As an example is where I'm coming from, I grew up in the eighties, when Garfield was everywhere. Yes, today you may know him simply as one of the last comic strips standing, but back then he was one of the most widely-licensed characters in pop-culture. Of course, being a licensed, trademarked property, all the products he appeared on built on the same concept: Garfield is lazy, pro-lasagna, anti-Monday. That attitude of blandness with a soupçon of rebellion clicked with many children and their parents, and the cat's image was slapped across all kinds of products. But none of it really challenged Garfield's basic personality.
Today, I think the closest property to that would be The Minions. I see them on products, and I see them on memes passed around Facebook. I mean harmless memes, not the hateful ones. Though, I don’t know, maybe they’re on the racist memes too, after all, you’d only have to cut and paste some graphics and you’ve got Minions campaigning for white power. Okay yellow power. But even in the part of the Internet that I frequent, I've seen the Minions used for everything from Dad Jokes to 9/11 memorials. My point is that they appeal to the sort of family demographic, but now it's the people themselves who are deciding how the characters are used, so sometimes they stray from what the creators and marketers originally intended.
But in the social media world, any idea can be attached to any image. It’s a lot like the Winnie The Pooh trying to quote Camus that I mentioned a few weeks ago. I’ve also seen Kermit drinking tea saying some really snotty things that even Miss Piggy would think is a little harsh. And Captain Picard has been supporting surprisingly anti-intellectual concepts.
Mostly it’s just kind of incongruous, or so silly it can’t be taken seriously. Though it sometimes bothers me how it misrepresents a work. Take Peanuts, for instance. It seems that people believe a couple of things about that strip:
- The Comic Sans font looks like Charles Schultz’ lettering
- Peanuts is a good medium for Christian messages.
I can’t explain the first point, but the second is not too surprising, since it was one of the few big media properties to make religion an unapologetic topic. But Peanuts was also distinctive in being one of the very few media properties to approach religion from a troubled, melancholy perspective. Instead of giving simple and easy religious solutions (<cough> - B.C. - <cough>) it assumed that there were Christians who could discuss the spiritual intellect, and if necessary, doubt. So it seems wrong to see Charlie Brown and Linus assuring everyone - in the wrong font - that you’ll have no troubles if you just accept Jesus.
Speaking of fonts, it's also weird that The Meme Font can represent so many things. (Apparently it's just Impact with dark outlines.) Yes, I know, it's just a font. But it used to be that fonts sort of meant things. Take Helvetica, for instance. You can print anything you want in it, as long as you pay the royalty to the trademark holders. But for some reason, it gets used for generic things: packaging, instructions, signs giving directions. The Meme Font, on the other hand, gets used for anything. It could be heartwarming, spiteful, clever. I've seen it used to spread both information and lies. It belongs to all of us and none of us.
Maybe sometime soon we'll see marketers crack down on the use of licensed characters in consumer-created graphics. Or maybe they'll try to taylor their characters to be all things to all people. Take the Smurfs, for instance. They each had a different personality, so whoever you are and whatever Facebook meme you want to create, you can find the Smurf for you, even if you have to use White Power Smurf. Okay, Blue Power.
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