nebu
...@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote in news:jib30c$leh$1
@reader1.panix.com:
> The reason Gunther's plan is so brilliant is that there's
> nothing like bringing together large numbers of teenagers to make
> one of their own stop bullying the weak, unpopular kid! It can't
> possibly go wrong!
> http://www.gocomics.com/luann/2012/02/25
> For now I'm going to suppose that it's just Gunther and
> Rosa who are this astoundingly out of touch with the way human
> beings interact, but I reserve the right to change my mind come
> Thursday, whenever that does happen in the strip.
Gunther thinking it's a brilliant idea is believable enough: I've come
up with embarrassingly stupid plans that seemed like pure genius at
first. Thing is, all it usually takes to burst a bubble like that is the
simple act of describing the plan to another person and getting their
reaction - provided, of course, that the other person exists outside the
Luanniverse.
The most absurd thing about the plan, IMO, is that Leslie agreed to it.
Bullies may not be 100-watt bulbs, but they're bright enough to know a
trap when they see one, and since Leslie doesn't know how stupid
Gunther's plan actually is, he'd never go along with it; he'd just
assume Gunther was trying to set him up. We've already seen him back off
from beating Gunther to a pulp because an adult (the oh-so-menacing Miss
Phelps) showed up, so even in the strip's reality he's savvy enough to
know that beating the shit out of someone in front of witnesses has its
downside.
The *second* most absurd thing about the plan is that Gunther just went
and explained it to Rosa, apparently under the impression that as long
as he doesn't explain it directly to Leslie, Leslie will never find out,
high schools being the tight-lipped hotbeds of secrecy that they are.
(Again, this doesn't even make sense in the strip's own terms: Knute
found out about Gunther knocking down Leslie almost immediately.)
--
Usually annihilating a culture and romanticizing it are done separately,
but Bunnell neatly compresses two stages of historical change into one
conversation. -Rebecca Solnit
