Word: cartooning
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...book is even more interesting as an archive of American humor. From the '30s until the '80s, Mankoff says, the punch line was in the third person: we were laughing at--not with--the figure in the cartoon: it was an era of screwball comedies, Jack Benny and cops chasing people through hallway doors. In a James Thurber cartoon, a man stops his date in the lobby of his building to say, "You wait here and I'll bring the etchings down." It's the Joey theory of humor...
...early '80s, Chandler had taken over, and the speaker was in on the joke. "Now everyone does shtick, so you see this wiseguy attitude. They're giving you their philosophy through humor," says Mankoff. In a 2002 cartoon by Bruce Eric Kaplan, who wrote for Seinfeld, a wife exiting a movie theater says to her husband, "I liked it except for you." Says Mankoff: "It's a Seinfeld line. That person realizes she is funny." Jokes today are also less visual and far more newsy than they were 40 years ago, when cartoonists could not expect news events to enter...
...real proof that humor is immutable isn't that you still shamefully laugh at a 1972 cartoon in which a Chinese warrior says, "That banquet was most delicious, and yet now, somehow, once again I feel the pang of hunger." It's that every week Mankoff has to reject great submissions because the research department sends him typed index cards enumerating similar jokes made in New Yorker cartoons over the past 79 years. Seriously, people, let go of the deserted island...
...security moms are this political season's cartoon action figures, the vital voters whom Kerry and Bush are supposedly chasing in the final weeks of the race. These heirs of the soccer moms have provided a handy explanation for how Kerry lost his lead this summer, when terrorism alerts went back up to orange and the scarring images of the school siege in Beslan, Russia, settled into the suburban psyche. In recent presidential elections women have leaned Democratic by at least 8 percentage points, and after his Boston convention, they favored Kerry by 14. But in recent weeks that margin...
This season will put her method to the test. In addition to a fantasy starring Jim Carrey (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events), a kiddie cartoon featuring cable TV's SpongeBob SquarePants and a remake of Alfie with Jude Law, one of Paramount's most anticipated releases is Team America: World Police, a raunchy, red-hot political satire from the South Park crew, using goofy marionettes...