Keeping Score: Where Was The Funny?
It is sometimes said of old jokes that they haven’t aged well. One-panel cartoons from newspapers and magazines are particularly susceptible; if you don’t believe me, grab some hundred-year-old cartoons from Punch and see how far you get with them. When I saw this half-century old comic by Smilby in a 1972 issue of Oui magazine, I’ll confess I found it (and I do still find it) perplexing:
There’s no mystery what’s going on: he’s getting seven orgasms to each one she’s getting, and from the expression on her face, she’s justifiably unhappy about it. That’s a timeless problem. Although I’d like to believe men are considerably more inclined to make sure of their partner’s orgasms in 2026 than they were in 1972, and women more likely to demand something closer to orgasmic parody rather than accepting such a miserable ratio of happy endings, I suspect a poll of sufficient detail and honesty would nonetheless disclose a persistent pleasure imbalance even today.
It doesn’t seem funny to me in 2026. Who would have thought it hilarious in 1972?
Perhaps the comic is like many of the cartoons in the New Yorker, founded in an absurdism that doesn’t survive close scrutiny. It tickles your funny bone or it doesn’t, but it can’t be explained in words.
Maybe the humor is in the artwork; perhaps his jagged smirk and her bombastic side-eye strike you as hilarious.
But I think it’s important to remember that Oui was a middle-brow porn magazine for men, and patriarchal sexism was much more blatant in the early 1970s than it is today. Men had not for the most part learned to code or conceal their misogyny, nor in many cases had they even learned that they ought to try. So: one working theory of the humor in this panel is that the orgasmic imbalance itself is what was supposed to be funny. Male-gaze hilarity at the cocksman’s ability to take “lay his chick” without a thought for her pleasure.
I dunno. I was a toddler in 1972. I genuinely don’t understand the animating humor in this panel. What do y’all think?
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