
The week Garfield died. Analysis & comics - forsaken
http://teaching.zachwhalen.net/comics/content/when-funnies-arent-so-funny-anymore-or-week-garfield-died
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vitaminj
While reading this, I couldn't help but feel that it had the tenor of an
english lit assignment... then realised that it was exactly that.

A+ notwithstanding.

~~~
omouse
That tenor, the idea of it, the very thought, comes with little, almost no
practice whatsoever. You, the reader, are astute in making this observation,
however English Lit. is more than a tenor, it is a soprano of the highest
order!

(English lit. encourages students to write essays that include unnecessary
words or phrases. Bullshitting is a fine art apparently)

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jwilliams
This reminds be of the great Garfield minus Garfield (The standard strip, but
with Garfield removed): <http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/>

It's actually brilliant - Apparently J. Davis loves + approves of it too -
says it bought a whole new perspective to his work.

~~~
maw
See also the <a
href="[http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/">Nietzsche](http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/)
Family Circus</a>.

~~~
unalone
You might want to check out <http://scottmeetsfamilycircus.tumblr.com/> in
that case. Quite funny.

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ph0rque
Reminds me of a much dark, and wittier, comic (imo): <http://pbfcomics.com>.

~~~
ngvrnd
PBF is definitely edgy. It often makes me feel that I shouldn't be laughing at
it.

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ojbyrne
I think it's plausible that Jim Davis was on vacation that week, and somebody
with some talent filled in. Then he came back unfortunately.

~~~
unalone
By the time this came out, Davis wasn't writing his own Garfield strips
anymore. I remember him saying in an interview that he thought this week was a
"fun joke" to play on readers. He obviously didn't read much into it.

Am I alone in really wishing this sort of thing wasn't on Hacker News? Not
just because it deals with comics, but because it makes a mockery of real
analysis. Garfield is not art. It's brilliant marketing, but no actual content
- not by the time this strip had been created, anyway. Analysis like this
distracts from the analysis that really matters: analysis that might introduce
casual readers to an entirely new medium. I'm not exactly a comics maven, but
I remember reading a strip-by-strip analysis of Krazy Kat, a comic that
absolutely does benefit from such analysis. It got me into that entire era of
comicry. There are more recent comics that benefit from such analysis.
Peanuts. Bloom County. Calvin & Hobbes. Each has strips that benefit from
really thinking, panel by panel.

This? A mockery! Nothing interesting is happening. The person that made these
strips was just stringing along clichéd views. The only interesting thing is
that it happened in a strip that's usually punchline after punchline - the
comic itself is bland, derivative, and in fact quite bad. This isn't the "I'm
upside down" of Peanuts, or the pterodactyl flying away in Calvin & Hobbes.
This is bullshit. And the analysis is bullshit compounding bullshit. It's a
disgrace. Stuff like this is why people mock the sorts of analysis that really
ought to be praised.

~~~
markessien
Should I send you a box of matches, perhaps you'd be interested in burning his
article?

There is no "right" intellectualism, thinking about things and analyzing
things does not first have to pass through a filter created by you on what is
right to think about, and what not.

Your statement is awful because it advocates the creation of a limited and
closed world, with only special topics being "worthy" of thought.

~~~
unalone
You're fighting a straw man. I never said things weren't worthy of thought, or
that there is shame in thinking about really stupid things. I said that I
disliked the attention it was receiving on Hacker News. To take it to one
extreme, while I'd never tell somebody that writing fanfiction was bad, I
wouldn't nominate it for a Pulitzer. I wouldn't give the writer awards. I
recall reading something wherein a fanfic writer was complaining that the lack
of published fanfiction novels was "censorship" on behalf of publishers.
Similarly, is it censorship for my to say I _don't_ want awful,
nonintellectual papers on Hacker News? No.

The problem with _your_ statement (I won't call it awful) is that the flip
side of intellectualism is that there are standards to be had. It means that
while I can't deny people thought, I _can_ choose to rebut the things that
they say, which I attempted to do. I didn't just say "Garfield, shit, censor."
I said, "I dislike this, because it makes it look like analysis is merely
bullshitting about really simple things."

This article isn't thought-provoking. It doesn't teach anything unless you've
never seen these comics before. Even now, I doubt anybody gets _anything_ out
of the article - all they get, they get from the comics. The article is fluff.
By criticizing it, I wasn't denying high schoolers the right to critique! Far
from it: I was saying that while high schoolers may not be smart or discerning
in the crap they write, Hacker News is, and I dislike that so many people are
voting up a crap story. There's no intelligent discussion coming up. The big
talk is about whether or not Garfield Minus Garfield ripped off other things
(which it did). People aren't discussion the fine art of comic craft, or
_anything_ interesting comics-related. This story's taking up a slot it
shouldn't, and it's absolutely one of the worse Hacker News stories I've seen.
It ticks me off because it's indicative of the community.

And for that matter, it ticks me off that you think it's right to bend and
twist what I said. You make me out to be an intellectual Nazi. "Send me a box
of matches." All the suggestions of censorship. I mean, come _on_. You've been
here longer than I have, and still you see it necessary to respond so
childishly?

It annoys me that this is what this site's becoming. And my original point
was, calling _this_ intellectualism is insulting the real intellectuals. It's
like calling XKCD a physics teacher.

~~~
markessien
The thing here is that we have core philosophies that are different, and our
statements here are indicative of these philosophies.

Let me explain what I mean:

In Germany it's illegal to publish or display Nazi material. I believe that we
both are against the Nazi philosophy, but it appears to me that you belong to
the group of people who would favour censoring such material, while I believe
in absolute freedom of expression, and that such material should not be in any
way illegal, and people should be free to argue for and against it.

Censorship is when it is not illegal to write the material, but it's illegal
to make this material available in a public forum. What you advocate is the
same as the German Government policy - you want these people free to write the
material you don't like, but you actively work to make it not publicly visible
in a forum you frequent.

I've never read a critique about comic characters, and I'm not particular
interested in this particular one, but I am a very strong proponent of
complete freedom of expression.

The problem with your path is that it's VERY subjective. You say you don't
like it, but where is the line? What if I post an article about how Hamas
builds a Bomb using cow manure. This may be interesting from a hacker
perspective but it will offend many sensibilities - the point of the upvote,
downvote button is to act as a filter, so if enough people find it
interesting, it will go to the top, no matter how loudly _individuals_
complain.

Final point : don't take my arguments seriously. I argue this dispassionately,
and I don't expect you to take the points personally. Read my text critically,
not emotionally.

~~~
unalone
Yeah! Of course. It's all about arguing, not about getting angry.

I think that you should be free to do anything. I don't, for instance, hate
Garfield, and I don't hate the people that think it's worth analyzing
Garfield. On the contrary! What I dislike is that this is an awful article,
and it's on Hacker News. If you were to submit a story talking about Nazis
that was poorly-written and ignored entirely the fact that Nazis did what they
did, I'd get annoyed if it got upvoted.

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antidaily
I remember seeing a For Better or for Worse
(<http://www.fborfw.com/index.php>) comic where a guy says hi to a little girl
in a shopping cart at the store, she waves back. Her mom freaks out and moves
the cart, scolding the girl for talking to a stranger. The last frame of the
comic has the guy saying "Sometimes I hate this world". Not very funny. I
mean... what?!

~~~
unalone
Well, yeah. Not all comics are funny. FBOFW has a serious side to it.

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Silentio
Unfortunately, Davis went back to writing the same old shit after that story
arc.

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timcederman
Hmm, how weird -- I've read a very similar analysis before, which I assumed
this was. Then I noticed the current date. I wonder where this person ripped
it off from?

~~~
olavk
<http://garfieldisdead.ytmnd.com/>

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Herring
what the fuck ...

