Sure. But did it serve the joke to be set at night? You’d think the default setting would be to set the comic during the day. So there’d need to be a reason to set it at night.
I think GaterMouth’s point was that comic strips use setting as variety, not just to set up a gag. You don’t want every strip to be in the exact same setting, use the exact same “props,” etc.
You might just as well ask why Calvin and Hobbes had a particular conversation in the backyard, when it would have worked just as well in Calvin’s room. Sometimes the answer is, well, there’s no real reason. The cartoonist just thought it worked best that way.
The nighttime aspect is actually the easiest part to explain.
I don’t like B.C., nor do I read it often, but even I know that the character in the strip in question is called the “Midnight… something or other” and pretty much always appears at night.
Actually… this particular character, every time I have seen him, has appeared at night and said a very unfunny one liner.
It seems extremely unlikely to me that the Islam interpretation is correct. I’d give it about a 1% chance like DtC did.
Getting in late here I see, but it seems possible to me that there might be an Islam thing going on but it isn’t that Islam is shit, per se, but rather that there is something that stinks in the house of Islam. Sort of a “clean out the bad” sort of thing, which I think is a pretty fair commentary. The fact is that there are elements of Islam that need to go.
“Family Circus” is a pit of banalitty, but “Zippy the Pinhead” is often hilarious.
Tosser.
As for the comic: I think someone needs to tell the ADL and the various Islamic groups “DNFTT”. Johnny Hart was making a stupid bathroom joke, but given his prior behavior he certainly doesn’t deserve any further attention.
I sort of wondered about that too. I know this is eading way too much into a poo joke but I wondered if maybe the real moon outside the outhouse represented true Islam while the outhouse represented the false Islam of terrorism.
Or maybe not.
Now that makes sense. I wasn’t really buying into the “maybe he did it for variety” explanation, but your explanation is much better.
I believe Nightime was referring to the “Midnight Skulker.” As I recall, this is a gag where one of the regulars (Peter?) assumes this alter ego. I don’t think that’s what this strip is about, so that wouldn’t explain the night setting. I’m still not sure why having someone run to the can in the middle of the night is such an implausible notion.
Anyway, in the interest of advancing this complex topic, here’s an example of the Midnight Skulker, which was, believe it or not, the first thing that came up when I googled “B.C. Midnight”…
In that case, I’m back to thinking this is just a very bad (and it’s bad even by B.C. standards) comic and not a slam.
I think you’re right. That doesn’t look like the same character at all. So now we’re back to square one.
It’s not implausible per se, and if anyone can dig up any other BC cartoon that is set at night “just for the hell of it”, it would put this thing to rest. Problem is, I have yet to see such a cartoon. Once in awhile he sets them at night, but there always seems to be a reason. Like when Peter(?) exchanges messages with another land by floating tablets across the ocean, Hart shows the moon for a very specific purpose: to indicate the passage of time. Or with the Midnight Skulker, the whole gag is that he does sneaky stuff at night. Since the Midnight Skulker angle seems to be a dead end, I’m still waiting for someone to explain why the outhouse strip is set at night. From what I can tell, Hart doesn’t seem to ever set his strips at night “just for the hell of it”, which is why I’d be interested to see if he ever did it before. Obviously it doesn’t prove he had a hidden message, but if Hart all of a sudden does something he’s never done before since he started in the 60s (50s?), it kind of makes me wonder if was just an excuse to put another crescent moon in there to make a religious point.
B.C. is the Midnight Skulker.
(Peter has far too much dignity to run around in a tight suit!)
Trinopus
And B.C. goes around in the daylight whenever he feels like it.
This strip, whatever the hell it means, has nothing to do with the Midnight Skulker.
Sorry about that. The picture I was looking at was small, and it looked like him.
Since I haven’t read B.C. very much, I can’t provide any evidence, but we do know that Hart has often used crescent moons to indicate night, and has often used vertical sound effects.
I think it is likely that he has used crescent moons to indicate outhouses in the past, because this is very common.
Given all that, there isn’t really any reason to think the strip is a slam on Islam.
Probably the most certain reason that the Islam explanation is wrong, however, is that the joke actually doesn’t work with the Islam explanation.
“Is it just me, or does it stink in here?” makes sense without the Islam explanation, because it is a play on “Is it just me” having an ambiguous meaning.
The ambiguity of “Is it just me” is that it can be read as “Am I the only one who thinks this” or “Am I the only one who stinks”.
With the Islam theory, this doesn’t work. This would have Hart saying “Am I the only one who stinks, or does Islam stink too?”, which is not the kind of message Hart is likely to want to send.
Since the line “Is it just me” makes sense without the Islam theory, but is incompatible with the Islam theory, I find it highly unlikely that the Islam theory is correct.
Unless someone can explain how the “Is it just me” joke works with the Islam theory.
::checking my old BC books::
Lessee…21 March '74, strip about Peter’s divining rod walking to a nearby stream.
Date unknown, B.C. and the fat one discussing a stocking on her wall.
Date unknown, the ladies plotting to kiss and run.
All three are set at night, complete with crescent moon, for no apparent reason.
Well, OK then - excellent research, Jeff. I think you guys make a good case for maybe it’s just a stupid potty joke.
Our options are: 1) it’s a really lame joke, or 2) it’s a really lame bigoted joke. Maybe Johnny Hart needs a new line of work.
Whatever the Christian take on it, I think you’ll find very few Jews who would not be offended by the menorah strip. For some reason, none of the Jews I know like the implication that their entire religion is wrong. Go figure. From the candles being snuffed out to the resurrection ending, it’s just obnoxious.
I can’t identify the first one without more detail, but… Christmas Stockings are hung on Christmas Eve…i.e., night-time… And kissing and running seems like nocturnal mischief, sort of like toilet-papering the neighbor’s tree…
Cartoonists hate doing night-time scenes without good reason: it takes up a lot of extra time and ink. (Editors hate them for the same reason: it wastes ink, which, in large amounts, has a tendency to bleed or smear…)
Hart is certainly an experienced enough cartoonist to avoid setting a strip at night without a reason.
It occurs to me…this might be a Straight Dope first…everyone here has actually agreed on something! The strip, whatever it was meant to accomplish, failed!
Trinopus
Hm… on reflection, and with Nightime’s explanation, I now think I was wrong.
Sorry for doubting you, Brutus*.
I suggest you take a screenshot of this comment and frame it!
Good points but none absolutely need to happen at night. Lots of people hang stockings well before Christmas Eve.
The second two are also in-cave strips. If it weren’t for the cave entrance being shown in a panel or two, there would be no way to identify them as happening at night.
I can’t believe this “debate” is still raging. It would be one thing if every BC comic was a laugh-riot, and all of the sudden there was one completely devoid of humor. But seriously - almost every time I read B.C. I sit there thinking, “Huh?”
I mean, why is this funny?
So now we’re debating whether there was a reason to set this at night. You know what - maybe Hart likes setting things at night on occasion. Maybe it’s fun to draw. I don’t know what’s in the guy’s mind, and I sure don’t know about how cartoonists come to design decisions like this. Apparently, a lot of people here do.