CSotD: An absurd choice
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Tom the Dancing Bug is always a fun read, though it tends to be inconsistent in that it's sometimes simply a fun read and other times it's a fun read with worthwhile insights.
Note that it is always a fun read. Even when Ruben Bolling is phoning one in, it's worth taking the call.
And the moments in which TTDB truly rises above the norm are ones in which you are reading along and you suddenly say, "There! That's what's been bothering me!"
It is a use of absurdity Ionesco would appreciate. Bolling brings you into the story, you accept the absurd setting and then, just as you've become comfortable in that odd universe, he uses its absurdity to frame an issue in a way that you wouldn't have seen in a more realistic context.
And so, in this strip, we have the familiar character of the rigid, moralizing preacher, who, in real life, is both an infuriating, hurtful presence and also someone frequently uncloaked as a closeted violator of his own harsh and unbending tenets.
It's easy enough to observe that we hate most in others what we fear most in ourselves, but that simply describes the phenomenon. It doesn't do much to expose the hypocritical illogic at work.
The problem is that, when one of these whited sepulchres is exposed in real life, it becomes that person's individual story, and there is such a pile of collateral damage and specific actions that you can't draw a logical lesson from it, other than that "an empty wagon makes the most noise" or something equally shopworn and tiresome.
But by approaching it in parable form, Bolling is able to separate the faulty logical base from the individual case. You don't end up in an endless loop of "Did not!" and "Did too!" because you're no longer talking about this particular person or that specific case.
We play along with Bolling for the first six panels, poking fun at the fellow by fantasizing a totally crazed closet for him, and just as it seems like all we're doing is mocking him, the last three panels provide the argument:
Why would anyone think sexuality was a conscious, willful choice, unless it's a choice that they've felt compelled to make?
Well?
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