One way to explore erotic
humor is to check out cartoons online. What are the topics? How is
the humor communicated?
In perusing a few such
cartoons recently, I came up with quite a list of topics, including erectile dysfunction and infidelity.
Many of the cartoons
communicate their humor in one of two ways: by starting with a
comment or question that “sets up” a humorous response and ending
with the humorous response, or punchline, itself. In one such
cartoon, an older couple, apparently a husband and wife who've been
married a number of years, sitting up in bed is discussing a problem:
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Husband (Setup)
|
Wife (Punchline)
|
|
“Do you think the doctor could give
me some pills to improve my sex urge?”
|
“No, lad; he can only heal the sick,
not raise the dead.”
|
Bamforth & Co.
This cartoon
provides a setting (the bedroom, at night); characters (husband and
wife), a situation, implicit or directly stated (erectile
dysfunction), and dialogue (speech bubbles in the cartoon
designate the speech of both the husband and his wife).
In other
cartoons, an image creates a context for which a caption, often
representing the dialogue of one of the featured characters,
provides a commentary or an explanation:
|
Image (Setup)
|
Caption (Punchline)
|
|
Two coed students, seated on a bench on
campus, discuss another coed passing by, a male student ogling
her.
|
“She was on the dean's list until the
dean's wife heard about it.”
|
Playboy
As in the
example, above, the humor is often derived from pun or other form of
wordplay: “dean's list” referring, simultaneously, to an academic
honor and to an actual list of names, a “black book,” kept by the
dean.
The image
provides the setting (a university campus), characters (the coed
students and the male student), a situation (the student is on the
dean's list), and a suggestion of dialogue (one coed is addressing
another coed); dialogue is spoken only by one, not two characters,
and it is represented outside
the cartoon.
