Sometimes, if I am having a bad day, I remember the comic The Oatmeal and within minutes of reaching the website, I have forgotten why I was unhappy.
Many comics can entertain me. But the artist and writer, Matthew Inman, is one of only a few humorists who can make me laugh out loud.
At times, the comic strips reach brilliance. The one on content creation was one of the best I have ever read – and I read it more than once. Not only was it funny; it was a perceptive look at creativity with insights I can use in my own work.
However, Inman recently wrote a comic denounced by a large number of readers. The outcry was so strident, the comic felt compelled to remove it from his website. Why? Because he used the word “rape.”
The context: he was personifying the keys of a computer,naming their chief roles, such as the delete button being “The Janitor.” For the last panel, he drew a comic comparing the over-pressed F5 computer key to a rape victim.
The context was so light and the comparison so absurd, it is hard to imagine how anyone could be offended – but many were. Readers expressed anger that he would take rape so “lightly.” A cyber-lynch-mob gathered against him, demanding apology and shaming him into removing the offending panel.
I am still struggling to understand why. In The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, the hero, the virtuously selfish genius Howard Roark, rapes a girl and she falls in love with him. The renowned author made a rapist into a kind of saint but fans, for the most part, forgave this.
Matthew Inman, however, was not encouraging, extolling, or condoning rape. He had merely used the word in a silly comic about computer keys before mass hysteria ensued.
Rape is a particularly taboo subject these days, after a certain Republican politician suggested that “legitimate rape” never results in pregnancy. Critics were right to call him on his obtuse remark. But Inman had nothing to do with any of this. He was not demeaning women or saying that rape is a good thing. He was a comic using an outrageously absurd and silly metaphor for laughs.
However, to some people, even making “light of” painful subjects is criminal – even though this is arguably the best use of comedy. Mark Twain said, “The secret source of humor itself is not joy, but sorrow.”
Jews who made fun of German soldiers in World War II may have understood this better than anyone.
Humor grants detachment. It flips perspectives. It relieves tension. Doing that, however, sometimes means bringing tensions to the surface.
The problem is that not everyone finds the same things funny. If a comic raises an uncomfortable topic that someone finds unfunny, the person who does not “get it” is left only with bad feelings. Without laughter for relief, the joke is only offensive to that person.
However, jokes should not be removed from view simply because not everyone likes them. As an art, comedy thrives on forbidden topics. Humorists say things others are afraid to say. They teeter on the edge of safety and propriety. They test convention. The best jokes are risky.
For that reason, it is inevitable that they sometimes go “too far.” If you are constantly flirting with social taboos for laughs, at some point you are going to offend.
Comics need taboos. Without them, it would be hard for comics to push the limits of propriety to create the kind of tension that draws laughs.
The tragedy is not that some people are offended by certain jokes. It is that some people take their personal response too far – to the point of coercing comics to remove jokes that make them uncomfortable.
I am capable of being offended too. Some topics are too raw and disturbing for me to laugh at them. But censorship is not the answer. Avoiding the kinds of websites that are likely to annoy or offend me – that makes more sense.
It may seem odd to speak so seriously about a comic strip that is often silly; that uses bathroom humor and compares stroking a cat belly to “frolicking on the back hair of an angel.” But the creativity of talented humorists goes beyond relief from boredom; it makes life better.
Inhibiting this creativity by monitoring how certain unpleasant subjects are discussed accomplishes nothing good. And striking an uncomfortable word from the comic lexicon does not make its underlying reality go away.
To me, calling an F5 computer key the “rape victim” is too silly to be offensive. Those who disagree should avoid the site, not deny its content to everyone else.
Mark Inman no longer thinks the F5 joke he removed was particularly funny or clever. However, many fans on his Facebook page disagree. I think it was funny. I want to go back and look at it – but it is gone.
While the humor of the F5 joke may be debated, I am certain of this much: it had every right to exist. Inman had no intention of hurting anyone when he wrote it. He has a rare talent, and chaining his vocabulary benefits no one.
I want his cat belly, Tesla, and Sriracha sauce jokes to continue unfettered. The Oatmeal is his website and he gives his most of his content away for free. And because he shares his quirky, vibrant comic world, it is there to tempt me into laughing on days when smiles are rare.