Archive for the ‘Bathos’ Category

Barcelonian bathos

May 25, 2026

(a dip into the rhetorical organization of texts and into figurative language, but getting its raw material from gay porn and so it’s going to be entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest)

In the opening of Raging Stallion’s 2024 porn flick Tourist Attractions (scenes from the stream of visitors to Beau Butler’s (fantasy) rental house in Barcelona), BB explains the pleasures of the city:

I like to take in everything Barcelona has to offer: art, culture, food, cock — you know, the basics.

Thus launching this seaside D&A S&F circus with a stroke of comic bathos. From the high level of art and culture, dropping to the artful and cultivated satisfaction of an animal need and then plunging to what we think of as raw vulgar pleasure.

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Posted in Allusion, Bathos, Figurative language, Gay porn, Jokes, Language and the body, Language of sex, Metaphor, Poetry, Pop culture, Porn actors | Leave a Comment »

Two texties, in two tonalities

August 7, 2018

Texties are cartoon-like compositions in which a pictorial component is entirely absent or merely decorative, not essential to the point of the composition — in effect, words-only cartoons; they can be intended as humor, like gag cartoons, or as serious commentary, like political cartoons.

Two have come to me via friends on Facebook recently — both funny, both taking off on specific registers in modern printed English: the lost and found poster (in the texty “FOUND:CAKE”, or F:C), and the amazing-fact texty on the net (in the texty “[plant facts!]”, or pf!). F:C is an elaborate translation, in detail, of an item of popular culture; pf! is an undermining of the amazing-fact texty form itself.

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Posted in Bathos, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Technical and ordinary language, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »