One particularly controversial installment of The Far Side provoked a visceral response from readers – whom a newspaper editor responded to in turn, offering up a defense of the comic that is still relevant in cultural discourse to this day. It is worth examining, along with some other critical takes on artist Gary Larson’s work, for the insight it provides into how controversial subjects can be addressed in entertainment.

The Far Side often tackled taboos; from the start of the strip’s run in publication, creator Gary Larson proved more than willing to go to dark places in order to get a reaction out of his readers. This was integral to the success of the comic, but it also resulted in a great deal of negative feedback.

Syndicated newspaper cartoons exist in a unique artistic position – while books, films, and other types of media can be easily avoided by people who find them offensive, a strip like The Far Side co-exists alongside more innocuous strips such as Garfield and Peanuts.

This Editor’s Defense Of The Far Side Reflects Modern Discourse

A Publisher’s Response To Criticism Of Gary Larson

As long as The Far Side was being published, the newspapers across the U.S. that carried it in their comics section received periodic complaints about the strip’s contents. Among the joys of reading The Complete Far Side collection are the glimpses of letters objecting to various cartoons throughout the years. There is one such prominent example early in Volume Two, from 1987. As one dismayed reader wrote to their local paper:

I was so upset after seeing the…cartoon that appeared Monday (Feb. 2) in The Herald Statesman. It was the ugliest, (most) obnoxious and sadistic cartoon I have ever seen in a family paper. The so-called artist, Gary Larson, must be sick. I hope you agree.

The offending cartoon in question was set in a dungeon, with one torturer remarking to another that while he is great at his job, he’s bad at making coffee.

The humor of the comic comes from the sharp contrast between the brutality of the characters’ profession, and the ordinary – bordering on outright banal – nature of their conversation. For that to make the reader laugh, however, they have to immediately recognize that dimension to the joke. Some readers, however, had a more negative response, rejecting the joke at its premise for its casual depiction of torture in a newspaper comic. “It certainly is not fit for exposure to children,” the author of the complaint to the Statesman concluded.

In her response, editor Nancy Q. Keefe offered a searing counterpoint to this last idea:

I am not a good candidate to carry your message of disenchantment. But I will say this: don’t worry about the children. They don’t get it. And when they do, they will not be as much affected, or infected, as they are now, daily, by the offerings of television or the hypocrisy of fundamentalists.

To whatever degree readers agree or disagree with Keefe’s response, this exchange is fascinating for the way it mirrors modern disagreements over the use of controversial material in art and entertainment. The debate about exposing younger audiences to more mature content is even more potent today than it was nearly forty years ago – making it important to explore earlier iterations of it like this one.

Gary Larson’s Work Was A Balm For “The Outrages Of Daily Life”

Far Side And The Value Of Satire

Nancy Q. Keefe’s response to criticism of Gary Larson’s work was admirable for its detail, and eloquence, especially in how it sought to offer context for The Far Side’s artistic precedents. Keefe championed the cartoon’s cultural value, noting:

To many, “Satire is what closes Saturday night,” as George S. Kaufman put it. To a few of us, satire is what makes it possible to deal with the outrages of daily life.

Doing so with skillful humor – not unlike that of The Far Side itself – this response comments on the idea that many readers have difficulty recognizing satire – and that just as many are not willing to acknowledge the utility of satire, even when they do recognize it.

The Far Side’s humor was often satirical, and for fans of Gary Larson’s work, that vein of satirical, observational comedy ranks among its most cherished elements. From recontextualizing classic bits of folklore and popular culture, to distilling deeply human moments into cartoons featuring cows, The Far Side was always the product of an artist that was acutely aware of the world around him – and despite what many critics might have thought, acutely protective of it, even if he may have often preferred animals to human beings.

Not Every Criticism Of The Far Side Was Entirely Off Base

The Other Side Of The Argument

It is understandable for readers who “get” Gary Larson’s humor to jump to his defense, but it is also worth considering the merit some objections to his work might have had. While the reader that Nancy Q. Keefe responded to attacked Larson directly, calling him “sick,” another reader subsequently offered a more well-reasoned response to the use of torture as a punchline. This criticism was prompted by a second Far Side torture cartoon, which came almost a year after the first.

In the second cartoon, two men hang from the wall of a dungeon underneath a sign that reads: “Congratulations Bob, Torturer of the Month.” The humor in this instance operates from the same premise as the previous comic – but in the context of the response printed in The Complete Far Side Volume Two, most readers will at least question the overall effectiveness of the joke. As one person wrote:

Using torture as the subject of humor is, to say the least, offensive to me. Perhaps the author of the cartoon believes that torture is something so far removed from today’s world that we can afford to laugh at it. If the author or the editor believes that, you are ill-informed.

Even decades later, this is a resonant argument; at the very least, it demonstrates how someone can effectively raise a concern about a piece of art or entertainment that they find inappropriate.

As reader wrote further, in his letter to the Des Moines Register:

Torture is not a laughing matter. It is a blot on the conscience of mankind that must be eradicated, not laughed at. The cartoon has done nothing to educate people about this evil, or to arouse people to work to stop torture and other violations of human rights.

Gary Larson was open about the lack of overt meaning of his work, beyond eliciting a reaction from audiences. So, while it was never his intent to “educate,” with any of his strips, it is worth thinking about in the context of the social critique The Far Side did convey. With its frequent implicit criticisms of humanity’s mistreatment of nature, Larson did at times use his cartoons as a place to convey something he considered important.

Recognizing The Limits Of Gary Larson’s Satire

Appreciating The Far Side For What It Was

As Nancy Q. Keefe identified, satire is an incredibly valuable mode of artistic expression. That said, satire is at its sharpest when it is being used as a means toward a greater end. Gary Larson’s use of torture for the sake of humor succeeded in the sense that it got a reaction out of readers, positive or negative. However, it can be argued that these cartoons fail as satire, for precisely the reason that there is no purpose to them beyond achieving that reaction.

This is another sense in which Keefe’s defense of Larson, and Larson’s use of controversial material in his work throughout the history of The Far Side, are worth exploring further, even forty years later. The Far Side offers a potent study of what constitutes satire, and how the technique can be used in different ways, especially when dealing with difficult subjects. More than just a question of whether a comic artist “should” or “shouldn’t” make jokes about issues of gravity, such as torture, the question concerns “how” and “why” they do so.