merchandising as an art

Christianity Today has a good article online comparing the new "Chronicles of Narnia" movie to "Calvin and Hobbes," and how the creators of each handled the thorny merchandising question when it comes to their respective cats and other casts of characters. Watterson never allowed his creation to be cheapened with merchandising, since his feeling was that the use of their likenesses in ohther media diminishes or alters their significance in the comics medium.

And really, he has a point, doesn't he? Would Calvin be so quintessentially boy if you could find him on mouse pads, coffee mugs and what have you? Would Hobbes be uniquely Calvin's pet tiger if every child in the universe could have owned one just like him? Of course not. And hasn't Calvin's image been tarnished by the unauthorized merchadise? He's been locked into Adam Sandler juvenile humor mode by all those bootleg window stickers that show him peeing on other car manufacturer logos. Lost in there is the real essence of a boiy, his imagination, his other forms of mischief, and his poignancy. In the same way, the majesty and grandeur of Aslan has been reduced because of my daughter's ability to play with him and make him do whatever she wants. "Not a tame lion," indeed.

I've always have been impressed with Watterson's commitment to the sanctity of his art. Both he and the Christianity Today writer make an excellent point about how the medium is part of the message, and using the merchandising medium affects the message in the other media as well.

Things like this make me glad that we don't get TV signals in our house. There's a lot of merchandising the girls just aren't aware of, and that makes things a lot easier. We're not overrun in junk like we would be, and the experience of a movie or book isn't cheapened as easily or as quickly for them as it is for their peers.

It's like Evangeline with Spider-man. She has two sets of sheets, a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, a backpack, a winter hat, a place mat, sneakers, a video game plug-and-play set, and at least one coloring book. There's probably more stuff I'm not even thinking of. She's seen the movies and even read a couple comic books, but a lot of her association with Spider-man has been tied up in the merchandising and the times she's had to assert her right to like Spider-man at school, where her classmates have told her that Spider-man's just for boys. Spider-man is a material asset to her, rather than a moral story about responsibility and how a moment's inaction or refusal to care about someone else's problems can lead to real problems of our own.