The commercialization of Garfield

I have to admit, I enjoyed Garfield as a kid. You know, before I discovered the delightful genius of Calvin and Hobbes. This is a pretty creepy article in Slate about how Garfield was always a commercial and ad-orientated creation.

It's funny, because when I was a kid I just liked Calvin and Hobbes because they were fun and funny. Then in my late teens I went back and re-read all the books and fell in love all over again for so many other reasons. And I was surprised – but shouldn't have been, I'm sure – to read all the text in the 10th anniversary collection. You know, the parts that I'd skipped through when I was a kid. In it, Bill Watterson talked about the same issues that a lot of the bands I was into at the time would rant about: struggling with a syndicate (i.e. record labels) over issues of artistic freedom and creativity, the ways in which the form has become more and more standardized and commercialized. Etc.

Things are a lot more connected than I knew at the time.

These days I know that it's a lot more than just "art." It's everything... the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the things we do for fun. Our own choices about employment and how we (fail to?) make a living. Is our primary motivation going to be money? Efficiency? Looking good?

Of course, I say this as someone who nearly went on a tour where one of the main factors pushing me to do so – much as I struggled to admit it – was that I really needed money, and knew I could make a fair bit by being part of it. No self-righteous judement here.