1018: Good Cop, Dadaist Cop
| Good Cop, Dadaist Cop |
 Title text: NOW INVENT AN IMPOSSIBLE-TO-TRANSLATE LANGUAGE AND USE IT TO TELL US WHERE THE MONEY IS. |
Explanation
This is a play on the traditional police officer strategy of "Good Cop, Bad Cop", in which two officers play different parts to get the suspect to give the required information. One is nice to the suspect and the other is mean to the suspect.
However, in this comic, they use the strategy "Good Cop, Dadaist Cop" strategy in which one is nice to the suspect and the other is Dadaist, which is defined as (via the Free Dictionary) a European artistic and literary movement (1916-1923) that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity.
So, the Dadaist cop is spouting nonsense attempting to get the suspect to give some information. Unfortunately, this probably is not going to work.
Mark Zuckerberg is the co-founder of Facebook; Church Latin (aka Ecclesiastical Latin) is a particular style of the Latin language used mainly by the Catholic Church. All that, however, is beside the point because Zuckerberg does not own a house (and thus does not have a mortgage), he rents. [1]
Transcript
- [Two cops look through a window into an interrogation chamber holding a handcuffed suspect.]
- Good Cop: All right, let's try good cop, dadaist cop
- [Good Cop is seated in front of the suspect]
- Good Cop: Look, you're a good guy. We can work this out. Hey, lemme get us some coffee.
- [CHANGE PLACES]
- [Dadaist Cop holds up a document of indeterminate contents and threatens the suspect with it]
- Dadaist Cop: See this? It's Mark Zuckerberg's Mortgage. So why is it written in CHURCH LATIN?
- [Dadaist cop physically rattles the suspect]
- Dadaist Cop: WHY ARE MY BONES SO SMALL?
- Suspect: What's WRONG with you!?
- Dadaist Cop: What's wrong with ART?
add a comment!Discussion
- I took a class in college, in French, and we studied (insofar as one can) dadaism, surrealism, and existentialism.
- One day, the girl next to me raised her hand and started out, “This is off the subject, but..”… Professor La Charité interrupted immediately, with, “It’s *never* off the subject. Continue.”
- We all felt we learned something that day. Giraffe. - E
