A children’s T-shirt has aroused the ire of a local shopper. The T-shirt depicts two panels of stick figures, with a male figure pushing a female figure out of a box. Captioned “Problem Solved,” the shirt has appalled people engaged in deterring domestic violence.
“I thought that shirt was very offensive, and I’m sure people who made that shirt thought it was cute,” District Attorney Evert Fowle said Friday. “But when you prosecute 728 domestic violence cases a year, it’s not cute.”
The shirt was removed briefly after a customer protested — but later returned to the shelves of the Augusta Kmart.
To me the term offensive doesn’t accurately describe the message of this T-shirt.
In the first frame the girl stick figure is jumping up in excitement while the boy stick figure appears to be frowning at her with his hands at his waist. Underneath that frame is the word Problem.
In the second frame the boy figure is smirking and has one arm fully extended toward where the girl was, but now there is now only empty space beside him. The far wall of the second frame has been shattered sending bits of the frame wall out. Two lines show the path of the girl’s descent and she is shown falling head first. Underneath the second frame is the word Solved.
Her crash landing is left to the imagination. Which makes sense since what happens to her isn’t relevant to this boy’s problem and his solution.
This attitude T-shirt is unintentionally educational.
In only 2 frames it captures the dynamics of a common and sometimes deadly form of interpersonal violence that happens in the real world. It perfectly illustrates the imbalance between the stimulus and the response. She annoys him and he shoves her through a wall. He’s left with a feeling of satisfied power and that’s all that matters.
Just as with this T-shirt, many people don’t understand why the dynamic captured in this T-shirt is offensive. They think nobody should make a fuss about this because it’s a cartoon. Those who do make a fuss must be missing a funny bone.
This isn’t satire or humor. It is reality in stick-figure form. And it makes some people smile or laugh.
That’s the real problem.
So often when a man murders a woman in his life, people ask where this violence comes from. How could an otherwise nice man do something this horrific? This T-shirt gives the answer.
Murder as simple problem solving. She was annoying and now she’s not.
That leaves the question of how we would illustrate a third box in this same style if the back of the T-shirt continued this story.
If the boy stick figure ended up in the hangman’s noose with the caption Justice (printed hangman style), would those who find the original version funny still be laughing or calling this T-shirt cute?
Would they think the revised T-shirt would be an appropriate Christmas present?
(crossposted at my blog, Abyss2hope)
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I don’t think it would be as snappy. But, now, if you captioned the second of the original two frames PROBLEM and your third frame SOLVED — that’s a punch line, and I think I’d buy it if I had the cash!
Perhaps the shirt is designed to be a handy identification device: You know whoever is wearing it is a misogynist.
But Marcella! Why didnt you mentinon the t-shirts about throwing rocks at boys?
Just kidding.
curiousgyrl, I’m glad you brought up that other T-shirt design. Here’s why I don’t have the same reaction to that T-shirt:
That message doesn’t elevate a current trend in criminal behavior into good clean fun. As far as I know there have been no recent cases of girls stoning boys to death. If that T-shirt had said: Homeless Men Are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them, it would elevate a current trend in criminal behavior in the same troubling way as this Problem Solved T-shirt does.
The bigger question for me is whether those who oppose the T-shirt about throwing rocks at boys are also opposed to this Problem Solved T-shirt. If they aren’t, then I am left wondering at their motives.
I have to agree, that shirt is not funny. I feel like it’s a struggle to raise my sons to be kind & respectful, and to raise my daughter to know she’s worthy, and I would interpret a shirt like that to mean I’m never going to succeed.
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I think you’re right Marcella.
Of course, had this t-shirt or a similar cartoon come out in a Muslim country, the neocons and their liberal enablers would be using that as a rationale for invading said country To Save Its Oppressed Women.
I’m so glad some people find it as offensive as I do. I guess a lot of people probably think it’s funny but are also uncomfortable by its message. “Feminist” has such a stigma right now that people are afraid to be labeled one.
I’d be interested to hear your take on my latest post if you’re interested. It’s about the documentary, Mail Order Wife.
I’ve seen at least one person misunderstand my comment about the T-shirt “boys are stupid, throw rocks at them” as endorsing that T-shirt or approving what it says. I don’t and I never said I did. My point was that the level of violence depicted in the 2 T-shirts is significantly different. The boy is running from small rocks being thrown at his back (he looks like he can outrun them) while the girl is plummeting head first from enough distance that the result would be serious injury or death.
I will not make those two equivalent acts of violence. Murder or attempted murder is not equivalent to assault. To equate the 2 is to minimize the violence represented by the Problem Solved T-shirt. To say that the Boys Are Stupid T-shirt is far worse than the Problem Solved T-shirt speaks volumes about the speakers value judgments.
Abyss2hope,
You (and others here) are really reaching for straws when explaining how you are dismissing the “throwing rocks” cartoon as opposed to the “Problem Solved”. Both insinuate to children that violence against the other sex is ok. The only difference is who that violence empowers.
Shame on you for dismissing either one.
R. Giskard, if I were approving the “throwing rocks” cartoon you might have a point, but that’s not what I was doing. You are wrong when you say, “The only difference is who that violence empowers.”
The level of violence in the “throw rocks” cartoon (attempted assault) is not equivalent to the level of violence in the “problem solved” cartoon (attempted or successful murder). That anyone will dismiss that difference is what is shameful.
A2H, is it possible you’re parsing the “violence” matter more finely than the shirts deserve? Both of them are stupid gag shirts that sort of condone violence, but do so in a very jokey matter. I don’t think the level of violence, per se, is what makes the difference.
Imagine that the “problem solved” shirt featured a first panel showing a cartoon nagging wife and a henpecked husband, and a second panel showing a pleased, happy husband and a now-silent, weeping wife with a black eye.
Compare that to a shirt showing a cartoon girl throwing a boy out of a plane, with the caption “boys are dumb, toss them out of planes.”
In that case, I’d find the first shirt much more disturbing than the second, even though the second depicts fatal violence and the first does not.
Nor is it hard for me to imagine t-shirts depicting violence against men that I’d find disturbing. For instance, an image of a shot male soldier with the caption “yay! One more down!” would disturb the hell out of me.
It seems to me that what makes one cartoon shirt more disquieting than another is not how damaging the violence depicted is, but how close the shirt comes to depicting reality.
Finally, I think you have to consider that US cartoons have a long tradition of showing over-the-top and potentially fatal violence as if it had no consequences at all; think of the Road Runner cartoons, for instance, or of Homer Simpson strangling Bart. I’m not sure that cartoons of this sort can be correctly interpreted if we assume that depictions of violence should always be read literally.
There’s an equally “charming” picture book that has the “boys are stupid, throw rocks at them” image on the cover; also the author/designers name, Todd Harris Goldman. Make of it what you will.
Amp:
Then the Problem Solved T-shirt is still more disturbing because it reflects a starker reality than the Boys are Stupid T-shirt.
The reason it might be less disturbing to some people is they either won’t acknowledge the reality behind the message of the Problem Solved T-shirt or they don’t think that reality is any worse than the reality behind the Boys Are Stupid T-shirt.
In the Road Runner cartoons it is the coyote (the violent one) who suffers because of his own violence. His intended victim, the road runner remains unharmed. The violence in the Road Runner cartoons is self inflicted and that violence becomes the outcome of stupidity.
Yes, I agree with you about that. Men beating their wives & girlfriends is obviously a much more severe and widespread problem than boys being assaulted by gangs of girls.
I’m just saying that it’s a mistake to focus on the relative fatality of the cartoon violence depicted.
I wanted to note that there is a huge difference between a cartoon which is visually disquieting and a cartoon that carries a disquieting and dangerous message.
Auguste has created a modified version based on my suggestion for a third box here. I was thinking more of the visual of the children’s game hangman, but you get the gist. In this version there are consequences for the short-term solution offered by the original T-shirt.
Chris has created a version that reverses the genders and makes the violence explicit here. It is visually more disturbing, but though the method is different, the attitude is the same as in the original Problem Solved T-shirt.
Some actions should be disturbing to us when represented visually. To whitewash a real problem like violence against women so the real dynamnics of this violence has people smiling or saying, “whatever” is what should be most disturbing of all.
I wasn’t trying to do that in isolation, but in the context of the 2 designs.
Amp–you are right, and that is the argument A2H was making in the 1st place which I agreed with, though to be clear, neither shirt meets with my approval if anybody cares.
although the violence aspect of the t-shirt is disturbing, no doubt, i actually find another aspect of the shirt as or more disturbing. i think the violence is recognizable by most people as over-the-top and inappropriate (not that any violence is appropriate), and i think that’s where the (supposed) humor is supposed to come from. that’s not excusing it, mind you, just an observation.
i think the more disturbing aspect is how even non-potentially-violent men could find that funny. even if you think that the shirt doesn’t actually condone violence, it certainly contributes to the us-vs.-them mentality of more traditional male-female interaction. it winks at men and boys and says “i know this isn’t an appropriate way to deal with annoying women, but we all know they are annoying, and don’t we wish this were okay.”
it perpetuates the idea that the men are all in this together; that it’s our job as men to educate other men when we find something that “works” to “keep our dignity” in the face of the “onslought” of annoying or powerful women; that no matter how powerful “they” get, “we” will always have the secret brotherhood of manhood to unite us, and that if things get too bad, there’s always consolation in the fact that men are, on the average, physically larger and stronger than women.
the violence aspect is certainly not absent from this, but i find the condoning of this us-vs.-them structure to be the more damaging, since the whole t-shirt is predicated on it, and thus reinforces that this condition is so true that it need not even be mentioned to be recognizable.
i could probably write that better, but i don’t have the time just now. does that make any sense?
polymath;
your point is well taken and could be equally applied to both shirts.
I think that everyone is overreacting a weee bit too much. I (and my financee-who is a WOMAN) personally think that the shirt is funny and we did not realize how much people have blown this whole thing way out of proportion until she went to purchase one for me and saw that just about every store has discontinued the shirt were the guy pushes the woman out of the box and replaced it with one were the guy simply puts on a pair of headphones. How lame. I do however recall one store that still carried them, so I will be heading there tomorrow to grab the last few that they have!!!
Hey Shawn! “I’m not sexist – I like women, some of my best friends are women…”