MetaChat - Explain this New Yorker cartoon to me

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26 July 2008

Explain this New Yorker cartoon to me because, you know, I may not be sophisticated enough to get it.→[More:]OK, so the SO asked me about this recent cartoon, and then wasn't really satisfied with my explanation. So I come to you metachat. Can you do better? Can you?

post by: DarkForest at: 17:40 | 20 comments

Here's the cartoon:
≡ Click to see image ≡

posted by DarkForest 26 July | 17:41

It's a global warming 'joke'. The eskimos are on the last bits of ice in the artic, which then break apart. Poor lonely single guy is going to float off to his death without his family.

On the plus side, he's unlikely to be eaten by a polar bear.

posted by mudpuppie 26 July | 17:48

Huh, I just thought it was the end of their vacation together, and the bergs were the separate transportation.

posted by Miko 26 July | 17:53

My explanation was like mudpuppie's. The SO doesn't think they look like eskimos, but like Santa Clauses instead.

Interesting thought, Miko. I like that there can be alternate explanations.

posted by DarkForest 26 July | 17:58

I concur with 'puppie. I don't really get the one on page 73 with the prickly-man coming home announcing, "We got the cactus account!"

posted by steef 26 July | 17:59

I'm gonna go a little deeper...supposedly when someone gets too old you send them off on an icefloe...only this time the trick's on the whole family.

posted by bunnyfire 26 July | 18:07

I think this cartoon is about the age-old thing of Eskimos putting their grandparents out on ice flows to die at the end of their life, but not realizing that due to global warming, the same thing has happened to them.

What do I win?

posted by Lipstick Thespian 26 July | 18:08

I don't jive with mudpuppie's grim view of global warming. Being the glass is half-full type, it's obvious to me that this is a comment on how global warming is bringing families closer, and this lonely tired eskimo is reunited with his family after being stuck on another glacier for so long.

posted by Hellbient 26 July | 18:18

Excellent, bunnyfire and LT! Viewed that way, it actually is a bit funnier.

posted by DarkForest 26 July | 18:19

I think it's (also) a riff on the desert island cartoons.

posted by Claudia_SF 26 July | 18:47

Do I need to remind you that I have a huge Internet following?

posted by ColdChef 26 July | 19:33

Christ, what an asshole.

posted by stilicho 26 July | 19:34

≡ Click to see image ≡

posted by wendell 26 July | 21:52

Maybe the it's a running theme in the New Yorker:

≡ Click to see image ≡

≡ Click to see image ≡

≡ Click to see image ≡

It especially looks like a further (global warming) riff on that last one. And, actually - the only funny one. According to me.

posted by taz 27 July | 00:25

(the one DarkForest posted is the only funny one, I mean)

posted by taz 27 July | 00:50

So I come to you metachat. Can you do better? Can you?

Oo, oo, pick me! *waves hand* I know!

Ahem.

It is not funny.

The New Yorker, mindful of the upcoming crisis in humor resources, has long been conserving the funny by publishing a minimum of one not-funny cartoon in each issue.

posted by Elsa 27 July | 14:27

Soon, the New Yorker will switch from iceberg cartoons to ones featuring rising tropical waters.

posted by box 27 July | 14:46

upcoming crisis in humor resources

You mean our humor resources are drying up? Have we already reached peak-humor? Will we be fighting future wars over over those last few Henny Youngman gags? [shudder]

posted by DarkForest 27 July | 15:09

Maybe the it's a running theme in the New Yorker

The only running theme with cartoons in The New Yorker is that 99% of them are absolutely not funny. My parents get the magazine sent from the States to the UK and I've seen countless editions, each one filled to the brim with awful, awful cartoons.

posted by TheDonF 27 July | 16:13

I don't really get the one on page 73 with the prickly-man coming home announcing, "We got the cactus account!

As an businessman, he has to make sacrifices to land accounts - sometimes ones that are painful compromises.

posted by Miko 28 July | 14:00

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