Smug

Cidu Bill on Feb 21st 2012

smug.png

The logic here completely eludes me…

Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Six Chix, comic strips, comics, humor | 25 responses so far

25 Responses to “Smug”

  1. Kilby Feb 21st 2012 at 02:53 am 1

    It’s simply an inversion of the stereotypical advice to a “dumb blonde”: “Don’t let him see how stupid you are, or he’ll overcharge you.” The women in “Six Chix” are presumably all enlightened, politically correct geniuses, but they still have the same problem, albeit the other way around.
    P.S. The question that we should be dealing with is: “Is this funny?” The answer, of course, is: “No, not really.”

  2. Charlene Feb 21st 2012 at 05:35 am 2

    @Kilby: I had no idea that “intelligent” was a female subsection of “politically correct”.

  3. Kilby Feb 21st 2012 at 06:04 am 3

    I knew when I wrote it that there would be at least one person who would not let a piece of politically incorrect sarcastic exaggeration pass by unpunished.

  4. mitch4 Feb 21st 2012 at 08:06 am 4

    While I do understand how it is supposed to be a female-supportive turnaround on “women are ignorant about cars” assumptions, I still just don’t get the logic behind “smug”. That is, it’s not just that it isn’t funny — it’s unclear how it could work as a joke. Why would seeing how intelligent [or knowledgable about cars] the woman customer is lead the mechanic into smugness?

  5. Mark M Feb 21st 2012 at 09:54 am 5

    Mitch4’s post led me to what I think is the joke. It’s not only an inverse to the “dumb women and cars” stereotype, but also a reference to the “men do not like to be shown up by smart women” one. If she seems threatening to him on an intelligence level, he will just overcharge and in effect say “not so smart now eh?”.

  6. The Ploughman Feb 21st 2012 at 10:44 am 6

    I’m with mitch4. The word “smug” doesn’t make any sense here. If anybody’s looking smug in the frame, it’s the two women, oblivious to the cat burglar stealing parts from their car.

    One could also comment on how a comic about women being smarter than expected is written by a women who doesn’t know the meaning of the word “smug” is a step backward, but now I’m sounding smug.

  7. The Ploughman Feb 21st 2012 at 10:46 am 7

    “a women” -> “a woman.” Trying to get ahead of somebody being smug about my proofreading!

  8. J-L Feb 21st 2012 at 11:12 am 8

    I think the women are sitting in a house. The host is telling the guest about how her husband feels threatened by smart women. She ends it with “he’ll get smug and…” but instead of finishing it with “…be snarky with us” or “…talk down to us,” the artist throws us a curve ball depicts the husband as a car mechanic (who some think unfairly overcharge at times).

    The fact that he’s fixing a car in the house is a little absurdist humor to accompany the rest of the joke.

  9. dd Feb 21st 2012 at 01:39 pm 9

    Mark’s got it. And it isn’t so far out of the realm of reality. Kind of a “oh you think you’re better than me? Well your dingleflappy was out of alignment so that’ll be all your money please”

  10. Keera Feb 21st 2012 at 01:49 pm 10

    My thoughts on this echo Mark M’s @5. Many a woman has been advised not to show a man how smart she actually is so as not to scare the man. Perhaps this advice applies outside the realm of romance, too?

  11. Gavin Feb 21st 2012 at 02:15 pm 11

    I really thought that the first woman was sarcastically implying that the second woman IS in fact an idiot. Maybe the joke is in the irony that both she and the mechanic take pleasure in being more intelligent. The mechanic does it by overcharging and the first woman through veiled insults.

  12. James Pollock Feb 21st 2012 at 03:30 pm 12

    There is another dynamic that previous commenters have not yet brought up… there is a bit of an assumption that intelligence and working on cars don’t go together (by which I do not mean to impugn the actual intelligence of automotive mechanics). Think back to high school… were the people taking AP academic classes the same ones that were taking auto shop? Also, I refer back to the previous cartoon from a while back where the college graduate has learned the energy efficiency range of the Diesel engine but in a later panel is shown unable to actually drive a truck.

    The people who are easiest to fool are sometimes people who think they are smart, too smart to be fooled. You’ll see this sometimes in magic acts, where the purposefully make you think that you’ve spotted how the trick is being done, and then at the last moment reveal that the way you thought it was being done couldn’t actually have been the way it was done.

  13. Mary in Ohio Feb 21st 2012 at 03:48 pm 13

    Well, actually the mechanic is smug because he knows something the rest of us don’t or we would be fixing our own cars. And also, she’s a woman: smart, dumb, blonde, brunette, he’s gonna overcharge her anyway. And possibly loosen something ELSE up so she’ll have to bring the car back AGAIN. Speaking from too much experience over the years here, sorry.

  14. The Ploughman Feb 21st 2012 at 04:48 pm 14

    I can see the wording in a different light after reading James’s take (11), although I’m not quite convinced it’s what the cartoon is trying to convey. If the mechanic is upset at being one-upped by a woman, he’s not going to “get smug” as a response (he might get smug about his revenge after he gets pissed about being shown up).

    If he gets smug when encountering someone intelligent (ie - with book smarts) and takes them for an easy mark for an underrated mechanic such as himself, then it’s irrelevant that the speakers are both women. I see the former scenario as more likely, with “smug” being a less-than-perfect word choice.

  15. AaronB Feb 21st 2012 at 09:38 pm 15

    I saw it as the woman on the left calling the other one stupid, in a subtle way.

  16. Tim Feb 21st 2012 at 10:20 pm 16

    I understood this as “He’ll give a discount to an airhead (in hopes of getting lucky), but he’ll charge a smart woman more.”

  17. Top Feb 21st 2012 at 11:56 pm 17

    I see a lot of great theories here, and honestly I’m just as confused as ever. The theories at #1, #5, and #15 sound the most promising to me, but:
    1. It’s still not the least bit funny.
    2. As Mitch4 at #4 said, the word “smug” seems completely inappropriate.

    I could *almost* see the logic behind the strip if they left it off, i.e., the woman saying “Don’t let him see how smart you are…he’ll overcharge!” Then, it would pretty much become New Yorker unfunny, rather than “I don’t think he knows what ’smug’ means” unfunny.

  18. Foxy Feb 22nd 2012 at 03:17 am 18

    My vote is with Mitch, Mark and the Ploughman.
    It’s an awkward stereotype reversal joke, which falls flat on it’s face cos
    a) it’s rather unfunny
    b) smug is definitely the wrong word
    I’m guessing smug was the most cartoon punchline friendly word he could come up with though (ie short, competitive or chauvenistic would seem out of place)
    However I do note that while we touch on the female stereotypes raised here, no-one seems to be upset that mechanics are still receiving the same negative stereotype of shifty rip off merchant? I’d find a joke looking at the reversal from a grease monkey’s point of view much funnier, mostly cos it’s not been done to death.

  19. Slager Feb 22nd 2012 at 11:55 am 19

    I was staring at this yesterday, trying to figure it out. Then I realized my confusion just came from the syntax itself… I was reading it as “Don’t let him see how smart you are, because if he sees you are smart, subsequently he will overcharge you” instead of the intended “Don’t let him see how smart you are, and consequently he will overcharge you thinking that you are not smart.”

    That said… it’s not really all that funny. It is a statement without a punch. And I’m a ding-dang feminist!

  20. SusanKatie Feb 22nd 2012 at 01:58 pm 20

    I thought he was going to get smug and try to charge her for installing some imaginary doo-hickey, then she would show her brains and say, no all you did was clean the battery leads and that’s all I’ll pay you for. Though if she plays this game every time she must have to keep finding new mechanics.

  21. Judge Mental Feb 23rd 2012 at 09:43 am 21

    @Slager #17

    I had already considered your interpretation and dismissed it. (Although I think it carries more water than any of the other explanations people have come up with here)

    While it might stand to reason that: (If you) “Don’t let him see how smart you are” (consequently) “He’ll get smug and overcharge”, what on earth could compel someone to *want* to get overcharged? Even if we presume that she will be able to recognize the overcharge (possible) and force him to adjust his bill (less likely), why would she want to go through that?

  22. Bob in Nashville Feb 23rd 2012 at 08:52 pm 22

    If the mechanic figures out how smart the woman is, he’ll feel smug about the fact that, smart as she is, she still can’t fix her own car and he can.

  23. Top Feb 24th 2012 at 12:31 am 23

    Bob @ 20 - that’s a reasonable guess, but if that ’s what the cartoonist is going for, then the comic fails on two major fronts:
    1. The mechanic can be smug for exactly the same reason even if he thinks the woman is dumb. So the text in the first dialogue balloon is useless…you could change the dialogue to read: “Don’t let him think you’re dumb…he’ll get smug and overcharge!”
    2. The mechanic’s smugness is completely unrelated to overcharging the woman. He could be smug for your reason and not overcharge (”Don’t let him see how smart you are…he’ll get smug that you had to ask him for help!”), and he could also not be smug and overcharge (”Don’t let him see how smart you are…he’ll overcharge!”).

    The key problem is that “smug” is absolutely the wrong word, because it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the dialogue. Depending on what the cartoonist is shooting for, here are better alternatives:
    1. “Vindictive” - the mechanic sees you’re smart and possibly looking down on him, so he’ll take his revenge by showing his superiority in his field of knowledge. He can do this by overcharging you and knowing you don’t know enough to protest
    2. “Petty” - the mechanic doesn’t like people who flaunt that they are better than him, so he passive-aggressively does them dirt
    3. Or even simply “Angry” - for the reasons above, the mechanic is no longer on your side and will therefore give you a bad deal
    4. And on and on…

    As Ploughman @ 6 pointed out, the cartoonist doesn’t help matters because the way the women are drawn, they are both looking extremely smug, whereas the mechanic is just looking puzzled.

  24. The Ploughman Feb 24th 2012 at 09:40 pm 24

    Top (23), “pissed” would work best for me, but that would probably not get past the editors.

  25. Slager Feb 26th 2012 at 11:10 pm 25

    @ 21…

    Good point!

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