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Mr. Oyl or, The Improver
🕑 Added 2020-09-01 17:24:39 +0000 UTCThis is very obviously a parody of the comic Mr. Boop by Alec Robbins, which exploded in popularity with a certain type of person on the internet when it was released. The idea came together in a discord voice chat with some friends while talking about the strip. I have nothing against the guy, personally, I'm sure he's totally swell. Nor do I have any beef with anyone who enjoys the comic. But I'm going to try to explain why I dislike it.
David Foster Wallace has been famously critically of irony as a rhetorical tool-- a postmodern method of writing in which everything is winking, self-aware, critical of itself. Earnestness is tossed aside; earnesty is vulnerability, weakness. But not irony. How can you make fun of something that creates its own artistic value from mocking itself?
For a comic as twee and cutesy as Mr. Boop, it garners essentially all its value from a similar sort of ironic posturing-- one which it utilizes in an almost identical way in nearly every comic. "I can't believe my wife is Betty Boop!"
Look how simple this thought is! Look how ridiculous it is! Betty Boop? What? If this was made in total earnesty, of course, it would end up being something akin to Sonichu, or some other self-insert fanfiction. But it' not, of course, the entire thing is written with a dry air of "this is so stupid, isn't it?" ans the fans and creator engage in this synchronized choreography of ironically praising how fantastic it is, while enjoying how (intentionally) silly and simple it is. Which is totally fine, of course, when done in earnesty. Tom and Jerry, old Max Fleischer slapstick cartoons, those sort of things.
There isn't a shred of an earnest thought or idea to be found in the strip-- not that I can find, anyway. Perhaps I'm wrong, and one has emerged in the~ 150 that were made after I stopped reading. If so, please let me know. More to the point, I just don't think its funny.
In the same discord chat, I proposed my counter to Mr. Boop; a wholly earnest, simple, goofy series called "Butler Ape" about a big gorilla with a funny haircut and fancy uniform, who would say stuff like "mmmmyour banana, sir..." in a droll british accent and present a single unpeeled banana on a silver platter. Is it funny? Probably more in execution than in concept. Is it earnest? Yes. Absolutely. There is no defensive irony, no self aware safegaurd; I am confident enough to simply admit that a gorilla acting like a human is funny. Tale as old as time.
