Animal Abuse = Hilarious?

We all understand about conflict, you don't need to explain simple tropes to us. It should be pretty obvious that conflict doesn't necessitate animal cruelty. I don't understand what's funny about it. Like I actually haven't a clue where the humor comes from. I know that it's there because these animal cruelty jokes pop up all the time and people who as far as I can tell are perfectly decent laugh at them. I haven't a clue what's going on. Why is that funny?

I saw this movie when I was about 8 and never watched it again, now pretty much the only thing I remember about it is that the dog was dragged to death behind the car. Where does the humor in that stem from? It's really awful. And it's not a quick gag, so we can find humor in the mean spirited absurdity, it's a long drawn out scene in which we are invited to dwell on it.

And the fact that no one gives a sh!t? When my cat was put to sleep as a kid, I was allowed to stay home from school for a couple of days while I mooned about the house occasionally crying like a little girl and sleeping for three thirds of the day because that's the normal reaction to the loss of a childhood pet, and anyone who thinks Wally World is more important looses my sympathy and the movie becomes a loss. I mean, we do have to actually engage with these characters even in a crazy comedy like Vacation, so it's hard to give much of crap about any of their conflict in the face of something that it seems obvious to me in real life is indisputably more important than the principle goal as set out in the script.

A similar sort of idea is in the movie Little Miss Sunshine. The goal is to get to the pageant and along the way we encounter many obstacles. The grandfather dies before they get there. His death though isn't horrifying. It isn't casually tossed aside as if it doesn't matter, we aren't invited to guffaw at some terrible tortuous end. He ODs. It's funny and sad, but it's not nasty, we can relate to the character's reactions and actions and carry on with the movie. That isn't true of Vacation. I just really don't get it.

What if a squirrel wants a sausage?

Whew thanks for clearing that up! We were all thinking they killed the dog off-screen for realism. :)

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I didn't actually think I needed to explain that I only meant the "character" of the dog, not the actual dog. The only moron here is you.

If someone really wanted to complain about animals, when Clark falls asleep and the end up in the hotel lot, watch for the old man walking his dog. When he sees Clark coming he jerks the dog clear off the ground. No one complains about that.

It's National Lampoon, not Disney. I love animals, and I think it's hysterical. But then I know it's a movie and not a documentary.

I would like to add, that comedy is SUPPOSED to poke fun at ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING. It has freedom and license to do that. If something is not funny, it's not funny. The reason for something not being funny is NOT the topic, context or the subject - anything can be MADE funny, even though some humor or jokes can be disturbing and thus not recommended for young or sensitive people.

You have to remember that it's still JUST humor, JUST jokes, and nothing REAL.

Therefore, any topic, no matter how 'horrible' or 'disturbing' in real life, can be made funny and SHOULD be able to be joked about. In fact, the more 'sacred' the thing, the funnier the joke - often when the audience is disturbed, it laughs the loudest, partially because it's so unexpected that someone would make a joke about such a horrible thing.

We have to remember that the joke is almost never about laughing AT some victim of torture and horrors, it's often USING something terrible, horrible or torturous to laugh at SOMETHING ELSE.

This is a good example, because although the thought of a dog being dragged behind a car until it dies from exhaustion, physical injuries, blood loss, etc, (and its dead body is then mangled by the contact with asphalt until the body becomes small/malformed/broken enough for the head to be cut off or slip through the collar) is ABSOLUTELY terrible..

..it brings a really disturbing thought into the extremely funny discussion and reactions of the actors, which combined, is SO absurd you can't help but laugh.

It's a ridiculous, funny, harmless scene that makes you go through something uncomfortable internally, while expressing something hilarious externally.

The audience is not pointing at animal cruelty and laughing about it.

The audience is squirming because of the thoughts of horror, while the absurdity of the scene and expresions are making the audience laugh.