Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

A person is reading a book with a look of dismay. The text they are reading aloud says: "And so we beat on enjoying Coca-Cola, borne ceaselessly forth into refreshment"? The caption below reads: "Reminder: The Great Gatsby will be public domain in 2021."

The comic imagines what would happen when F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby enters the public domain. The famous closing line of the novel -- "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" -- has been rewritten as a Coca-Cola advertisement. The reader is horrified to discover that this literary masterpiece has been commercially corrupted the moment it became free to use.

The Humor

The humor lies in the juxtaposition of one of the most celebrated lines in American literature with crass corporate advertising. The original line is a poetic meditation on nostalgia, longing, and the human condition. Replacing "boats against the current" with "enjoying Coca-Cola" and "into the past" with "into refreshment" turns it into a grotesque product placement. The joke satirizes how public domain works are often exploited for commercial purposes, and imagines the most cynical possible outcome: corporations literally rewriting classic literature to sell soft drinks. There is also an ironic layer given that The Great Gatsby itself is a novel deeply critical of materialism and the corruption of the American Dream.

References

The comic references the final line of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." The title of the comic, "And So We Beat On," is itself a riff on this line. The novel did indeed enter the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2021, when works published in 1925 had their copyright expire. The comic was published in 2017, anticipating this event. While no one has yet inserted Coca-Cola ads into the text, the public domain status has led to numerous derivative works, adaptations, and reprints.