2011-06-12
Explanation
This comic shows a mother talking to her young daughter Susie. The mother asks Susie to repeat a question she asked last week. Susie asks: "Why do tears come out of my eyes when I'''m sad?" The mother responds with a comforting but scientifically nonsensical explanation: "Tears are made of sadness, and they come out when you cry. So, when you cry, it'''s not because you'''re sad. It'''s because you'''re becoming happy." Susie smiles, apparently comforted. In the final panel, the scene pulls back to reveal the mother whispering to the father: "Okay, I think we can tell her we ran over Miss Kitty now."
The joke operates on two levels. First, the mother'''s explanation of tears is a deliberately misleading but sweet-sounding piece of parental spin -- reframing sadness as the process of becoming happy. Second, the reveal that this entire exchange was a setup to deliver devastating news (the family cat has been run over) exposes the manipulation. The parents have primed Susie to believe that crying equals becoming happy, so when she inevitably cries upon hearing about Miss Kitty, she will interpret her own grief as a positive experience.
The votey panel shows the father gleefully calling out "Susie! Time to get happy!" -- using the mother'''s reframing to deliver the bad news with darkly comedic enthusiasm, treating the announcement of the cat'''s death as though it were good news since the resulting tears will supposedly make Susie "happy."