I like your underlined was, when you surely mean is…if it was published tomorrow it would still raise an eyebrow or two. But I believe you're way off the mark if you think everybody would agree that this strip is both unpleasant and disturbing. The act it clearly alludes to in the dialogue is, but the strip isn't in itself. Like I said, I just see a clumsy, even crass (panel three...), attempt at transgressive humour with the context, a mainstream kids' comic, being relevant.Phoenix wrote:The strip was essentially unpleasant and disturbing, Mike. The fact that the majority of its young readers may not have noticed the subtext didn't make the strip any less unpleasant or disturbing.
Even the almost inexcusable wording in this example, which can only be taken to be a reference to pedophiliac rape, is part of the same pushing of the boundaries that artists and writers often engage in. I don't see it as an attempt to legitimise, condone, or downgrade the crime to an act of contravention. In fact, the juxtaposition of these words with the supposedly sexless act of corporal punishment is revealing. I admit that as an arts graduate with years of hanging around the fringes of society I may have a more liberal view than is prevalent around these parts, but that's why I have to take issue with your assumption that we all find the actual strip unpleasant and disturbing. I hear what you're saying - that any and all references to such acts are not comedic in any respect - but you have to accept that the artist/writer of this strip appears to have had a different point of view....
Maybe. But I think if this is depicted, whether in prose, art or film then even this relationship between the spanker and spankee can easily become sexualised to some by the addition of the voyeuristic dimension. Effects which, speaking psychosexually, may sometimes be beyond the control of the artist. I've heard it said that an artist should ultimately be responsible for the effect of his art, but these effects are myriad and often unpredictable. I'd be as outraged as you appear to be if you could show that this strip had any predictably negative effect on the readers, and, by extension, society.Phoenix wrote: I think we must bear in mind that the comic would probably also have been read, although not necessarily bought, by a minority of older children, as well as by those parents who read the comic strips to or with their children, who may well have picked up on the innuendo. I also feel that the subtext is rather more substantial than corporal punishment was often just a peccadillo. In fact, I think there is a general agreement on this forum that there is a deeper subtext here. Regarding your point that a grown man hitting a young girl on her exposed buttocks will always have a sexual dimension, I do think you need to add the caveat that this would not normally be the case where it is a father smacking his daughter.
No. I said that older readers would get the innuendo. But I guess the use of the imagery in the context of a comic strip was a result of newly minted mainstream concerns, and a lack of inhibition - not a didactic expression as such, but an admission of the existence of such concerns and, as I said, I feel it's primarily an attempt at prurient humour. A few years later the underground comix movement would take this material to it's logical extremes, and find a comic audience of (mainlyPhoenix wrote:You may well be right that comics showing punishment beatings of children might have had some influence on the awakening of an awareness of children's rights, but if you are suggesting that the carefree cartoon world of a children's comic was the ideal place, for whatever reason, to bring the issue to the mainstream, which I take to mean adults, you would appear to be contradicting the point you made in your first lines, in which you seemed to dismiss the likelihood of the artist's subtext being spotted at all.
) adults.And, for those that don't get the 'too tight' - she's referring to her bonds. Look at the picture - she's tied to the foot stool...(this just gets worse, doesn't it?).
