I...WHAT!?

[trinityvixen]

There can be no question but this goes so far over the line as to be...

I mean, LOOK AT THIS.

That's so wrong. On every level. And this is supposed to be funny!? How fucking tasteless can you get?

This makes me want to delete every fucking VG Cats icon I have. I am seriously revolted.

ETA: NOT SURPRISINGLY, ALL THE PEOPLE COMMENTING ON HIS FORUM FOR THE COMIC THINK IT IS SOOOOOOO FUNNY. THESE PEOPLE ARE DISGUSTING.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The boundaries of good taste are exceeded whether they or mine or his. I doubt anyone finds this in good taste. There's also the tricky question of the fact that it's patently not funny, which, if you're going to be in bad taste, you have to shoot for in order to justify your work.

I also find it very telling that only guys on the f'list see no problem with this comic. It's specifically riffing on violence against women as a panacea for one person's suffering. That shit skates, as Kevin Smith said in This Film Is Not Yet Rated. It's only a woman, after all. Just forget what the coat hangar symbolizes and the suffering inherent in it. The debate is not that this is a comic that is incredibly awful and demeaning towards women written by a man but a call to defend his right to be offensive. God forbid we say he was in bad taste, no matter how many insignificant females feel utterly revolted by this.

For the record: this is not an infrequently read or unpopular comic.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Your first point is not true. Clearly the author thinks it will be okay. He didn't offend himself in writing it. He also didn't seem to offend any of the message board posters. And I don't want to get in some sort of argument over this because it's unwinnable, but the truth is, I feel inarguably, that humor is subjective. There is nothing in the world that SOMEONE doesn't find funny. Again, the readers on his message board and the author himself think the comic is funny.

Well, I am a guy, I can't argue that, but I think it's more that I don't read that kind of meaning into objects. It may be symbolic of various struggles throughout history for you. To me, it's a coat hanger. Same with the noose example you used below. It's not like I get offended whenever characters in a comedy get marched up to the noose (although this example is flawed IMO in that it can't be quite substituted in a potential joke the way the hanger is used, nor would finding a way to get it in necessarily have the same ties to racism the way the hanger is a reference to abortion).

I'm not arguing against the way you reacted to it at all, though, I'm just saying it isn't my way. I look at it as something that is, hopefully, currently not happening, and if we all don't vote with our heads up our asses, will not return to happening and if someone makes a joke about it, that may make them ignorant and stupid but for me it's not the end of the world. I'm pretty sure the author of the comic and his readers will go on being ignorant and stupid regardless of what they learn.

And while what Kevin Smith says is true, you can't really reverse it without creating a bit of the opposite double-standard. The point, as someone else was trying to make, is that it's just violence period, whether it's a coat hanger or a chainsaw murder.