No, really, it’s uncanny. Suddenly, Jon is standing there talking to himself, and all we get are occasional Garfield expressions back. It becomes slightly surreal, and much more entertaining than the “club you over the head with a pan of lasagna” humor the strip usually has.
Less is more.
81 view(s)
Ummm…
Garfield and funny…
Wow, I just can’t make that work. ;P
I get almost physically ill when exposed to a Garfield strip these days.
It goes back to reading an interview with the creator (Jim Davis I believe) a while back and him talking about he he had gone out of his way to craft a mediocre, unexciting, static piece of work. He intentionally didn’t want it to be artistic, the jokes are re-used and stale on purpose, and anytime merchandise for it gets too hot he kills production on it to artificially create scarcity before it becomes too widespread and stands the chance of ‘burn out’ as a fad (like the car window suction cup Garfields, he stopped production on them when they suddenly got real popular). The entire thing is basically him looking at a newspaper comic strip and syndication from a marketing standpoint and not caring about the writing or the art. Garfield is everything I despise in newspaper comic strips. He doesn’t even draw or write it himself anymore, it is apparently all ghost-drawn and ghost-written by people who’ve been hired to do it since he can’t be bothered with the actual work himself.
While on the face of it that’s appalling, the fact is it’s also not uncommon in the creative biz — “What sells? What generates demand? What will bring in the bucks?” While not meeting some purist ideal of ars gratia artis, I really don’t care whether an artist puts something together to make money, to edify humanity, or to cure personal demons (or a combination thereof); I care whether I find it enjoyable.
And, yes, Garfield I do not.
I can understand the idea of having to make something ‘mainstream’ enough to attract an audience, and understanding what sells. You can’t get something syndicated if it doesn’t have a large enough potential audience to make it worth the comic page editor’s time…
But intentionally producing a work that you know is mediocre and intentionally mining a demographic to make as bland a piece of work possible because you know if it has so few distinguishing features it will be inoffensive to everyone…
When such an effort gets rewarded with being as successful as it is, exactly what sort of message is that supposed to be sending? “Don’t be creative or original, just mine the lifeless corpse of the mainstream to be successful” or “Don’t bother trying anything new, the audience’s attention span is so short they won’t notice if you only have five jokes and just recycle them.” I just find the whole thing to be repugnant.
Hooray for Hollywood!