Interesting viewpoint in this article. If it's to be believed, Garfield is a textbook case of art serving capitalism rather than the reverse. Of course we all know that art is always subject to marketability and very often this fact leaves us with a bland experience (the music industry anyone?), but this is the first case I've heard of someone doing it intentionally and without reservation. On one hand you have to admire Davis's business savvy; on the other it's chilling to think of art designed to be bland and what a world full of that would look like. I wonder how true this piece is and if Davis is really as calculating as it makes him sound.

This is an interesting quote from the article:

Garfield's origins were so mercantile that it's fair to say he never sold out—he never had any integrity to put on the auction block to begin with.

but this is the first case I've heard of someone doing it intentionally and without reservation

I don't think there's anything special about that. There are plenty of media examples (cartoon or otherwise) of precisely the same thing.

I think that the difference is most of those are corporate sponsored and very in-your-face in some way. I'm thinking of He-Man and the like, intended to sell action figures, not necessarily entertain. However, Davis was an individual and had (I'm sure) no real money to back up his plans. (To make merchandise, etc.) He started out with an idea of creating something easily licensable under the guise of entertainment, and intentionally made it bland in order to avoid a backlash. That's disconcerting, but it sounds to me like one person's psychosis instead of a new trend.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams is very similar in his strategies and business acumen. I think his cartoons are edgier than Davis', but they do share a certain deliberate calculated blandness with Garfield.

I disagree. I'll admit I'm not a big Dilbert fan, though I usually find them reasonably funny, but many of the situations involved in the strip are not accessible to everyone. Some of them require you knowing what he's talking about. (Not to the extent that Penny Arcade might require an hour of research to get, obviously.)

Of course, he could just be targeting a smaller niche in the same manner. But I don't think so. I feel like he's committed to what he's saying. He's just not the best cartoonist in the world.

This is all assuming that capitolism is bad, when in fact, it is not. We wouldn't have computers to discuss this on if it were not for capitolism. Did Hugo sell out by going to a company that aims to "gasp" make money?

I'm a big fan of "edgy" or obscure art like David Lynch or music that very few people like, but I also see a place for stuff that is more mainstream. I admit it, I love to watch Monkees reruns. This is even more true when something comes up that has to be enjoyed by children. Garfield may come off as "bland" as an adult, but I loved the hell out of the series when I was a little kid. And the fact that I could get stickers and stuffed Ottos made it even more fun for me. Is it bad that someone made a buck off of it and created it in a way that an eight year old would love? Or that my wife, an illustrator, was inspired to draw cats in her notebook at school?

I'm not pointing the finger here, but sometimes people (not you) that express so much distain for mainstream anything come off as being a bit elitist. Everyone sucks for not having the great artistic tastes they do. Besides, how fun would it be to read the Onion (or instert your favorite thing that has a cult following) if everyone at Walmart was wearing a "Your favorite band sucks" shirt? If it wasn't for the mainstream, we couldn't take pride in finding things that are a little more aquired in taste.

Like the article said, Garfield never sold out because it always was what it was/is. It never pretended to be political satire or art of any form. Entertainment wasn't the guise, it was the reason.

When I think Sell Out, I think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.. oh well, I guess something had to come along and make me stop buying comic books.

This is all assuming that capitolism is bad

Not true. I've never assumed that capitalism is bad, but capitalism is a means to an end, not an end in itself (unless you're Ayn Rand, that is). Capitalism should support art by allowing artists to be rewarded for their production, thus promoting it's creation. Art created for the mere act of promoting production misses the spirit of things, and is one of the particular downfalls of this system of economics. I don't think it's evil or anything, but I'd much prefer art born out of artistic passion rahter than calculation.

I think that all artists straddle the $$ vs. passion spectrum, and it's very rare to find someone as polarized as this article makes Davis out to be. Adams may be leaning toward the $$ end of things as you seem to be suggesting, but there is definitely some sense of passion his subject, or at least it seems so to me.

We probably wouldn't have computers if not for war. Does that mean war is good, too?

When I think Sell Out, I think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

No [censored]. Though I think Metallica were worse.

I've never assumed that capitalism is bad, but capitalism is a means to an end, not an end in itself

Well put. I don't think capitalism is bad, either, but crass commercialism for the sake of itself (and the revenue) always makes me retch. The good thing is, you can usually see it when it's happening.

Even though I dislike it so much, I'm not sure whether commercialism for its own sake is necessarily bad. I don't think making money and garnering mindshare (even if it's the mindshare of the world's lowest-common-denominator cattle) is inherently evil. Although I'm sure aspects of it can be. If it crowds out true art, I suppose it could be. But I don't think Jim Davis is on a mission to rub out art or anything.

Fair enough. I guess I just never considered something like that to be art. And I guess that capitolism by itself doesn't do anything to disallow artists to do their thing. James Whister and Pablo Picaso died pretty loaded didn't they?

Besides, what artist needs money? Art should be its own reward.

Naw, we would have built them to predict weather if we didn't already do it to crack German codes. You're thinking GPS. Oh, guess not, that was developed during peace time too, as a deterent to war.

Capitolism = war?

I agree, but I think it's even less of a factor now since there are so many ways to gain access to art or entertainment. When there were just a few movie studios and television stations, we could argue lack of choise. Britney Spears and Limp Bizcuit can put out all the CDs they want and make all the money they want, but that's not going to keep me from having access to Stina Nordenstam and Emiliana Torinni.

In fact, in some ways, it allows you to.

In reply to:

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Well put. I don't think capitalism is bad, either, but crass commercialism for the sake of itself (and the revenue) always makes me retch. The good thing is, you can usually see it when it's happening.

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It seems to me if you /can't/ tell that it's happening, then the product is good enough to be "worth" the money and thus who cares about the original intentions surrounding its creation. If you can tell it's happening, then it probably means that the quality isn't good, so it's not worth buying. Basically what I'm saying is capitalism will work itself out.

This reminds me of a discussion I was having with a friend a few years ago. He said the intentions behind art matter to him. I said if it's good art, it's good art, regardless of why it was made. His example was if the Oklahoma City Bomber guys wrote a beautiful symphony work about killing children, he would refuse to listen to it. I disagreed saying that if it's beautiful music, it's beautiful music, and that it can stand independently from its creator and the events surrounding its creation.

ms

He said the intentions behind art matter to him. I said if it's good art, it's good art, regardless of why it was made.

An old episode of The West Wing that we recently watched had a nice line by Laura Dern as a US Poet Laureate. She said...

You think I think that an artist's job is to speak the truth. An artist's job... is to captivate you for however long we've asked for your attention. If we stumble into truth, we got lucky, and I don't get to decide what truth is.

I found that very pithy.

To some extent, you are all dancing around a classic problem that the literature people have fought with for a while. Lit people love to worry about whether the meaning of a given work has anything to do with the intention of its author. To gratuitously smash the entire discipline of postmodern philosophy into computer geek-speak: many expressions have unbound variables, and you can only evaluate the meaning of such expressions in a context where those variables have definitions. (Example: You don't know what "X+Y" really means until I've defined X, Y, and for that matter, +.) To some of these lit people, there is no true definition of these terms, and thus the whole equation become dependent on the context provided by the reader, and we can all experience it in our own way. Start applying that to literature, and then assume the position of all sorts of critical readers, and you can generate reams of publishable scholarship, so long as you can use long and inscrutable terms to describe common, everyday things.

Back to Garfield, a postmodernist approach would perhaps put Garfield on a pedestal as the empty vessel into which we can easily put ourselves without fear of being too tightly constrained by our pre-conceived notions of the poor cat. That Garfield's creator can get rich off of it is can likewise be interpreted however you want. There's no true good or evil. Just a man making a killing off of a formulaic comic strip.

it's chilling to think of art designed to be bland and what a world full of that would look like.

Driven through a city subdivision, lately?

Kind of reminds me of all those folks who stopped listening to the Dixie Chicks because of the bush comment. (Assuming you listened to them to start with)

Or those idiots who wanted to stop the various sports arenas from playing Gary Glitter "Rock & Roll Pt2" because of his kiddie porn conviction.

... if it's beautiful music, it's beautiful music, and that it can stand independently from its creator and the events surrounding its creation.

And I agree with you. Pete Townshend started a band to get girls. Neither that nor any recent legal troubles change his status with me as an excellent musician and composer, nor the status of "Who's Next," which I believe to be one of the all-time best rock albums.

Okay, here's an interesting moral "what if" question, then...

Let's say you frequented a certain restaurant. Let's say it was a particularly good Indian restaurant in a different city that you only went to a few times a year. But you always went there with your friends every time you visited them in that city, it was sort of a tradition.

Now let's say someone tells you that the restaurant is owned by a rich Indian family, the patriarch of which (and person who holds title to that restaurant) was convicted and sentenced to prison for running an underage prostitution ring. He and other male members of his family are now serving prison time for it. And not only was he just a pimp, he would bring over girls from his home village in India, promising them prosperity in the US, but instead keep them locked up in slave-like conditions. And that this was all discovered when one of the locked-up girls died from negligence. And this all happened a few years ago and you didn't know about it until now. But the same family owns the same restaurant and it's still doing a booming business because their food is excellent.

Knowing that, in a very small and possibly indirect way, your patronage of that restaurant puts money into those men's bank accounts, would you stop eating at the restaurant?

If your answer (as mine was when I found out about it) was "hell yes I'd find a different restaurant", how different is that from buying albums or any other kind of art from an artist whose morals you find reprehensible?

I'm not talking about Pete, of course, I'm just saying in general, as a hypothetical concept.

Okay, here's an interesting moral "what if" question, then...

Ah, that would only be dificult if there were no other sources of Indian food. There are so many other indian restaurants in Berkeley that you could easily go somewhere besides Pasand. May I sugest Vik's for perhaps the best quick snack you'll ever have, or the Udupi Palace for more of a sit down experience.

Matthew

Lemme put it this way: I still don't buy gas from Exxon.

Ah, that would only be dificult if there were no other sources of Indian food.

There's plenty of other sources of art, too...

And I'll look up that Udupi Palace, thanks for the tip.

What about Mobil which has since merged with Exxon?

-Zeke

Good point. I don't think we have any Mobil stations left around here, but I'll keep that in mind for when I travel.

His example was if the Oklahoma City Bomber guys wrote a beautiful symphony work about killing children, he would refuse to listen to it. I disagreed saying that if it's beautiful music, it's beautiful music, and that it can stand independently from its creator and the events surrounding its creation.

You are probably a bigger man than me, then. Not to say that your premise of art standing on it's own isn't correct, but I have a great deal of difficulty separating the art from the artist. My take is that if I heard the symphony without knowing who wrote it or why, I could enjoy it in blissful ignorance. However, if I learned that the driving force behind the music was inspired by the thought of killing childrent that would change my response to the music. That's not to say that the music itself is evil, but in my mind I'd always be actively considering the inspiration everytime I heard the song. If you can, great. I won't foist my limitation upon you, however I wouldn't be able to make that separation.

Another example is a friend of mine who doesn't like a certain actor becase she saw an interview with him where he was crass and admitted to being a womanizer. Now my friend can't stand to watch the actor's movies because she always sees him in that light. I pointed out that this probably not an isoalted attitude among hollywood actors and she agreed, but that didn't change the way she perceived his work.

Finally, your argument only works for art that is ambiguous in nature. Songs with words, paintings that depict identifiable objects or situations, and much literature contains ideas and concepts within the work itself that people might find offensive, distasteful, or simply just not "their bag".

Art serves many purposes, whether it's to make money, convey emotions, convey ideas, convey "truth", or simply to enjoy producing it. I suppose it's all up to us individually to determine what we seek to find in art and what we think of as valuable.

Yeah, I have trouble getting past the whole "scientologist" thing every time I see John Travolta or any of the other famous stars who are scientologists. But despite how much I think the church of scientology is evil, if it's a good movie, I'll still go see it.

My thought on that one is: every movie I see starring (or produced by) a Scientologist is one more dollar in the Scientology coffers that they can use to sue, manipulate, brainwash and enslave. That doesn't mean I never see such a movie, but it does play a sizable part in my decision to see it or not.