MOREWELL!!!: (sorry) From “The Art of Donald McGill”: “When one examines McGill’s [comic postcards] more closely, one notices that his brand of humour only has meaning in relation to a fairly strict moral code. Whereas in papers like Esquire, for instance, or La Vie Parisienne, the imaginary background of the jokes is always promiscuity, or the utter breakdown of all standards, the background of the McGill postcard is marriage. The four leading jokes are nakedness, illegitimate babies, old maids and newly married couples, none of which would seem funny in a really dissolute or even ‘sophisticated’ society. The postcards dealing with honeymoon couples always have the enthusiastic indecency of those village weddings where it is still considered screamingly funny to sew bells to the bridal bed. In one, for example, a young bridegroom is shown getting out of bed the morning after his wedding night. ‘The first morning in our own little home, darling!’ he is saying; ‘I’ll go and get the milk and paper and bring you a cup of tea.’ Inset is a picture of the front doorstep; on it are four newspapers and four bottles of milk. This is obscene, if you like, but it is not immoral. Its implication–and this is just the implication that Esquire or the New Yorker would avoid at all costs–is that marriage is something profoundly exciting and important, the biggest event in the average human being’s life. So also with the jokes about nagging wives and tyrannous mothers-in-law. They do at least imply a stable society in which marriage is indissoluble and family loyalty taken for granted.”

(Horizon, September 1941)

Points of note: 1) This is pretty much the exact stripe of humor found in “Malcolm in the Middle,” much of “The Simpsons,” and to a lesser extent (because it’s not as joke-laden) “King of the Hill.” All hail Fox!

2) The Abolition of Marriage, a book I can’t recommend enough, has an excellent chapter on the idea of “romantic divorce.” One facet of our society’s view of divorce (a view that has been changing, for the better, for about five years now) is the idea that marriage is so serious, so enormous, that a) whenever the emotions of love fade, the marriage has become “false,” “not really a marriage at all,” and so divorce merely makes official what had already happened–just as marriage does not “really” change anything for the couple, but merely publicly affirms their pre-existing emotions; and b) the couple has to be everything to one another–best friend, constant companion, etc. That turns out not to work too well (ever tried to live with your best friend? I’ve been very lucky with roommates, but I’ve heard some major horror stories); a marriage is not supposed to become ingrown, turning constantly in on itself because “you’re the only person who understands me!” And too many people think a marriage is all about the couple in isolation from their society. All of these viewpoints are completely alien to the comic, McGill/”Malcolm” view of marriage; and I’d rather have a view of marriage that can maintain its heroic and romantic aspects, without losing a sense of humor. Abolition is by far the best book on marriage I know of–it’s inspiring, sensible, romantic, and non-self-righteous.