Derf's Cartoon
Cartoons have been use for many years and its modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or mock different things. John Backderf, known as Derf, is a famous and recognized cartoonist “who works out of an unheated, attic studio in his Cleveland home, grew up in a rural, small town in Ohio and went to high school with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer” (“Bio”). He drew a cartoon in 1995 in which he presents an implicit theory about how and why things evolve to be “cool”. This paper will elaborate on explaining what Derf’s theory actually is, an interpretation of the meaning presented in the cartoon, and a fad or style that follows Derf’s theory.
In this cartoon, Derf’s theory of how things get to expand and get “cool” expresses that a fad starts by a small group of people, many times not even knowing where it came from, then eventually evolving and reaching greater groups of people by the influence of media, and at certain point the fad just disappears. In his cartoons, he expresses this theory by starting to say in the first box that some art students who often go to a coffee shop started to use a “large, hardened boogers dangling from their nostrils”. He even mentions that no one remembers who started to use these boogers or why. In the second box, he states that the booger fad expands to the Hipsters Citywide and eventually the Indie-Rock musicians starts to use it too, spreading the practice to other cities. He also expresses that Tabitha Soren gave the MTV news with a booger and suddenly 30 million High School students “blindly follow” this fad. Here the audience could see how he critiques that once a fad gets to media eventually more people starts adopting that fad, in this case the millions of students. In this same box, Derf shows that some people always will relate certain fad to some source of criminality. He uses a Principal confiscating boogers from students because
In this cartoon, Derf’s theory of how things get to expand and get “cool” expresses that a fad starts by a small group of people, many times not even knowing where it came from, then eventually evolving and reaching greater groups of people by the influence of media, and at certain point the fad just disappears. In his cartoons, he expresses this theory by starting to say in the first box that some art students who often go to a coffee shop started to use a “large, hardened boogers dangling from their nostrils”. He even mentions that no one remembers who started to use these boogers or why. In the second box, he states that the booger fad expands to the Hipsters Citywide and eventually the Indie-Rock musicians starts to use it too, spreading the practice to other cities. He also expresses that Tabitha Soren gave the MTV news with a booger and suddenly 30 million High School students “blindly follow” this fad. Here the audience could see how he critiques that once a fad gets to media eventually more people starts adopting that fad, in this case the millions of students. In this same box, Derf shows that some people always will relate certain fad to some source of criminality. He uses a Principal confiscating boogers from students because
Cited: "Bio." About Derf, Man of Mystery. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2013. Backderf, John “Derf”. The City. 1995. Cartoon Truitt, Brian. " 'My Friend Dahmer ' Depicts the Boy before the Monster." USATODAY. USA TODAY, 22 Mar. 2012. Web. 19 Apr. 2013. "You Only Think You Know This Story." My Friend Dahmer. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2013.