2012-02-25
Explanation
This comic reimagines the classic nursery rhyme "There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe" through a grimly realistic modern lens. It begins by following the familiar rhyme structure: "There was an old lady" (showing an elderly woman happily knitting in her living room) "who lived in a shoe" (revealing her home is indeed a giant shoe in a residential neighborhood). But then the comic takes a dark turn: "Shoes are not permitted by city zoning law" (showing a code enforcement officer serving the old woman with papers at her shoe-door). The final panel concludes, "She lives in a nursing home now" -- showing the old woman alone in a wheelchair in a dark, empty room.
The comic takes a whimsical, beloved nursery rhyme and subjects it to the unglamorous realities of modern bureaucracy and aging. The old woman'''s charming, eccentric lifestyle of living in a shoe is shut down not by any villain or dramatic event, but by the mundane enforcement of zoning regulations. The result is not a happy ending but a depressing one: she loses her home and her independence, ending up isolated in a nursing home.
The humor is dark and satirical, commenting on how modern society -- through its rules, regulations, and institutions -- strips away individuality and joy from elderly people'''s lives. The votey reinforces the bleakness with the old woman (or possibly one of her children from the original rhyme) saying, "I don'''t know what to do!" -- echoing the original rhyme'''s line about not knowing what to do, but now in a genuinely distressing context rather than a playful one.