What Bill Keane and Friedrich Nietzche Have in Common
I cannot for the life of me fathom what relationship “The Nietzche Family Circus” has to its parent site losanjealous.com. They have basically nothing in common; NFC a witty little one-trick-pony sort of gag that’s snottily and unashamedly intellectual, while LAJ is pretty much just ad-baiting photos of celebrities and concerts.
But what, you ask, is The Nietzche Family Circus? It is a panel from The Family Circus paired with a random quotation from Friedrich Nietzche. You can refresh it as many times as you like to create basically infinite cartoons, the vast majority of which seem scarily coherent:
The structure of The Family Circus has basically done the parodyist’s job for him/her in this one: nearly all of Bill Keane’s comics consist of a single character with their mouth open, pedantically stating some simplistic truth to a fascinated audience of one or more silent characters. Nietzche would recoil in horror.
Pair that with the declarative sentences Nietzche himself favored, and you have a natural match. The pairings shouldn’t work but usually do. You can entertain yourself by refreshing for quite a while before you hit one that just doesn’t make sense. Much more often you get eerie coincidences that seem to make almost too much sense as a pairing:
So that’s both a bit of fun to fill your day with and a powerful reminder of why “show, don’t tell” is such a mantra in all creative arts these days. Bill Keane and Friedrich Nietzche share the same weakness for telling. And look how well they go together, despite the vast disparity in philosophy, goals, and medium.
But seriously, if you can figure out how NFC wound up hosted where it is, I’d love to know.
