Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

git

2019-10-09 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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git
Votey panel for git
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Explanation

The Joke

The comic shows a scene from the Garden of Eden with God shooing Adam and Eve away, shouting "Go on, git! Dang it! My apple patch!" in the manner of an angry farmer chasing pests off his property. The caption below reads: "If Eden was God's garden, humans were driven out for being varmints."

The comic reimagines the Fall of Man -- one of the most theologically significant events in Judeo-Christian tradition -- as a mundane pest control problem. Instead of the solemn expulsion from paradise due to original sin and disobedience, God is just an irritated gardener dealing with critters eating his produce.

The Humor

The humor comes from the extreme deflation of a grand Biblical narrative into something totally banal. The word "git" (a Southern/rural American command to shoo animals) and "varmints" recast the entire theology of the Fall as a farmer-vs-wildlife dispute. It strips away all the weighty themes of temptation, free will, and divine punishment, and replaces them with the image of God as a cranky old man in overalls protecting his apple trees. The comic also plays on the double meaning -- the "forbidden fruit" was traditionally depicted as an apple, so of course God would be upset about someone eating from his apple patch.

View History (1) Original Comic