Directors: Zachary Johnson and Jeffrey Max
Screenplay: Zachary Johnson and Jeffrey Max
Based on the newspaper
comic strip by Jim Davis
[Note: Yes, back last year I covered this web parody series in a two
part blog piece. Bluntly, this is a return to this peculiar long gestating
production about everyone's favourite orange cat. Unlike last time, there will
be more time on each piece of this work because, unlike the last review, I
realise I should have given more thought to each piece]
How does one explain Lasagna Cat? Well, the question extends
back to not even where the first "season" of this web parody series
came from, as I feel the work changed as it entered its unexpected return, but
to another - how does one explain Garfield?
Who actually read Jim Davis' original
newspaper strip when it started in 1978, and what is the appeal of a lonely guy
named Jon Arbuckle, his yellow dog named Odie, and an orange cat that loves
lasagne and hates Monday called Garfield? Here's the thing, even if Garfield dissipates in pop culture, for
a certain generation if you say "I hate Mondays" or evoke lasagne,
Garfield will be there. I grew up in an era where you did not have to read any
of the strips but could see the animated tie-ins and merchandise, so the
character could transcend the original strips. That they are still being
published however means he is now more than the sum of his original premise. The
initial idea, presumed, in Lasagna Cat is
that these strips are not inherently funny, and the premise is to recreate the
panels exactly, followed by a "tribute" to Jim Davis.
As the project continued, and
creators Fatal Farm (Zachary Johnson and Jeffrey Max) found as they worked over ten years on these jokes,
this initial premise has been muddled. Frankly, I have always been of the
belief that a lot of popular work that is successful in the mainstream, the
true mainstream of ordinary people, is not going to be understood in how it
succeeds, as is underground material is not going to be understood by the
mainstream, and inevitably these types of arguments of artistic merit are going
to be subjective. From the panels used in Lasagna
Cat, Garfield is innocuous but
at times quite ward and idiosyncratic, merely slithers of it in banal humour
which plays a factor in this adaptation.
For "Season One", this
was only three years into YouTube's
existence when these videos were uploaded in 2008, following a trailer in 2007,
the site virtually alien to the dominant form more likely to be watched by kids
than actual television in the 2010s. They are, in all honesty, merely basic
parodies, but I have softened to them in knowledge of Fatal Farm at this point were going to develop and build to more
elaborate work afterwards. The duo created work before, but it was this project
that got the attention of the likes of Adult
Swim, letting them on to bigger work on Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (2007-10), even Old Spice
commercials with Terry Crews. Before
however, they were doing alternative title sequences to old television. During the
production of their take the Disney animated show Ducktails (1987-1990) in which Webby Vanderquack gets catfished
online and kidnapped as a sex slave, they found a grotesque adult sized
Garfield costume; sunken eyes, giant head, a thing perfect for a CreepyPasta of
Garfield eating your soul. Certainly, for subverting the original comic strip,
a natty costume like this would suffice.
For me, the recreations are the
most interesting aspects of Season One, because controversially I think acting
out the strips presents some fascinating ways filmed images can add to the
material. I am thinking specifically of co-creator Jeffrey Max as Jon Arbuckle, who is actually providing a great
performance as a naive, wide eyed individual. Having the character being acted,
in a very fluffy wig and trademark blue sweater, means that facial expressions
and eye movement adds to what are some frankly generic jokes in the original
material, adding odd levels to them as seen as the panels themselves are shown
after the recreations for comparison.
Obviously most of the fan base is
about the tributes, which are effectively their versions of a trend at the time
of fan made music tributes taking existing footage and editing it to music. Fatal Farm follow these restrictions
fully, in that they only use the footage from the recreations, manipulating it
which can get really perplexing when (set against "Suicide is Painless" from the M.A.S.H soundtrack) Garfield is depicted with a third eye and even
crucified on a cross. The music is a lot of big mainstream pop hits,
surprisingly with only one real case of copyright violation being raised by the
short using Desperado by The Eagles1 having to be
deleted officially in the 2010s.
It can be argued, even by
accident, that some of the songs chosen are being questioned as much for their
mainstream success as the strips. I have to think of a song like Bailamos by Enrique Iglesias and wonder is it has actually been remembered
fondly, or whether it was just the chorus being stuck in your head as it did
for me from Lasagna Cat. It was
originally on the soundtrack for Wild
Wild West (1999), a notorious cinematic flop, a detail that few would
remember, and as much as a fake Garfield dancing to it with Adobe After Effects being used a plenty
is a critique of the newspaper strip, it can offer a critique on these songs
too. Likewise, is Ebony and Ivory,
the Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder collaboration, held
highly, as it sits over time over Garfield and Odie (in a ridiculous homemade
costume) hug. Like Garfield itself,
if people love these songs sincerely, even if it was just one person in the
world, then they are loved. But the spectre of what is perceived as accepted
because we have presumed so, an issue with mainstream media, as much clings to
these examples. If they are mostly perceived to be great or important, that is
a form of purgatory, a symbolically appropriate metaphor for a web parody
series that will run with this when we get to Sex Survey Result's ending all the way in 2018.
At this stage, these are really
just parody videos, released in a whole batch in 2008. Fatal Farm originally had plans to do a Garfield strip a day, only
to find this was impractical, so this does work in its places a peculiar form
of filmed performance art. One of the most famous, set to the score from Jurassic Park (1993) whilst increasingly
low pickings in terms of reviews to Garfield
(2004) and Garfield: A Tail of Two
Kitties (2006) are shown, starting with positive reviews for both by Roger Ebert but eventually getting to an
Amazon review, is more of an extended
gag than how ambitious they eventually got. This is particularly the case as,
if you go to these after seeing the 2017 work, these do not really have a
dynamic conclusion to any of them. The tributes do not really get ambitious
later on, and the only dynamic change is the sole female cast member, hired to
play the vegetarian Dr. Liz Wilson, for a single strip used about Garfield
eating her handbag. What does predate where the second season would head is
that Jim Davis' strip has odd touches belying it as an innocuous and for some
unfunny work. The closest to a grandiose tribute is the one which uses original
footage, Jon Arbuckle not having a romantic life turned into a sad monochrome
tribute of his crying on the kitchen floor with the telephone receiver by him.
Arbuckle was originally a
stand-in for his creator, who in the first strip was also a cartoonist, only to
grow into a man in his thirties or so who is perpetually single, isolated and
eccentric. Some of it is absurd, like his glee in a toaster popping which is
turned into a brash USA tribute, but the romantic life one is dark humour for a
very silly comic strip. If I ever did a "Books of the Abstract", I
would have to cover the strange history of Garfield
Without Garfield, a parody which just took original strips and removed
Garfield, and anything else out the ordinary, so what was left were just Jon
being insane and isolated. It is a project that Jim Davis clearly liked as the
rights owners officially released the strips in paperback form, thus making it
canon and adding layers to this character2.
As I will get to in the later
parts, the snark and irony that has been welded to Garfield in parody, which this is the biggest example of, became
paradoxically as it became a way for the franchise still to live, although it
will take a while before we get to this in terms of where Fatal Farm themselves ended up being. The result here is merely a
stepping stone to a bigger project, not to be dismissed but that it was the
first stage to a project Fatal Farm
which grew from this version's virtues and evolved into something considerably
weirder. It would take ten years, but it would happen.
TO BE CONTINUED...
=========
1) The Big Lebowski
(1998) perfectly sums this up - "The fucking Eagles..."
2) This is not to mention the likes of Garfield: His 9 Lives (1984), a collaborative comic, or any of the
TV animation and animated specials which suggest that, even if occasionally,
the newspaper strip's reputation for being banal belays the whole story.
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