It's been awhile since I've shat knowledge on the blogue. The Bad Fog of Loneliness has been disrupting my connectivity, you see. But as I emerge, observations begin to take shape:
Looney Tunes is wonderful.
The classic Wile E. Coyote set-up is the reversal of the joke formula, and for this it is beautiful. The set-up always involves Coyote procuring some sci-fi fantasy, like rocket skates, which he plans to use to capture Road Runner. For eating? For sex? A coyote getting rocket skates? This is absurd, the sort of thing that most jokes use as the punchline. But it gets scarier... the joke comes when the rocket skates malfunction and cause Coyote to fall down a cliff. You see, the joke comes from the Absurd resolving into Reality. This is quite similar to Kafka's classic short story The Metamorphosis, which begins with our protagonist, Gregor Samsa, discovering he's been turned into a giant verminous buggy thing. The story ends with everything going back to normal. Much like gravity overcoming Coyote's batshit schemes.
I'll be looking for more examples, in Looney Tunes, of the comic reversal. I think those tweekers were on to something...
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