Document Type
Article
Abstract
[First paragraph]
A year ago while surfing the Internet, I came across a website called Garfield Minus Garfield (GMG), operated by artist/businessman Dan Walsh. Walsh received notoriety for his adaptations of the popular Garfield comic strip in which he removed its title character [1]. This act results in Garfield’s human counterpart, Jon Arbuckle, alone and talking to himself in the now empty space of the strip. A radical transformation occurs because of Garfield’s deletion that serves to emphasize the crucial role Jon and Garfield’s relationship plays in our perception of the world within the strip. Walsh begins the site with a concise description of the portrait he is constructing:
Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb [2].
Jon, alone and talking to himself, reminded me of a familiar scene but one I was unable to initially identify. Finally, I realized where I had seen something similar to the solitariness of Jon’s performance: cellphone users. Almost everyday we see people talking to themselves, often in the most public of places: lobbies, buses, hallways, and even occasionally restrooms. Often they are expressing inane details about their days or comments on their location, but just as often they are sharing intimate details about their lives. And yet, when I witness someone talking on his cellphone I rarely, if ever, have the same impression of isolation and depression that is present in Jon’s case. Why?
Repository Citation
Engel, Andy. "Talking to Yourself: Garfield Minus Garfield as an Introduction to Techno-Companionship." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 11, no. 4, 2011, pp. 1–19. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol11/iss4/3