David Macpherson - And If You Gaze Into the Garbage Pail, the Garbage Pail Also Gazes Into You

And if You Gaze Into the Garbage Pail, the Garbage Pail Also Gazes into You

by

David Macpherson

And if you gaze into the garbage pail, the garbage pail also gazes into you

Copyright 2020 by David Macpherson

All rights reserved

Garbage Pail Kids are copyright Topps, Inc.

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Before the Gaze

T he filmmaker and novelist , Ruth Ozeki, wrote a short book called The Face: A Time Code. In it she writes about her life and her perception of self while staring at her face in the mirror for three hours. Thats the thing. Three hours to truly look and be aware of every part of her face. She noticed the effects of aging. She recognized her father in parts of her face and was happy for the reunion. She kept on looking and meditating on the moment. She saw it as a part of her zen practice. She quoted zen buddhists who stare at dead bodies for a long time to understand the nature of mortality.

Why three hours? She took that idea from a college homework assignment. She read about an assignment given to students of art history by Professor Jennifer L. Roberts. Professor Roberts had her students pick a painting in a museum or gallery and intently look at it for three hours. The student would take notes of their experience and many of them found things in the painting that they would never have realized without such a prolonged viewing.

This is bonkers.

Professor Roberts is not dissuaded from her students, or by me, shouting raspberries in the back. She is sure that a long study of art is not only helpful, but necessary. She writes, The art historian David Joselit has described paintings as deep reservoirs of temporal experiencetime batteriesexorbitant stockpiles of experience and information. I would suggest that the same holds true for anything a student might want to study at Harvard Universitya star, a sonnet, a chromosome. There are infinite depths of information at any point in the students education. They just need to take the time to unlock that wealth.

This makes some kind of sense. But in her article, she used as an example staring at a work by John Singleton Copely, who worked in England and America in the 18th century. The painting was entitled Boy with Squirrel. She was able to find much about history and art in the work. Copley is an important artist of the time. HIs work has value. They are large and are seen in many museums. It might be worth staring at a painting by him for three hours.

And Ruth Ozeki can give value to her own face. It is the portrait she carries around with her for her entire life. There can be a sense of vanity to stare at your own face for three hours. The book does show that it is difficult to look for that long and not find things of interest. Things that might not want to be seen. It is a very simple form of self-examination.

But what if you are one of Professor Roberts students at Harvard and pick your painting poorly? What if you decide to stare at a piece of crap? Dogs playing poker? Elvis on black velvet? What if you decide that Thomas Kincaide is the guy for your three hour stare?

While contemplating this, I thought of what type of art we had as kids. There were comics. There were the Mad Magazine paperback collections. There were posters of Farah Fawcett resplendent in a red bathing suit. And there were stickers. We put stickers on our school notebooks. When I was young, we bought Wacky Packages and put the stickers everywhere. We didnt know half of the products that were being satirized, we just knew that something was being ridiculed. There was something being attacked and we were allowed to display it anywhere we might choose, or at least get away with.

The big one, the one that really rocked the boat was the Garbage Pail Kids. They made fun of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. I was fifteen when Garbage Pail Kids came out, so I was out of the demographic. But I noticed them. I was aware of how gross they were and that parents were disgusted by them. They were kids with bodily functions on full display. When I saw them, they reminded me of illustrations from Mad Magazine.

If I wanted to upset my parents, I didnt need a series of stickers. I had loud pretentious music to play. I had gory horror movies to watch. Though, I didnt let my grown-ups know that a lot of the music was repetitive, and the films were more boring than horrifying. I kept that little bit of truth for myself.

As I thought of it, Garbage Pail Kids seemed to be the perfect vehicle for this Long Gaze. It was art that was made for the popular market. It was not made for walls. But the thing is, they were on walls. And in the inside of lockers. And on Biology textbooks. They were placed by kids feeling like they were curators facing a blank wall.

On doing the research to start this exercise. I have been surprised that many people call the Garbage Pail Kids cards. The term used is non-sports cards which is a ridiculous moniker. That means that the world of bubble gum cards are divided into two camps. Those that feature baseball or hockey or basketball. And then there is everything else. Everything else. They are defined by what they are not. Star Wars does not feature any sporting activity, so those cards are non-sports.

The Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Barbara Tuchman, complained about her books being considered non-fiction. She hated that term. She found it nebulous and imprecise. With that designation, everything other than a made-up tale is non-fiction. Non-fiction is seen by what it is not.

And Garbage Pail Kids are also thought of as something they are not. They are not cards. They are stickers. The front image can be removed from a cardboard backing and placed somewhere. They can be put in a place of honor. It can be adhered into a secret place, a place that acknowledges a sense of shame.

Groupings can be created. It is like a 19th century painting salon. People would come and stare at the wall of paintings. So many paintings crowded on the wall that you might not be able to focus on any one thing, any one image. Maybe thats a good place to stare for three hours. Only with that much time, will you be able to discern any kind of truth?

Though I never bought a pack of Garbage Pail Kids, I took great pleasure in judging the younger kids who did. I found them gross. I found them derivative. I found them not as good as the cards I used to buy as a kid. I was a trading card snob. I sniffed at the popular.

I had learned about the thirty year old series called Mars Attack and believed that if you wanted to upset your parents, you should do it with pictures of big headed aliens destroying the world in a graphic fashion. Also, I was spending five or ten dollars for one single card, which was insane back then. That upset my mother. You spend five dollars for one old card? And you didnt even get any gum? I guess art for kids is all about pissing off the parents. Maybe art for anyone is about pissing off the parental figures.

Once I decided that I would gaze for three hours at a Garbage Pail Kid card, I had to figure out which card to use. There are over three hundred of them. I thought I would find an image of the classic card, Adam Bomb, the one where the kid pushes a button and a mushroom cloud explodes from his head. It struck me that I should do it the way we got trading cards traditionally, randomly.