Sport in the Cartoons of Charles Addams and Gary Larson: A Theater of Ludic Absurdity

Abstract

This article examines how sport illuminates the Dadaist foundations of Charles Addams’s and Gary Larson’s humor in their single-panel cartoons. The article also considers how Addams’s and Larson’s treatment of sport sheds light on particular theories of humor and elucidates their view of sport as human endeavor and social institution. Ultimately, this article argues that Addams and Larson portray sport in a way that suggests that the appropriate mode by which to approach life may well be the comic and playful one that characterizes Zen Buddhism. While the sport cartoons of Addams and Larson constitute a theater of ludic absurdity, in the end, they also offer us liberating enlightenment.