Its not a joke about wordplay because if you take away the dark humour context - the loss, the reaction of the mother - it’s got nothing other than ‘lol a word has two meanings’.
If the mum was cut out of the last panel - then yep you could pass it off as absurdist humour, but as it is I don’t think thats fair, an easy out - the humour relies on her reaction. I appreciate you engaging as I thought it was an interesting conversation, but most have really taken it to heart it and attacked me for finding a comic distasteful. Counter opinions are very unwelcome here like most comms on Lemmy. My last reply about it but I did want to thank you if but to disagree politely. 👌
It’s not real, so empathy is not required. Cartoons often have horrifying implications if you look too closely, because they’re not trying to represent reality
If you’re putting yourself in the place of the mother pig, you’re zoomed in to far. The absurdism is in the situation
Think of it this way, if the reason for the child dying was making some parallel to something real, like splitting the family due to deportation… That’s something grounded in reality, it would be horrible
But there is no situation where doctors turn children into meat as a service. The premise is absurd. There’s no danger a real person would ever go through this, this is pure fancy
The mother’s reaction isn’t to laugh at her pain, it’s to let us sit with the moment and let the joke land
Its not real so empathy is irrelevant?
Its not a joke about wordplay because if you take away the dark humour context - the loss, the reaction of the mother - it’s got nothing other than ‘lol a word has two meanings’.
If the mum was cut out of the last panel - then yep you could pass it off as absurdist humour, but as it is I don’t think thats fair, an easy out - the humour relies on her reaction. I appreciate you engaging as I thought it was an interesting conversation, but most have really taken it to heart it and attacked me for finding a comic distasteful. Counter opinions are very unwelcome here like most comms on Lemmy. My last reply about it but I did want to thank you if but to disagree politely. 👌
It’s not real, so empathy is not required. Cartoons often have horrifying implications if you look too closely, because they’re not trying to represent reality
If you’re putting yourself in the place of the mother pig, you’re zoomed in to far. The absurdism is in the situation
Think of it this way, if the reason for the child dying was making some parallel to something real, like splitting the family due to deportation… That’s something grounded in reality, it would be horrible
But there is no situation where doctors turn children into meat as a service. The premise is absurd. There’s no danger a real person would ever go through this, this is pure fancy
The mother’s reaction isn’t to laugh at her pain, it’s to let us sit with the moment and let the joke land