2011-10-25
Explanation
This comic is a multi-generational satire that imagines a future where pornography is so mainstream that it has its own rating system and generational culture wars -- just like movies and TV do today. An elderly grandmother scolds her daughter, saying that in her day they "weren'''t surrounded by porno" the way modern kids are. She reminisces about being "only allowed to watch XG porno" as a young girl -- "nothing gross, no weird camera angles, everyone behaved nicely." She is horrified that 13-year-olds now watch "XR films" without any supervision.
The daughter explains that she and her husband talk to their kids about such topics so they can "save it for their wedding nights." The grandmother insists on extreme precautions when she babysits. In the final panels, labeled "Later," the grandmother is babysitting and the kids ask to watch something called "Assplosions 12." She refuses and says they may watch "a Disney porn" instead, holding up titles like "The Aristocats" and "Fairy Cinderella 5."
The joke extrapolates current generational anxieties about media content to an absurd extreme. Just as today'''s grandparents worry about violence and sexual content in PG-13 movies that would have been scandalous in their era, this imagined future has grandparents applying the same protective instincts to pornography -- treating some as wholesome and age-appropriate while clutching their pearls at the more extreme varieties. The votey panel proposes a pornography rating system (XG, X13, XR) paralleling the movie rating system (G, PG-13, R), with increasingly intense reactions.