How Garfield Helped Me Make Peace With a Culture in Decline
Randomized Garfield comic #12323 using Censored template, inspired by @CensoredGarf pic.twitter.com/bhxehVAEW3
— Garfield Randomized (@RandomizedGarf) December 22, 2020
— pipe garfield (@GarfieldPipe) February 2, 2021
I really enjoyed this thoughtful (and gentle) analysis (NYT, Archive.is) of Garfield, brands, culture, consistency, and nostalgia. Despite the proliferation of arch/snark Garfield remixes, the author considers them authentically.
Little did I know that iteration would become the dominant model of 21st-century entertainment: beloved intellectual property endlessly spun off, rebooted and crossed over; culture not as a series of works but as a constellation of reliable draws. It is true that I am getting older, but it is also true that culture can get worse: less surprising, more reliant on references and brands, familiar to the point of revulsion. I worry that I have witnessed these changes in my short lifetime, although I cannot really know. As a hedge against uncertainty, Garfield variants offer a course of conditioning.