2009-10-02
Explanation
This comic shows a man and woman lying in bed together after sex, both smoking cigarettes. The man declares: "It wasn't lousy sex, it was a satire ABOUT lousy sex." The word "about" is bolded and italicized for emphasis. The woman next to him looks distinctly unimpressed and unconvinced by this excuse.
The caption below reads: "Lesson Learned: Don't sleep with your Literature professor." The joke plays on the tendency of literary academics to reframe anything through the lens of literary criticism. Rather than simply admitting that the sexual encounter was bad, the literature professor applies the same intellectual defense he might use to justify a poorly received piece of writing -- claiming it was intentionally bad as a form of meta-commentary or satire. It satirizes how literary types can use critical theory jargon to spin anything into something intentional and profound.
The votey panel extends this joke by listing how other academics might similarly deflect. A philosopher asks "Is there even such a thing as sex?" (using epistemological doubt to avoid the question entirely). A physicist claims "The sex was great in MY inertial reference frame" (using relativity to argue that quality is observer-dependent). An artist says "Sex is really more about quantity, anyway" (redefining the metric of success). Each profession offers its own discipline-specific excuse for a bad performance, compounding the humor.