Isegoria

The most important tool for the diffusion and understanding of art in the modern world, Alain de Botton argues, is the gift shop:

Though it appears to be a mere appendage to most museums, the gift shop is central to the project of art institutions. Its job is to ensure that the lessons of the museum — which concern beauty, meaning and the enlargement of the spirit — can endure in the visitor far beyond the actual tour of the premises and be put into use in daily life.

The means deployed, however, are rarely on target.

[...]

That said, gift shops will rarely sell us actual reproductions of works; fake, copy, pastiche, forgery. Many of the most bitter insults of the art world are designed to denigrate anything which is not the actual product of the master’s hand. We’ve uncritically absorbed the idea that copies are worthless, deeply embarrassing kitsch. The nightmares of curators and gallery directors are haunted by copies. Hang a reproduction by mistake and your career is over. But why? Why are copies always supposed to be terrible? Even asking this straightforward question is suspect. Sometimes, of course, a copy truly violates the original. It mucks up all the details, it gets proportions weirdly wrong, the colours become garish. But not always. What if it’s a really good copy? What if the details are faithful? What if the shapes are harmonious and the colours lovely? A well-made reproduction can carry 99% of the meaning of the original. And maybe that’s all that really matters to us.

We’ve come to think that art belongs in art galleries and thereby condemned ourselves to encountering works at times dictated by museum opening hours and holiday schedules.

[...]

Art works have therapeutic power. But usually this passes us by. Not because we are insensitive or unworthy. But for a more basic reason. Their messages are hitting us at the wrong time — at moments when we’ve no need of them — like adverts for winter coats on the first day of spring. Copying is one much-needed solution to this problem, because copies allow us to locate these important, beneficial images in the places where we can encounter them in our times of need.

In the absence of copies, gift shops will sell us a lot of signed tea towels. They have discovered that people will buy objects heavily decorated with names of artists and their works: so we have Picasso table mats and Hepworth pencils.

Mattel is introducing its new DC SuperHero Girls line:

The new Mattel characters, created through a partnership with Warner Bros.’ DC Comics, are aimed at a 6-year-old girl. The DC SuperHero Girls line, which launches this spring, will include 12-inch dolls, 6-inch action figures, and gadgets such as a Batgirl utility belt. Some of the products will be unveiled for the first time this week at New York Comic Con. The two companies joined forces last year after seeing a hole in the market, one Warner Bros. wants to help fill with girl-oriented books and animated Web series. The studio also is pushing female superheroes into the mainstream with Supergirl, a television show airing this month on CBS, and a Wonder Woman movie slated for 2017.

Mattel’s board replaced the CEO earlier this year while giving Dickson more power to lead a turnaround, and SuperHero Girls will be one of the first major tests of a comeback effort under new leadership. DC supplied the characters from its comic books and then Mattel helped craft a story around them as teenagers in high school — a well-worn and successful plot the company has used with homegrown brands like Monster High. They also softened up the characters for a younger audience. Take Harley Quinn: Joker’s girlfriend is described by DC as “psychotic” after “murdering countless civilians.” The high school version is a “jokester” who lives for “LOLs.”

With a story in hand, Mattel turned to its research arm to figure out what girls really wanted from a superhero. The researchers quickly discovered some big gender differences. Boys are totally fine with killing off the villains; girls wanted the bad guys to be redeemed and turned into friends. Girls also desired different superpowers, including the ability to talk to animals, hear whispers, and force people to tell the truth.

Researchers found that girls didn’t want the superheroes to be too girly, a problem with the first round of dolls that Mattel developed. One girl complained that the toys looked “more pretty than superhero,” and another pointed out that Poison Ivy’s scarf would only get in the way during a fight. Wonder Woman, meanwhile, was too skinny and not athletic enough.

Kim, the toy designer, instructed her team to use gymnasts, dancers, and basketball players as primers for sculpting more muscular versions of the dolls and action figures. “We wanted to have this very strong, toned body, but keeping in mind that they are still in high school, so they’re not fully mature yet,” Kim says. “But they still look like they can save the day instead of being saved.” They also stuck with existing colors, leaving Supergirl’s cape red instead of shifting to pink.

The new figures have bigger heads, more cartoonish features, and even longer legs.

Magic and persuasion share a common core:

Visit a magic shop in your city and spend a half an hour or so watching the owner demonstrate some tricks. Pick the one that baffles you the most and buy it. Then go out to your car, open up the instructions (if you’re like me, you won’t be able to wait till you get home) and discover how the trick works. If you will do this, I can predict with 99.9% accuracy what will happen.

You will be disappointed.

The “secrets” behind many magic tricks, even some of those that seem like miracles, are often so mundane that one cannot help but feel disappointed upon their discovery. Now for another prediction: your next thought will be, “This is ridiculous. This wouldn’t fool anyone.”

At this point, if you’re like most people, you’ll put the trick away and consider your $20 investment a bust. But if you’re honest with yourself (and few people are), you will have another thought that can transform the way you look at life. No joke. That thought goes something like this:

“Wait a minute. It must not be that ridiculous if it fooled me.”

And with this one thought you will have risen to a level of intellectual honesty and understanding that few people ever experience; you will have discovered that the most magical things in life — on and off the stage — are often the result of the correct application of the most basic principles imaginable.

That’s from Blair Warren’s One-Sentence Persuasion Course, recommended by Scott Adams.

Picking a topic is an important first step in writing funny, Scott Adams (Dilbert) explains:

The topic does half of your work. I look for topics that have at least one of the essential elements of humor:

1. Clever
2. Cute
3. Bizarre
4. Cruel
5. Naughty
6. Recognizable

His other recommendations:

• Simple Sentences
• Write About People
• Write Visually
• Leave Room for Imagination
• Funny Words
• Pop Culture References
• Animal analogies
• Exaggerate, then Exaggerate Some More
• Near Logic
• Callback
• Genetic Abnormality

Snoopy killed Peanuts, Kevin Wong argues:

The now famous debut strip is an important reminder of what Peanuts used to be. Note that it stars Shermy and Patty, both of whom stopped being featured in the strip in the 70s:

It establishes, from its very debut, that this strip is not about the adorable inanities of being a child. It’s about the cruelties and hardships of being a child; children can be bullying, backstabbing, petty people. And sometimes, children can be irrational, and hate someone for no reason — simply ‘because.’

The happiness we feel for these characters, when they occasionally get the final word or win, is poignant because they’re dragged through the muck so many times. One of the most famous Peanuts strips is this one:

But that’s all most people know of Peanuts, and that’s a gross oversimplification of the strip. Because in his prime, Schulz always balanced the sentiment with the flipside of it, sometimes over the course of multiple strips, and sometimes in the context of a single Sunday strip, with multiple panels.

Snoopy began the strip as a normal dog, and the majority of his gags were of him doing traditional dog stuff. But a couple of years in, Schulz figured out how to characterize Snoopy; he was a dog who resented being a dog. So, Snoopy spent most of his time trying on other identities — usually those of other animals, and occasionally those of humans.

But the end result was always failure — for whatever reason, he would always revert to being a dog, because the new identity didn’t fit him properly. It was a great commentary on self-acceptance, but also on embracing creativity and the need to dream of something better.

Failure was the key to Snoopy’s charm; as it was to Charlie Brown, who never kicked the football; as it was to Linus, who couldn’t give up his security blanket; as it was to Lucy, who never got Schroeder to look her way. On the rare instances Snoopy tried to be human, Frieda or Lucy tried to cut him down.

And on the occasions that he cultivated human emotions, he got hurt.

But near the end of the 60s and well into the 70s, the cracks started to show. Snoopy began walking on his hind legs and using his hands, and that was the beginning of the end for the strip. Perhaps he was technically still a dog, but in a very substantial way, Snoopy had overcome the principal struggle of his existence. His opposable thumbs and upward positioning meant that for all intents and purposes, he was now a human in a dog costume. One of his new roleplays was to be different Joes — Joe Cool, Joe Skateboard, etc.

None of this had any greater, narrative payoff, or ended with Snoopy realizing he was a dog. It was always a pure visual gag, and it lacked the subtlety, pain, and vision that had previously been the strip’s trademark. In short, there was no balance. It was just a series of Snoopy in new costumes, almost as if Schulz was anticipating merchandise demands. Cuteness had replaced depth in a strip that had always celebrated the maturity and adult-like nature of precocious children. And since the strip had become globally, universally loved, there was little impetus to revisit the darker social commentary of years past.

Jim Henson passed away years ago, and Steve Whitmire took over many of his roles, including Kermit the Frog:

Although The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson was his first on-screen performance as Kermit, he considers The Muppet Christmas Carol to be his first real production as Kermit.

Frank Oz is still with us, but he has largely retired, and Eric Jacobson has taken on Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, Animal, and Sam the Eagle:

At 2001′s MuppetFest fan convention Jacobson made his Muppet debut secretly performing Miss Piggy welcoming the fans “live via satellite”. Jacobson made his first major Muppet production debut performing Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, and Animal for 2002′s It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie. He took over the role of Sam the Eagle starting in 2005 with The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz.

With the Muppets returning to prime time, PBS presents the Jim Henson episode of In Their Own Words:

Berkeley Breathed now shares his Bloom County strips on Facebook, not on paper: