John Campbell's strip focuses on the blatancy big business employs when offering a service or product that has little or no value to the consumer. Despite acknowledging this fact, the consumer still purchases the product, and quietly accepts the torment from this acknowledgment. Campbell's strip 'Pictures for Sad Children' facilitates deadpan, anti-humor, and often absurd punchlines to display his nihilistic outlook and anxiety when dealing with the world. Humans are portrayed fully aware of the problems in their life, but completely accepting and unwilling to combat or change the issue. I think this is an interesting and possibly accurate portrayal of western culture and the current human condition. While many problems in society are being tackled and dealt with competently, I feel many things that could be improved are unnoticed or accepted by humanity.
5 comments:
This comic strip satirizes society's desire to buy things it really doesn't need. Using horatian satire, the comic shows a man clearly purchasing something he doesn't need and then accepting that he doesn't need it. This is just how society works and shows how people buy many things they don't need. Then, they admit to not even wanting them.
The comic is satirizing society's tendency to buy things it doesn't need, knowing full well what it is doing. This comes from a human desire to have the latest and greatest, even when it is completely unnecessary. It is also satirizing how as humans we are fully aware of our faults but do nothing to fix them, how we just lie down and take them, paralleled by the final line of the comic strip.
I completely agree with max. People every day go out, look at useless stuff, and still buy it anyways. its completely absurd. but we live in a commercial world and everything is for sale.
I effing love 'Pictures for Sad Children'. The appeal for me of these comics comes from the fact that, as a fellow nihilist, I am often disgusted by culture, society, people, and a great many other things. Campbell's art gives me a feeling of being on the same page as someone. It makes me feel that I am not the only person to think this way.
This speaks strongly to pathos, the artist forging a strong emotive bond with the audience, although it only works on people who share his outlook, or at least can understand it. This particular strip could almost be described as juvenalian satire, although lighter than much of what we are used to of that genre. Everyone who reads this strip has been in this situation. You see something, you're really excited, you buy it, and then what? It's completely useless. The blatant portrayal of the truth behind out behaviors is done so in a humorous fashion, so you find yourself laughing. When the utter apathy behind the punchline hits, you're still laughing, but simultaneously dieing a little inside.
...This is why I shouldn't do blog posts when I'm this tired/angry.
It's funny how a satirical comic like this one proves to remind one how frivolous our society is as a whole. I'm sure all of us have made purchases that we're almost positive we've either never used or pushed way far back in the closet next to that Christmas sweater your grandmother made for you! I find it almost pathetic how out of hand we've allowed our spending and responsibility to become throughout the developments of the Twentieth Century and its newly emerging technologies. From this comic I'll take the fact that I am not a pawn in the company/organization's sick game fueled by profit but, rather, the proprietor of their business and what product(s) they release and when.
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