From this site (Sad and Useless), this still from an animation:
Ordinarily, I’d unpack this image, but in the Linguage of Comics course at Stanford this quarter, Elizabeth Traugott and I have been asking students what sociocultural knowledge is required to understand a cartoon (this isn’t technically a cartoon, but it’s a similar visual joke) — imagine you’re trying to explain it to a Martian or a child — and why it’s funny. So think of this as an at-home exercise.
February 10, 2014 at 4:55 am |
This would be an even more challenging exercise — though not impossible — without the caption.