Lasagna Cat Part 3: 07/27/1978 (2017)

Following on from Part 2.

Directors: Zachary Johnson and Jeffrey Max (as Fatal Farm)

Screenplay: Zachary Johnson and Jeffrey Max

Based on the comic strip by Jim Davis

Stars: John Blyth Barrymore as the Speaker, Jeffrey Max as Jon Arbuckle

If the name is vague, this can also be called the Pipe Strip episode of Lasagna Cat, in which the following is recreated:

1st Panel: Jon Arbuckle (in his early, cruder design) reading a newspaper and extending his hand out to grasp for a smoking pipe.

2nd Panel: Jon staring straight at the reader, a thought bubble appearing saying "Now where could my pipe be?"

Final Panel: Garfield, significantly different and larger in his early design, smoking the pipe as Jon is read off panel shouting at him.

Then for an episode longer than all the others in Season 2 combined, as I view Sex Survey Results its own piece, we have actor John Blyth Barrymore, related Drew Barrymore and an actor in his own right, telling us of the philosophical and spiritual depth of this newspaper strip for over an hour whilst the entirety of Philip Glass' Kundun soundtrack for the 1997 Martin Scorsese film plays over his speech and images behind him in green screen.

Immediately of note, Fatal Farm duo Zachary Johnson and Jeffrey Max were not aware there was a sequel strip in existence which followed on from this joke. That strip can almost deflate this episode but is weirdly enigmatic to suit it. Namely that Jon takes the pipe from Garfield, is about to puff at it but reconsiders the idea, only to give it back to Garfield. On one hand, he probably does not want to taste what has been in his cat's mouth, but the final panel is the same one as before of Garfield smoking the pipe, as if inevitable.

I will argue this episode, the original final episode planned by Fatal Farm, was probably stretching the joke for an extreme, even in mind of the hard work and talent in the production feeling its girth at an hour. A clear reason why the length is necessary, though this is not probably the reason for this episode being an hour long, is that Philip Glass score. Glass himself is a unique figure whose work beyond his famous soundtracks is challenging to say the least - Einstein on the Beach anyone? - but the choice has more fascinating meaning. It is a soundtrack for a film where Martin Scorsese, a Roman Catholic, tackled a film about Buddhism, a film seen as extremely obscure in his filmography and idiosyncratic to have taking music from to say the least; it is a curious choice in Fatal Farm digging out soundtrack choices, and Glass' work of monkish chanting and repetition is naturally profound, making its use here even more inspired as a joke.

It sets the episode as being a pisstake. A person might find this tale of John Blyth Barrymore becoming obsessed with a humble Garfield strip a mean swipe at the Jim Davis creation's existence in pop culture. It can be viewed as anti-religious or at least a caution of reading into beliefs as it becomes a gospel for Barrymore. It hits close to home for me as this also entirely asks the question of critical thinking of any object, as it can be argued this joke can even be applied to "high art", be it the countless professional film critics who have talked of films like Citizen Kane (1941), or amateur opinions, such as the countless theories about The Shining (1980) that were numerous enough to create the documentary Room 237 (2012).  

What does it say when I am analyzing an episode on a satirical critique of the Garfield newspaper strips, which is about someone making a critique of its profoundness? It is an absurd thing to consider - yet this can apply to all work and all communication when you eliminate the notions of "high and low art". I cannot help but think of the fact I did a dissertation in university on David Lynch, an artist notoriously holding his cards to his chest to what his work means. Many a professional writer attempted to read his poker face, something I can attest to as I was reading such interpretations to write that dissertation. The idea of trying to dig deeper into a work is not something that comes from crazed theories and can be just as much a case of pot luck in actually succeeding in anything.

If I am to recreate this episode by comparing a Garfield strip to work talked of by intellectuals, how befitting it was a comic strip about a pipe. Here for once images are needed, as you dear reader should find the strip (the title is the date it was published for help, as for all the Lasagna Cat episodes), and René Magritte's The Treachery of Images (1929). Magritte's painting is a drawn image of a pipe but with text in French saying "This is not a pipe". The betrayal of images is that, yes, it is a representation of a pipe but it is not a pipe, as one cannot pick it up and smoke it. Knowing Magritte's history as a surrealist, it is a deliberate subversion of the onlooker's perception of image and reality. It also makes a metaphor for the issues of a person reading any object or symbol or concept in certain ways. This works both ways for me - if one reads too much into a concept, you can take questionable leaps of logic, but if you merely read the surface, even that which is presumed garbage culture, you can fall into a blindness. Obviously, the Garfield newspaper strip is clearly meant as a joke. However, the episode itself, even if it originates as a joke, turns into something more meaningful, which makes the idea it was the original final episode of Lasagna Cat more significant.

Copyright 1978 PAWS, INC. All Rights Reserved

One also thinks of is how much of the narration by Barrymore is actually true or not. Fatal Farm's script and Barrymore's performance deserve credit for being very convincing, where between material that is very over-the-top, they sneak in facts that sound credible and may not be scrutinised as carefully. Cats are not colour blind to red and green as suggested, but struggle within the spectrum of reds to pinks only. "Cat rage rooms", a term Barrymore says he learned from a veterinarian, when searched online just goes to Lasagna Cat or the fascinating concept of "rage rooms", built rooms for human customers to destroy to relive stress. This episode proves funnier in how it toys with this, suggesting a really convincing tone can even make the utterly ludicrous sound convincing still.

This episode also metaphorically is a light hearted take on the truth that, honestly, human beings require a faith to cling onto. Even in terms of entertainment, Star Wars fans, Star Trek fans, My Little Pony "bronies", many fandoms all belong to attempts at a faith even down to sacred objects and even uniforms. Barrymore's performance is tremendous. His character at times is a figure some might keep their distance from, but he also can be just an eccentric who has managed to find ideas as meaningful to him as the Bible or Karl Marx's Das Kapital would to another, his character talking of how he has both by a mere cartoon strip developed both a spiritual foundation to be virtuous and also be suspicious of capitalism, which is absurd from Garfield but would still be good if found from a real person. Also we don't bat an eye on humanist Gene Roddenberry creating Star Trek, the original sixties series exposing ideas of the united nature of mankind above war but still having William Shatner fight a lizard man with comical boulders.

Also, some of the ideas are sound to consider, especially imagining Garfield himself as a chaotic devil figure. Garfield, whilst meant to be the loved character over his owner, is regardless of being feline an arsehole if you think of all the moments of meanness and selfishness that have just been depicted in the strips used in Lasagna Cat. It is befitting that the only piece of Garfield merchandise I has as a kid was a second hand illustration, in a frame, of Garfield cutting up Jon's computer with a chainsaw out of spite.

07/27/1978's existence also has the emphasis that, as documented in the last review, Fatal Farm admitted they had grown fond of Garfield or found that it would cruel to just mock a newspaper strip that would be especially fond for children to read, the ten years devoted to this pointless if the point was to just make a joke. The episode, as mentioned, was meant to be the conclusion. It would have been perfect, as it ends on a fittingly sweet ending that contrasts all the darker jokes or moments of Jon having a shampoo bukkake from half naked men, Barrymore ending with the idea that in hundreds of years, when humanity changes and evolves, people (explicitly children) will still read a Garfield comic like the pipe story, and smile. Even if Garfield had went the way of a Francis the Talking Mule, a pop culture phenomenon that disappeared into the past, there would still be figures like myself resurrecting them out of curiosity if a reboot did not exist. Even the meaner jokes about Garfield online, the actual irony, is paradoxically sustaining the orange cat longer than just ignoring him, before you consider even into the 2010s he was still having animated series etc. to keep the franchise going.

Of course, this was not the final episode of Lasagna Cat Season Two. Feeling like it was its own beast, there is of course an alternative ending, arguably so, which presents a much darker take on this notion of resurrection after four plus hours of telephone knock knock jokes. That is for another time and the conclusion however...

To Be Continued...