They’re meant to be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes they are nonsense, like the one this week, about cough syrup. None of that happened. It’s just a funny visual and a mildly clever portmanteau. Sometimes they have a deeper message wrapped in a dumb turn of phrase, and sometimes they use words people don’t like to illustrate a point about perception. Last week certainly did.
-Editor, Dan Degenstien