You dont have to blog (or twitter) every 10 minutes… as long as when you do its meaningful. Greg Ritter posts maybe once or twice a month, and there was a time when the light at Ten Reasons Why was dark for like a year, but he shares some fabulous gems.
Earlier this month he shared the link to the 50 Best Commercial Parodies which fed my nostalga as a teen growing up on SNL (in its first year, it was not even broadcast on Baltimore NBC’s station and I remember staying with the fuzzy signal from channel 4 in D.C.).
And today, he shared what I think is one of the most brilliant creative ideas in a while; maybe it is a negative mashup? Check our garfield minus garfield in which the cat has been erased from the strips, revealing a disturbing personality of Jon:
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.
Think about the sheer creativty (IMHO) of this- in making content, we tend to focus about adding, adding, piling on, and here is someone who creates by stripping away. I am sure there is a fancy art school word for this and it goes back to the 1300s, but hey, it is fresh to me.
But it gets better. If you were like me, the first thing you would guess is that Jim Davis Garfield artist or whatever megacorp that owns Garfield.would be sic-ing the lawyers on Dan Walsh, the garfield-garfield creator and piling him with cease and desists.
But no.
Davis likes the derivative work. In an article in the Washington Post, When the Cat’s Away, Neurosis Is on Display (gotta like a good title), a quote form Davis suggests he does not have the copyright fever…
One of Walsh’s occasional readers is Davis, who heard about the site a few months ago. The cartoonist calls the work “an inspired thing to do” and wishes to thank Walsh for enabling him to see another side of “Garfield.”
I love this stuff…
Now THIS is amazing. Walsh’s idea could be generalized/mutated/mashed into a whole series of interesting analytical/creative assignments for students. This kind of stuff gets me fully jazzed because it’s so clearly driven both by inspiration and by careful, deliberate thought.
Think about a film studies class where we could take actors out of certain scenes and just watch other actors respond to them. What a great way to study acting.
I’m all for reductionist thinking.
Perhaps Jim Davis could switch Garfields tone and speak of more important matters – http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war74.html