A Victoria Roberts schadenfrog cartoon in the 5/5/25 New Yorker:
(#1) The surviving frog — call it Schadenfroggy — takes malicious pleasure in its companion having been flattened to death; it’s a cruel, cruel ranine world
What Victoria Roberts has presented us with is a somewhat eccentric portmanteau word
schadenfrog = schadenfreude + frog (with shared fr and with the eude omitted)
using the excellent borrowed noun
schadenfreude: pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune: a business that thrives on schadenfreude | a frisson of schadenfreude. ORIGIN German Schadenfreude, from Schaden ‘harm’ + Freude ‘joy’ (NOAD)
Froggy goes a-toonin’. VR is (at least in recent years) into frogs. Three more of her frog-themed cartoons in the New Yorker; they’re all about Schadenfroggy (or else all talking frogs look alike):
— from the 11/7/22 issue:
(#2) Escaping froggishness
— from the 1/31/25 issue:
(#3) The mirror of vanity
— from the 2/17/25 issue:
(#4) Animal sounds
The couch cartoons. VR is fond of Psychiatrist cartoons. My 1/15/22 posting “On the couch” displays 5 Psychiatrist cartoons by VR (plus a note about her and her work).
The couple cartoons. A gigantic theme in VR’s cartoon world is the domestic life of couples. On at least one occasion, she’s managed to put the couple in an analyst’s offi ce:
(#5) VR’s couple Psychiatrist cartoon
And at least once, the couple has been a same-sex one:
(#6) This is, of course, a Proust cartoon, and a gay life cartoon (William Haefeli could have done a version of this with one of his NYC gay couples), and a passionate reader cartoon, and probably several other things as well
xx
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