Cymbals/Hollering/Bed-Jumping


I'm going to try to follow a format today that I may end up using for the long-haul, or that I may discard on the wayside. First I'm going to go through a description of the events in the strip. Then I'm going to talk through some of the metaphors and deconstruct any deeper meaning that I can find. Finally, I'm going to try to relate this particular strip to my day somehow. Okay, sounds good.

Description:

  • 1st Panel: Dad enters Calvin's bedroom and questions him about the excessive noise. This is the first panel in the entire anthology where we see Hobbes drawn as a stuffed animal, and not a real tiger. 
  • 2nd Panel: Calvin blames Hobbes for the noise, insisting that it was Hobbes and not him that was jumping on the bed. Hobbes is again drawn as a stuffed animal.
  • 3rd Panel: Just Dad in this one. Dad is mad. Dad points his finger (presumably at Hobbes) and tells Calvin that it was not Hobbes that is jumping on the bed, because Hobbes is a stuffed tiger to him, and therefore cannot jump. Dad tells Calvin to go to sleep.
  • 4th Panel: Calvin points out that it was Hobbes who was jumping on the bed, and Hobbes retorts with the punchline, reminding Calvin that his cymbal-playing was probably more cacophonous than his bed-jumping.
Discussion: Man this is an interesting strip, for so many reasons! First and foremost, we see Hobbes as a stuffed animal instead of a living tiger for the first time in the series! However, I can't help but notice that in both of the panels where stuffed-Hobbes *from now on this is what I'll call Hobbes when he's drawn or implied to be nothing more than a simple stuffed animal* is shown, he's not in Calvin's line-of-sight. I wonder if that trend will continue, or if Bill Watterson consistently draws Calvin looking away from stuffed-Hobbes. I'm very excited to see more instances of stuffed-Hobbes and Calvin sharing a panel. It seems that this strip is a continuation of the last, in that the dichotomy between Calvin's vision of the world and everyone else's is further established. In a very literal sense, in Dad's view (like literally in his field-of-view), Hobbes is a stuffed tiger. He actually sees and percieves Hobbes as a stuffed animal, and this legitimately affects his interaction with Calvin, his son. He admonishes Calvin, and curtly orders him to go to sleep. This causes Calvin to be upset with Hobbes when Hobbes doesn't admit his own guilt in the matter.

Another interesting point to consider is that Hobbes was the one who was actually performing the act that Calvin is scolded for - jumping on the bed. I wonder if this was an intentional choice by Watterson. The joke could have easily been the other way around, with Calvin being the one who was jumping on the bed, getting blamed for it, but then putting the blame on Hobbes for playing the cymbals. This fact that Hobbes was the one who was actually jumping on the bed bleeds the ink on the ever-thickening black line that divides Calvin's world vs. Dad's world. Was something that Hobbes did actually translating over to the reality of Dad's world, but Dad just misread it as an act committed by his son? If Dad is blind to the possibility that Hobbes his real, he wouldn't be able to consider the possibility that the stuffed animal tiger could be making that noise of his own volition.

Day: I can't seem to find a very strong parallel between this strip and my day today. One thing I will say is that I had a very hard time falling asleep last night, so I sympathize with Dad a bit here. However, I have had times in my life where I've been blamed for an act I didn't commit, and I understand how frustrating and unjustified it can be. So in that way, I sympathize with Calvin a bit here. Finally, I think I sympathize with Hobbes a bit here as well. If my bedmate were playing the cymbals, and I started jumping on the bed, then I got admonished by my bedmate for that, I would be pretty upset! In conclusion, cymbals beat bed-jumping in a classic game of cymbals/hollering/bed-jumping.


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