this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024

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The Far Side

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Hello fellow Far Side fans!

About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.

The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side

Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s The Far Side!

Ps. Sub to all my comic strip communities:

Bloom County [email protected] https://lemm.ee/c/bloomcounty

Calvin and Hobbes [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/calvinandhobbes

Cyanide and Happiness !cyanideandhappiness https://lemm.ee/c/cyanideandhappiness

Garfield [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/garfield

The Far Side [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]

Fine print: All comics I post are freely available online. In no way am I claiming ownership, copyright or anything else. This is a not for profit community, we just want to enjoy our comics, thank you.

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136

23 April 2024 (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I remember watching some bewitched reruns and they only had a few plots.

Husband doesn’t want wife to use witchcraft ever
Husband wants to be the breadwinner and doesn’t want any magical help with his career. By the way his job is in advertising which is useless and stupid so why would he care?
Wife’s in laws hate husband and make problems for him using magic in some way
Nosey neighbor keeps seeing strange things but nobody believes her

It’s a comedy so nobody ever thinks to use magic in a way to help society or something, so that’s ok. But it’s very noticeable how mundane the plots are. Also I think there were a few other old shows where the characters were in the advertising business or television business. I bet this was done to pander to the people who were paying for the show.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So many of the plots are of the form "housewife disobeys husband" that it's seriously hard to watch.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Watching old media is painful sometimes because of how much inherent misogyny there is.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Eh, it doesn't bother me, but it's probably because I grew up with it. I'm quite capable of separating that nonsense from the rest of the show, and not being misogynistic toward others (or so my wife says).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Even some not so old. JAG is a show I loved as a kid. I tried to watch it again a couple of years ago and was shocked at how much misogyny was portrayed in it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Like the times the wife has a valid disagreement and the immediate response is for her to "stop being hysterical."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Or you watch even older films and the response is physical abuse.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

On The Honeymooners his catchphrase was "one of these days Alice, bang zoom straight to the moon." He was going to hit her so hard she flew to the moon. The height of comedy at the time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

But it's nice to see how much progress we're making as a society

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think the characters are in those careers commonly because it's what the writers know.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Close but it's because if the husband is an advertiser, then it's REALLY easy to slip product placements in. It was part of the transition from the actors just blatantly looking at the screen and advertising the product to making it more subtle.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This comment was so shocking I spit out my cool, refreshing (your product name here).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I nod approvingly as I sip my hot, comforting cup of (your product name here).

[–] [email protected] 38 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The joke being that that's basically the plot to every episode.

Endora is Samantha's mother, so Darren's mother-in-law.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Where would a young person even encounter Bewitched and actually watch it these days?

It's on various streaming services, and maybe that sitcom/classic TV channel on digital broadcast

You'd actually have to seek it out to watch it, as opposed to coming across it when channel surfing.

Another American cultural reference that will be lost to technology...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Or maybe it's because it's a 60 year old sitcom and not every reference has to be fresh forever?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Jack Sparrow is one of my favourite characters.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

You mean Major Healy

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Who even channel surfs anymore? You have to seek out everything now. I find myself watching Pluto just because you can find random shows without having to know about it already.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I've never actually watched an episode but do know about the general premise somehow, I think through references to it in other media. I was able to figure out most of the joke even though I don't know the character names.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah it was different as a kid, I had Nick at nite before it was it's own channel so the cartoons rolled into I dream of genie, bewitched, Mary tyler moore, dick van dyke. Welcome back cotter, happy days

I've seen pretty much every episode of these shows even though they were an easy 20 years before my time.

You can stumble across it on Pluto or tubi but who would bother when YouTube exists and these shows... I'm not sure they hold the test of time even though I look back on them fondly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I’m a child of the 80’s and still have the theme songs for Mr Ed and My Three Sons because of that channel.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I think it’s on Tubi which is free and young people can figure it out. But they won’t stumble upon it like you said