Control-X: Dirkjan
According to Wikipedia, the title character of the impenetrable Dutch comic strip "Dirkjan" is "a loser who stumbles through life." Like "Doonesbury," "Dirkjan" started life as a college strip featuring collegiate sidekicks and a familiar university setting, and only upon syndication did creator Mark Retera attempt to broaden the strip's appeal by moving its main character into the world at large.
"Dirkjan" brings to mind the golden age of American comic strips -- not the 1930s, when the broadsheets ran "Little Nemo" every week, but the late 1980s, when "Bloom County," "Calvin and Hobbes," "The Far Side," and "Doonesbury" all appeared in the Milwaukee Journal's Green Sheet every afternoon. I learned everything I know about the 1960s and 1970s from "Doonesbury"; I still remember most major events of the 1980s as refracted through the lens of "Bloom County." I even filled scrapbooks with clipped-out copies of particularly crucial "Bloom County" cartoons, believing sincerely that future generations would treasure the opportunity to see first-hand the pale green "originals" of such epochal comic events as Opus's death by balloon-wheelchair, or his wedding to Lola Granola.
Endless inches have been written about the decline of the comic strip in American newspapers, most snappily by Scocca and MacLeod in Baltimore City Paper's treasured (and defunct) Funny Paper column. But between the Prophet Mohammed cartoon furor and "Dirkjan," it seems that things aren't much better in the Netherlands.
Reading a foreign strip like "Dirkjan" feels off-kilter, with the familiar rhythms of comic beats only barely breaking through my lack of Dutch language comprehension. In the strip pictured here, the entire first panel of the strip is wasted as a character -- seemingly Dirkjan's landlord, although it's unclear why he's wearing oversized clown pants -- asks Dirkjan and a roommate to come with him. In the second panel, the clown-pantsed landlord mentions that he's found a hair in the shower, and declares that the hair is not his own.
The third panel's punchline is an utter mystery to me. Altavista's Babelfish translates it: "With that red capsule nose he had still something comically." Perhaps this is a reference to the clown-pantsed landlord, who may at one time have worn a large red nose? Perhaps the "comically" should be translated "funny," and this is some Dutch-specific play on the well-worn cannibals-cooking-a-clown gag, "Does this taste funny to you?" It's unclear.
Wikipedia links to this site, which offers two Flash-animated Dirkjan bits, both of which are a tiny bit funny, and benefit from their relative lack of Dutch dialogue. Both seem to imply that Dirkjan, the character, is not your garden-variety comic loser -- in fact he seems so moronic as to nearly qualify as being in a persistent vegetative state. Dirkjan is visited by a clown at his (very European-looking, depressing block) flat, and sits mutely through the clown's performance? The gag is that next door, a harried mother waits impatiently at her child's birthday party as the promised entertainment never arrives. But I found myself wondering not at the joke, but at the depth of Dirkjan's idiocy, that he would never question the idea that a clown would visit his flat and put on a private performance just for him -- and that he would watch the performance silently, never smiling, never responding in any way. (Though I suppose his clown-pantsed landlord may have deadened Dirkjan to the appeal of clownly antics.)
Or are we to take away from the gag not Dirkjan's idiocy but his loneliness? That the long barren stretch of his endless days has been interrupted by a surprise visit from a floppy-shoed stranger with a unicycle and juggling balls? That despite the joy such a show should bring, Dirkjan realizes that even this pleasure is temporary -- that soon the clown will depart, unicycle packed carefully away, and Dirkjan will be left alone with his Continental despair, his tiny head sinking lower and lower into his chest, as a future of three-paneled misery stretches out before him?
According to Wikipedia, Dirkjan is also a "notorious leprechaun abuser." But I don't think he abuses leprechauns out of bigotry, or hatred. I think he does it to feel something. To feel anything.
"Dirkjan" brings to mind the golden age of American comic strips -- not the 1930s, when the broadsheets ran "Little Nemo" every week, but the late 1980s, when "Bloom County," "Calvin and Hobbes," "The Far Side," and "Doonesbury" all appeared in the Milwaukee Journal's Green Sheet every afternoon. I learned everything I know about the 1960s and 1970s from "Doonesbury"; I still remember most major events of the 1980s as refracted through the lens of "Bloom County." I even filled scrapbooks with clipped-out copies of particularly crucial "Bloom County" cartoons, believing sincerely that future generations would treasure the opportunity to see first-hand the pale green "originals" of such epochal comic events as Opus's death by balloon-wheelchair, or his wedding to Lola Granola.
Endless inches have been written about the decline of the comic strip in American newspapers, most snappily by Scocca and MacLeod in Baltimore City Paper's treasured (and defunct) Funny Paper column. But between the Prophet Mohammed cartoon furor and "Dirkjan," it seems that things aren't much better in the Netherlands.
Reading a foreign strip like "Dirkjan" feels off-kilter, with the familiar rhythms of comic beats only barely breaking through my lack of Dutch language comprehension. In the strip pictured here, the entire first panel of the strip is wasted as a character -- seemingly Dirkjan's landlord, although it's unclear why he's wearing oversized clown pants -- asks Dirkjan and a roommate to come with him. In the second panel, the clown-pantsed landlord mentions that he's found a hair in the shower, and declares that the hair is not his own.
The third panel's punchline is an utter mystery to me. Altavista's Babelfish translates it: "With that red capsule nose he had still something comically." Perhaps this is a reference to the clown-pantsed landlord, who may at one time have worn a large red nose? Perhaps the "comically" should be translated "funny," and this is some Dutch-specific play on the well-worn cannibals-cooking-a-clown gag, "Does this taste funny to you?" It's unclear.
Wikipedia links to this site, which offers two Flash-animated Dirkjan bits, both of which are a tiny bit funny, and benefit from their relative lack of Dutch dialogue. Both seem to imply that Dirkjan, the character, is not your garden-variety comic loser -- in fact he seems so moronic as to nearly qualify as being in a persistent vegetative state. Dirkjan is visited by a clown at his (very European-looking, depressing block) flat, and sits mutely through the clown's performance? The gag is that next door, a harried mother waits impatiently at her child's birthday party as the promised entertainment never arrives. But I found myself wondering not at the joke, but at the depth of Dirkjan's idiocy, that he would never question the idea that a clown would visit his flat and put on a private performance just for him -- and that he would watch the performance silently, never smiling, never responding in any way. (Though I suppose his clown-pantsed landlord may have deadened Dirkjan to the appeal of clownly antics.)
Or are we to take away from the gag not Dirkjan's idiocy but his loneliness? That the long barren stretch of his endless days has been interrupted by a surprise visit from a floppy-shoed stranger with a unicycle and juggling balls? That despite the joy such a show should bring, Dirkjan realizes that even this pleasure is temporary -- that soon the clown will depart, unicycle packed carefully away, and Dirkjan will be left alone with his Continental despair, his tiny head sinking lower and lower into his chest, as a future of three-paneled misery stretches out before him?
According to Wikipedia, Dirkjan is also a "notorious leprechaun abuser." But I don't think he abuses leprechauns out of bigotry, or hatred. I think he does it to feel something. To feel anything.
posted by Dan at 11:08 PM
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