From AI-generated explanations of New Yorker cartoons created for a study published in July 2023 in Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

The scene is a humorous take on the biblical story of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from God at Mount Sinai. In this case, God is depicted wearing Groucho glasses, a comedic disguise, while advising Moses that “it’s all in the timing,” which is actually a famous principle in comedy.

In this scenario, a deceased husband has been escorted home by angels and his hands are emitting flames, which implies that he is holier or more virtuous than his wife. However, the wife is not impressed and calls him out for having a “holier-than-thou” attitude, a phrase used to describe someone who acts superior to others in terms of morality or spirituality. The joke lies in the unexpected reaction of the wife to the surreal situation, as she does not seem to acknowledge the exceptional circumstances.

Surrealism is an artistic movement characterized by dreamlike, illogical, and fantastical imagery. The situation in the cartoon, in which the man is cut into three pieces but still alive, appears like a surrealistic artwork. The joke is that the doctor is diagnosing the man’s condition as if it were a real medical ailment, but in fact, it’s just an absurd, surreal scenario that wouldn’t happen in real life.

A meta-joke about cartoons as an artform. Since the presence of aliens in unexpected contexts is often a humorous device employed in cartoons, one alien is offering another a cartoon idea while unknowingly taking part in a cartoon. The humor comes from the fact that they don’t seem to realize that they are already part of a cartoon with aliens, making the suggestion redundant and ironically funny.