Pictures For Sad Children

There's something hauntingly succinct about stick figures.  Their simplicity of form can be manipulated to portray an extremely wide variety of human experiences through subtle altercations that only a true master of form could grace with their touch.  If it's not that, their lack of expression can serve in stark contrast to the emotive powers of the dialogue and create an extreme disconnect, just as poignant.  In Pictures For Sad Children, a webcomic by John Campbell, we see simplicity taken to an almost absurd extreme, but that somehow seems to capture perfectly the frustrated voices and weariness of an entire generation.

Although it is filled with cryptic apparent randomness, he pretty regularly follows the story line of Paul, a man who has died and is now a ghost.  As a ghost, he remains on Earth and continues to do what he's been doing for years because he can't think of anything else to do.  This in and of itself struck me pretty hard the first time through.  A man in death, in ultimate freedom, free of responsibilities and societal pressures, a man who can do anything he could dream of does the same thing he's been doing his whole life.  Because he has no dreams;  they were taken from him, sucked out through the course of his sad life in a box.  One hell of a thesis statement for a comic drawn with stick figures and no capital letters.  I knew it was going to be an interesting read.

If the character of Paul serves as the surrogate of Campbell's initial shock valued statement regarding the common white collared worker, Paul serves as the surrogate of realism.  He contrasts greatly with Paul because... well simply, he's not dead.  He comes in as Paul's replacement and we learn his story.  He becomes our new focal point, fresh and not quite as jaded or frustrated as Paul, but far from a voice of optimism; he still has a great amount of hesitance about the life he's leading.  One of his most deeply affective lines "i'm going to grad school... i'm not sure why i started.  i wrote it down on a card when i enrolled but then i lost it."  Sort of an absurdist joke, it is equal parts poking fun and despairing at the lost and confused youth who unconsciously continue going in the direction they know because they don't know what else to do.  The job of which he is relieving Paul is at a call center where they take customer complaints and pretend to address them.  

If I had to describe the style of artwork of the entire work of this comic, it would be "minimalism."  There are no colors, only lines and shapes drawn in a thick pen with no variance in width.  The words have no bubbles, they are just floating in the space, drawn with the same pen as the artwork with no capital letters.  They look childish and clumsy, and they give off a cold, detached feeling as you read them to yourself in your head.  As the story progresses, they mirror perfectly the sense of numbness you begin to get from Gary as he retreats from other people including his family.  

The true beauty of this comic though- aside from its ability to create in the reader a sense of hopelessness and pointlessness as they begin to draw parallels to their own trapped lives- is it never abandons humor.  You find yourself getting sadder as you're laughing, and that is truly an art.  Along with that is a sense that each comic, each point he cryptically makes is one level deeper than you can perceive.  You get this overwhelming sense that you're looking at a philosophical masterpiece, practically a treatise on the human condition.  The truth, as far as I know, is there is no intended deeper meaning.  The comics are individually conceived as a response to one particular thing from Campbell's life, and any sense of something greater is not necessarily accidental, but far from completely planned out.  With its simplicity of form, lack of emotional expression in text and artwork, Pictures For Sad Children serves as the perfect blank slate for readers to project their own deep philosophical understandings of this condition of human existence to which both Paul and Gary have subscribed.

The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

I've always been a fan of both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.  Not a religious fan, mind you;  I didn't tune in daily to see both of their shows and guffaw at all of the ridiculousness at which they worked so ardently to poke fun, but my ears would certainly perk up at the sound of either of their names.  However as the rally got closer and gained national attention, I started paying a lot more attention to Jon Stewart in particular.  Specifically, I started looking at his more serious moments;  the moments in which he nearly abandoned comedy altogether, dropped the safety veil of sarcasm and distance, and took things head on with a stern demeanor and relentless ardor.  His message has been consistently that the media has been taken over as a tool by politicians to convey their talking points unhindered and unchecked, and in those moments he himself sought to be the antithesis.  [I speak of course of his most famous interview with Jim Cramer from CNBC in which he blamed CNBC (using Jim Cramer as their representative since he decided to come on the show) in part for withholding knowledge of the economic meltdown before it actually happened, and his appearance on Crossfire and his ugly back and forth with Tucker Carlson in which he begged them to "stop hurting America" with their "partisan hackery."]

So as the event came closer, I could sense that there was going to be an element of seriousness to it.  I was not disappointed.  I was slightly disappointed by the role of Stephen Colbert however.  As a satirist, his humor is mostly achieved through his derision of the right wing elite by impersonating them to ridiculous extremes and rarely ever breaking character.  This is, I find, a beautiful thing he has going, where he can make his point entirely without ever breaking character.  Even his appearance in Congress, he held true to his character through the majority of it, right until the end where he had a moment of sincerity as California congresswoman asked him why he took on the issue of immigration reform.  However, as Stewart had dedicated himself as the voice of reason, Colbert's role became that of the comic relief obstructionist in holding to his character, which by the way lost its partisan affiliation and became more of a fear-monger, presumably a media figure.  The lengths he had to go to in order to be Stewart's antithesis became less funny and amiable, and more ridiculous and almost irritating.  

As a purely comedic event, the rally was only worth a few chuckles at most, and that I believe was a wasted opportunity on their part, as a lot of their viewership was hoping for some serious laughs.  If they had replaced the laughs with more serious material, it would not bother me as much, but that was not the case, it was more simply.... not funny.  However the tour de force of the whole event came at the end when Stephen Colbert "died" and was dragged offstage along with his giant-fear-puppet-thing, leaving Stewart up alone with a honed-in audience, waiting for something, anything.  What he delivered was a sincere and intimate twelve minute speech.  Its oratory narrative did not come off as a call for action, nor did it come off as defeatist, but a man, a comedian, telling two hundred thousand people strong what he believed the politicians and the media failed to see in the American people: a reasonable, compromising and realistic melange of individuals less concerned with political narrative than being on time for their next appointment.  He used a rather poignant analogy of cars lining up to take turns entering a one lane tunnel passing under a river.  The cars have no concern for any ideological differences they may have with the neighboring cars, they take their turns just the same and cooperate to get through the tunnel.  He finished by thanking his audience for being the Americans he hoped they were.

It is not uncommon for comedians to have a message, and it is not uncommon for comedians to disguise this message and deliver it under the guise of laughter: George Carlin bashed religion pretty heavily, he just had to make sure it was funny.  Lewis Black was heavily political, ranting and raving through his humor.  However comedians are very careful to keep track of their role and not get swept up in the passion they may feel towards their message.  They are first and foremost comedians, purveyors of laughter and light-heartedness, and they like it that way; it pays their bills.  Jon Stewart is beginning to emerge as a figure of trust to many people.  He's beginning to be looked to now less for laughter and more for a candid look at the system, and I find this utterly fascinating.  His ambitions are not political, he has much more interest in truth and information than resorting to one particular political party, and he seems less and less reliant on being a comedian first and foremost.  I have no idea what his ambitions are, and I have no idea where he would be the most benefit to the people who now see him emerging into a new role, but I sense he is changing, and I believe this rally is just the beginning.