2) Well, I think the immediate appeal of solitary geniuses and masterpieces is they will outlive us. It may be hard for a cartoon character to entirely grasp the fear of mortality that creeps into the synapses of Ke$ha songs.
Yeah, I like reading old books and totally throwing authorial intent out the window, making up my own interpretations. Sometimes the reader’s new interpretations make more sense than what the author intended. (See “Shakespeare in the Bush.”)
why does this remind me of fashion? all I hear is how “original” something is because it combined the 70’s prints with skirts from the 50’s.. and blah blah blah…. or something being brought back after it was brought back, a supposed “irony” of sorts… it makes my head spin and makers me think how skewed this sense of “originality” means…
(Oh wow fringe has been renewed!! thanks for letting me me know!!)
thierry gets it, he just gets it in an oversimplified, noob kind of way. and since he’s obsessive, he probably won’t move past that. but if he doesn’t get it, then art won’t ever reach anyone and it’s just art for artists, which is fine, but then don’t bother looking because the rest of us are too stupid to get anything from it, i guess
There is also a philosophy that morality is bunk, nothing we ever do really ‘means’ anything and that eventually the Sun is going to explode and everything we have ever accomplished will be wiped out. This thinking led to a brief period of my life when I behaved like tomorrow didn’t matter, but then I learned that nihilism just means having to pay off a student loan for the rest of your life.
Aaanyway. This strip makes me think of those books that are currently proliferating like ‘Jane Austen meets Zombies’ and ‘Abraham Lincoln meets Vampires’ and inevitably ‘Jack Kerouac meets Cthulhu’. They are the ‘bacon flavoured mayonnaise’ of literature and only exist so that people raised by the internet have something to bond over.
Confession: My friends and I bond over Cat and Girl. Well, and alcohol. And the Contessa, self-winding watches, knitting, bowling ball croquet, bicycle injuries, and laughing at ourselves. And mortality.
“I will only read things written by people who don’t know what they’re doing -”
I’d say that that pretty well much works for the entire body of work of James Joyce. Even literary scholars don’t know what he was doing… I bet it was Laudanum.
@David: Kerouac x Cthulu = GENIUS
Originality is basically just doing something before other people (as far as anybody cares to remember). Memes are only considered original because of juxtaposition/recontextualization. You don’t need to be “creative” to create [something new]. That’s the entire concept behind genius, we’re simply conduits for interpersonal/social/spiritual/underlying psychological forces.
@Girl, exactly. The whole idea of “new” is a bit odd. You know the line about humans being made from stardust? Everything has a precedent. Unless you go back to when/where time and matter were one thing.
Dorothy is on a kick of having a big panel at the end, with no preceding panels on the side, showing a fascimile of a computer screen. Has she been reading the Scott McCloud book nobody read?
March 24, 2011
The like button isn’t clickable.
March 24, 2011
Cat needs to watch “Exit Through the Gift Shop”. He could make a mint!
March 24, 2011
ok, dammit! now I want to see an ASCII animation of the Rodney King beatdown.
March 24, 2011
“It’s Complicated”
March 24, 2011
Yeah, Banksy gets it but I don’t think Thierry Guetta ever will.
March 24, 2011
1) yay!
2) Well, I think the immediate appeal of solitary geniuses and masterpieces is they will outlive us. It may be hard for a cartoon character to entirely grasp the fear of mortality that creeps into the synapses of Ke$ha songs.
3) Fringe was renewed!
;-)
March 25, 2011
so where does that put the viewer?
March 25, 2011
Strange… were my comments caught by the spam filter?
Ok, maybe it’s reacting to me posting a link in here.
So since I can’t post a link… please use Google to find “The Cult of Originality” by Nina Paley. I think it may be relevant here.
Thank you for this comic, Dorothy, it is lovely.
Originality is just mushing together so many different things the unaided eye can no longer see what they are.
March 25, 2011
Yeah, I like reading old books and totally throwing authorial intent out the window, making up my own interpretations. Sometimes the reader’s new interpretations make more sense than what the author intended. (See “Shakespeare in the Bush.”)
March 25, 2011
why does this remind me of fashion? all I hear is how “original” something is because it combined the 70’s prints with skirts from the 50’s.. and blah blah blah…. or something being brought back after it was brought back, a supposed “irony” of sorts… it makes my head spin and makers me think how skewed this sense of “originality” means…
(Oh wow fringe has been renewed!! thanks for letting me me know!!)
March 25, 2011
…and that was how I learned Fringe was renewed.
March 25, 2011
wow
March 26, 2011
thierry gets it, he just gets it in an oversimplified, noob kind of way. and since he’s obsessive, he probably won’t move past that. but if he doesn’t get it, then art won’t ever reach anyone and it’s just art for artists, which is fine, but then don’t bother looking because the rest of us are too stupid to get anything from it, i guess
March 26, 2011
Theres a philosophy that humans can’t create anything new, that everything we create is an amalgamation of things that already exist.
March 26, 2011
There is also a philosophy that morality is bunk, nothing we ever do really ‘means’ anything and that eventually the Sun is going to explode and everything we have ever accomplished will be wiped out. This thinking led to a brief period of my life when I behaved like tomorrow didn’t matter, but then I learned that nihilism just means having to pay off a student loan for the rest of your life.
Aaanyway. This strip makes me think of those books that are currently proliferating like ‘Jane Austen meets Zombies’ and ‘Abraham Lincoln meets Vampires’ and inevitably ‘Jack Kerouac meets Cthulhu’. They are the ‘bacon flavoured mayonnaise’ of literature and only exist so that people raised by the internet have something to bond over.
March 27, 2011
Confession: My friends and I bond over Cat and Girl. Well, and alcohol. And the Contessa, self-winding watches, knitting, bowling ball croquet, bicycle injuries, and laughing at ourselves. And mortality.
March 27, 2011
“I will only read things written by people who don’t know what they’re doing -”
I’d say that that pretty well much works for the entire body of work of James Joyce. Even literary scholars don’t know what he was doing… I bet it was Laudanum.
March 27, 2011
@David: Kerouac x Cthulu = GENIUS
Originality is basically just doing something before other people (as far as anybody cares to remember). Memes are only considered original because of juxtaposition/recontextualization. You don’t need to be “creative” to create [something new]. That’s the entire concept behind genius, we’re simply conduits for interpersonal/social/spiritual/underlying psychological forces.
March 28, 2011
@Girl, exactly. The whole idea of “new” is a bit odd. You know the line about humans being made from stardust? Everything has a precedent. Unless you go back to when/where time and matter were one thing.
March 29, 2011
Dorothy is on a kick of having a big panel at the end, with no preceding panels on the side, showing a fascimile of a computer screen. Has she been reading the Scott McCloud book nobody read?
January 11, 2012
out of new ideas – mix up the old and used ones eg superman, who really is happy to be poverty stricken with failure.
October 19, 2013
Often the cynical new detritus is just detritus.
Quickly an embarrassment to all.