As opposed to Dora threatening someone with a sword for asking her bf out when that person didn't know he was her bf?
Violence and the threat of violence has been a mainstay of the humor in this comic from the beginning.
Yup. I was uncomfortable with it then, too. My objection, however, is the retcon, not the original joke. I do see how my post could be interpreted that way, however, I should have been clearer about what precisely bothered me.
Indeed, part of the early humour of the comic basically boiled down to one of the following topics:
- Obscure music reference.
- Obscene joke/prank from Pintsize
- Faye threatening or inflicting violence on someone, usually Marten.
We can't cherry pick what's right or wrong with any joke because we don't like the situation. If we do that, then we need to judge every other joke in the comic. Every time violence has come up in the comic, its backfires on the instigator, sometimes in quick horrific ways.
The joke made me merely uncomfortable. The retcon made me angry. I should have been clearer about that. In addition, the act of retconning something is not something I disagree with on general terms - if something doesn't work, fixing it can be a good thing to do. It was this particular retcon, and what it implied, that I am not comfortable with.
I do not agree that the violence backfires on the instigator every time. I feel that it is almost always treated much too lightly, and often draws no drawback at all. However, this is different, because here, it
can’t backfire on the instigator, because it was made not to happen. She cannot be made to suffer for pulling a gun on Clinton, cannot be held guilty for implying that he was not allowed to leave after she had taken her gun out, because the author made it not happen.
Now, if she had indeed gone too far, the author could have made it backfire on her. This is a situation where no one involved has any reason not to report this to the police, or her bosses. She could have gotten fired, lost her right to own a gun, gotten a fine, or any other punishment. It could have been presented in any tone of the author’s choice, funny or serious, played for comedy or drama. Instead, the author made it not have happened, so none of these things could happen to her. Mr. Jacques choose to instead make it impossible to punish the violent person.
Making it impossible to punish violent people is the opposite of making it backfire in their face. It is to say that violence should be done, rather than say that one should be punished for doing it.
Rather the opposite of how these actions should be treated, really. And also in a way very similar to how one defends the horrors of violence in reality - make it seem like the act was a different one, or in a different context, than it was. To make the act seem less serious, less unambiguous.
It was this act, this statement, which made me angry. Not at all the joke itself.