hamlet-2
Explanation
The Joke
The ghost of Hamlet's father appears, and Hamlet complains that his father didn't even give him a father-son talk while alive. The ghost retorts: "Does it strike you as the least bit weird that your dad came back from the dead and didn't say 'I love you' or give a single hug but instead told you to go stab a dude? What movie version did you watch? No, not gonna tell me? Just thinking about murder, totally!" Hamlet deflects, and the ghost continues that Hamlet's father didn't come here to talk about a little stabbing — "Here's some advice: don't let your grandfather kill your father." The ghost then offers to go out for a walk and some ice cream, and Hamlet says "Attaboy" as a bat-like shape flies away.
The Humor
The comic reframes the plot of Hamlet through a modern therapeutic lens. The ghost of Hamlet's father, in the original play, appears solely to demand revenge — he never expresses love, never hugs his son, and essentially assigns his grieving child a murder. When stated plainly, this is terrible parenting, even by ghost standards. The humor comes from applying contemporary expectations about father-son relationships to a 400-year-old revenge tragedy and finding it hilariously lacking. The ghost's exasperated tone — essentially saying "your dad's ghost showed up and his only message was 'go kill a guy'?" — highlights how strange the original play's emotional priorities are when viewed through a modern lens.
Broader Context
SMBC frequently takes classic literature and mythology and re-examines them with modern sensibilities, finding comedy in the gap between how these stories are revered and how absurd their actual content is. Weinersmith's Shakespeare comics often zero in on the emotional logic of the plays and point out what everyone has been too respectful to mention. This fits into a broader SMBC theme about how cultural prestige can make us overlook obvious absurdities in beloved works.