Arf-heben

Garfield and Odie engage in the dialectical death struggle, but this master-slave conflict will never resolve, never synthesize. One side is too dumb to resist or surrender. Garfield is playing Hegel's game correctly, but his opponent barely qualifies as a self-consciousness to be battled.

Garfield's behaviors are cultivated and perfected or at least self-aware. He may not be able to control his food addiction, but he frames it as an artform, a lifestyle, a moral certitude. Odie's body simply cannot be regulated. He is beyond choice, out of control, outside the boundaries of self-awareness. His tongue protrudes, eyes bulge, body spasms because he cannot help it. Odie cannot follow Garfield's rules because he cannot process them, but also through the sheer force of the rampaging lifeforce that Garfield would annihilate.

Finally, Garfield defines himself through sheer opposition to the Other, even as he tries to conscript Odie into his own behavioral patterns. Though he can name the activities that define the dog, he looks into the core of what makes a cat — his own identity — and comes up empty.

Attempting to curb Odie's behavior through orders couched in the form of a sort of game, Garfield makes two weird logistical moves and the sum comes out less than zero.

Doors of Deception

If you have not experienced this, it may seem a little specific, but it happens all the time. There is a strain of practical jokery which involves telling the "victim" something completely reasonable, mundane and within the realm of possibility, then cackling with self-satisfaction when they believe the lie. It is the laziest and saddest of "jokes," because the joke is ultimately on the prankster. For example, it is very funny to convince the nation they are being attacked by Martians. It is not funny say "the mail is here! No, just kidding." Pranks such as calling the police to convince them you have committed a murder fall in a gray area. Garfield's trick on Odie largely falls into the first category, wherein it is perfectly reasonable that if Odie is far enough from the door, or there is a prowler outside, the dog might not have heard the approaching human.

Garfield seems to believe that the trick proves that Odie is stupid. Perhaps it does, but not because the dog is gullible enough to act on the cat's bad information despite lack of evidence. If Odie does anything stupid in this strip, it is believing Garfield, who habitually acts deceitfully toward Odie. All Garfield has demonstrated is that he is not trustworthy, though he may have descended so far into his own pathology that it is amusing that people assume they are not being lied to about subjects of no importance. This is funny only in the way that it is funny that people breathe air to survive and wear coats when it is cold.

There is a second, less malicious level to the joke, though. It is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy gag, in which the victim is given a cue, unconsciously enacts a predictable behavior pattern, and finds the letter of the promise fulfilled by their own action, if not the spirit. That is vague, so for example: my dad's favorite of these jokes is to ask a child "what's in your pockets?" Child instinctually thrusts hands into pockets, gropes about only to find nothing. Punchline: "Your hands!" This is more a gag about the intricacies of literal language and programmed behavior than a joke at someone's expense. See also under The Monster at the End of this Book. It is interesting to consider why the prank works, beyond the dog's gullibility. Once Odie has reached the door, "someone" is indeed at the door. Most of us still might not grasp the punchline without explanation, because we do not typically think of our personal Self as "Someone." Therefore the joke is about identity and individual consciousness, if only in the broadest possible way. Related, Garfield is preying on Odie's curiosity and protective instinct, and while barking at everyone who comes to the door is an obnoxious trait of dogs, it is one of the basic reasons they were domesticated in the first place.

This does not stop it from being a dick thing to to, of course. Though Garfield forces Odie to demonstrate some vagaries of language, it is one step removed from correcting someone's grammar in the middle of conversation. Garfield intends the common irony of applying Einstein's name to someone who has just demonstrated foolishness, but given that Einstein understood God "who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a god who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind," he would likely approve of the elegant cause/effect demonstration enacted by the idiot dog and the jerk-ass cat.

Kitteo Rewind

Garfield takes frequent aim at those elements of its own fabric most complained-about and misunderstood by critics, and in the process lays to waste the complaints and successfully turns the mirror on the strip. This Sunday strip is a prime example.

Title Panel: Between the apparent whimsy of the lovable cartoon cat and the reader's heart is the cold reality of the PAWS merchandising interest. Playful, colorful fish leap about, google-eyed, their doom in Garfield's stomach already written upon their very bodies. The last in line bears the Registered Trademark symbol upon his scales.

The Strip: The same two drawings repeated 2.5 times (and with the implication of endless repetition) become the raw material for the joke. The content, you've seen before - Garfield kicking Odie off the table - and seen for years, the same joke repeated in variation ad nauseum. You've heard the complaint that Garfield is the same jokes every day - Garfield is fat, Garfield is lazy, Jon is a nerd, Garfield is mean - but if you think Jim Davis doesn't know this, or it is an insult to your intelligence, or even a flaw in the comic strip, you are missing the point.

I Guess: Garfield set up a camera to capture his own exploits? This doesn't surprise me, and I certainly don't put it past Garfield, but it says a lot about the nature of kicking-Odie-off-the-table gags. Like most of Garfield, success in life isn't about grabbing surprising opportunities, but exploiting the patterns of predestination all around you.

The Punchline: Garfield rightly identifies perusing his adventures as "treasured memories." I get a lot of email that boils down to "I used to like Garfield as a kid, but the apparent lack of sophistication drove me away as an adult." The pleasure of the strip is Davis' ability to conjure infinite variations on the same jokes, daily stories from drawings that look more or less the same, and characters who remain in relative physical and emotional stasis. When Garfield is at its best, these regulatory boundaries themselves become the subject of the jokes. So "whatcha' watching?" = "why are you looking at the same two drawings over and over?" The answer is: it may be an exercise in cruelty, but I like it.

Flight of the Ph-odie-nix

Scott McCloud, eat your heart out. Garfield makes deconstructionist jokes about the relationships of time, sound, and image in comics, and links them to the historical model of silent film, with an eye to the special problems of the slapstick genre.

The Garfield staff researchers would have done well, however, to note the infrequency of sound effects title cards in silent film.

Panel 3 reveals that either the drop from the table is very short, or Odie's front leg is going totally Plastic Man.