78: Garfield

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Garfield

Title text: The use of the 'Garfield' character for the purposes of this parody qualifies as fair use under the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. sec. 107. See Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (92-1292), 510 U.S. 569

Explanation

Garfield has been known for repetitive, poorly written strips. Intended for a wide audience, these strips are now ghost written and do not do anything unconventional. The author is challenging Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, to do something unexpected and surprise us all. And also accuses Jim Davis of being a "sell out", sticking to bourgeois/commercial logic, something that dadaist artists challenged.

Dadaism was an artistic movement in the early 20th century marked primarily by chaos, irrationality and surrealism. Some of the artists believed that the bourgeois logic, made human being unhappy and therefore led to war.

Randall leads by example by featuring a strip with multiple colors (xkcd usually contains only black and white, with some few containing an additional color like red or yellow) and a character that is not a stick figure, which breaks the "whole xkcd logic". Another dadaistic aspect is the fact the while Garfield is smiling, he is "saying" something that could be considered terrifying.

Transcript

I want to see something unexpected in comics. Just one strip could make up for it all.

[Garfield is standing on hind legs facing and looking directly at the camera. But is off-center in the frame, about 1/3 from the left, rotated very slightly clockwise.]

[Zoom in on Garfield, still to the left, now rotated slightly counterclockwise.]

[Zoom in again on Garfield, now the frame clips off the left side of his face.]

Garfield thought bubble: The world is burning.

[Final zoom in, the frame is ripped like a page, offset, and Garfield's eyes are half closed on the right half.]

Garfield thought bubble: Run.

Jim Davis, throw off your commercial shackles. Challenge us. Go out in a blaze of Dadaist glory. There is still time.

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Discussion

I disagree with the original author of the article, I don't think Garfield is poorly written. However, to avoid any greater conflict, I decided to keep it as it is. Does everyone else think it is "poorly written"? --Pnariyoshi (talk) 21:56, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

There was certainly controversy sparked within the comic writing community when Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, quit early because he felt that cartoonists targeted their comics at too wide a market to be meaningful and funny. This was at the gestation of the internet, when the only funding that a cartoonist could find was from newspapers looking for something to fill the back page, and had to follow the newspaper's guidelines for neutrality to avoid offending anyone. Watterson called other cartoonists "sell-outs" for dumbing down their work for the mass-market, and he quit in disgust at his own newspaper's attempts to cull the philosophical speeches that were ever-so-common in Calvin and Hobbes. Since then, widespread corporate culture has made Dilbert a hit, and we ourselves are discussing XKCD here. Watterson would be smiling right now. Davidy²²[talk] 00:44, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Wow, that was incredibly instructive. I'm actually very excited about this discussion. While I do agree "dumbing down" something that was originally intended for a specific niche is what ruins a lot of media (besides comic strips, I feel it commonly ruins TV shows, Movie adaptations etc), I think it would be unfair to call it "poorly written". I think a better word would be "unexciting", "lacking passion" or "having lost it's first love". Making a strip appeal to a wide range of people is not always as easy as it seems, especially without making it come down to bathroom/sexual jokes. While I do feel that Randall sometimes gets very close to the border of "distasteful", I think xkcd still maintains its roots and it is pretty funny and smart. --Pnariyoshi (talk) 02:25, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi there, I'm the original author of the page in question. I do not mind if it is changed or even removed. 98.162.150.124 02:08, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I definitely agree that Garfield isn't poorly written, but it is basically lacking in creativity at this point. The underlying point remains however, and that is that the 'mainstream' all suffers from that same mass appeal sickness, which is rather outmoded in the modern era.