07 mars 2006

Enn af Gretti

Davis makes no attempt to conceal the crass commercial motivations behind his creation of Garfield. Davis has the soul of an adman—his first job after dropping out of Ball State, where he majored in business and art, was in advertising—and he carefully studied the marketplace when developing Garfield. The genesis of the strip was "a conscious effort to come up with a good, marketable character," Davis told Walter Shapiro in a 1982 interview in the Washington Post. "And primarily an animal. … Snoopy is very popular in licensing. Charlie Brown is not." So, Davis looked around and noticed that dogs were popular in the funny papers, but there wasn't a strip for the nation's 15 million cat owners. Then, he consciously developed a stable of recurring, repetitive jokes for the cat. He hates Mondays. He loves lasagna. He sure is fat.

Þetta er svolítið grimmur pistill.. ég hef mjög gaman af slatta af gamla Gretti, en á móti kemur jú að hann er búinn að vera herfilega lélegur núna í mörg mörg ár. Virkilega athyglisvert að Davis skuli hafa spáð sérstaklega í markaðssetningunni þegar hann smíðaði þessa karaktera. Kannske ekkert skrýtið að hafa það bakvið eyrað en þarna virðist skrítlan sjálf vera hugsuð sem grunnur fyrir sölu á dúkkum og hnífapörum. Lélegt. Hinsvegar..
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 today Davis spends even less time on the strip than he used to — between three days and a week each month. During that time, he collaborates with another cartoonist to generate ideas and rough sketches, then hands them over to Paws employees to be illustrated.

Og það sést aldeilis á Gretti einsog hann kemur fyrir í blöðunum í dag. Fjöldaframleitt drasl, steingelt alla leið aftur í hnakka og gersamlega laust við öll tilþrif. Því er nú helvítis verr.

Ég nenni nú ekki að leita að því núna en það er allt annar tónn í Bill Watterson þegar hann talar um Calvin & Hobbes, bara svona til dæmis.. endalausar útistöður við skrítlumiðlarana, vesen yfir stöðlum sem ekki mátti föndra við o.s.frv. Í stuttu máli sagt skrítlan sjálf í öndvegi, ekki kröfur markaðarins.

Hah, smá gúglun leiðir þetta viðtal í ljós:
Christie: What about Jim Davis?

Watterson: Uh...Garfield is...(long pause)...consistent.

Christie: Ooo-kay...

Watterson: U.S. Acres I think is an abomination.

Christie: Never seen it.

Watterson: Lucky you. Jim Davis has his factory in Indiana cranking out this strip about a pig on a farm. I find it an insult to the intelligence, though it's very successful.

Gott stöff.

-b.

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