When it comes to cartoons, brightly coloured and/or amorphous as they sometimes are, it can be difficult to assume just how they identify, at least in broad, basic terms. Gender, religion, ethnicity, sexuality – there is no guidebook on how to classify a cartoon, but that doesn’t mean it matters any less.
Cartoons are people, too, goshdarnit — especially when you’ve grown up with them.
Regardless, a debate is still necessary for some people. Take, for example, Garfield, that lasagna-loving little bastard who many of us, at some point in our lives, have come to love. First featured in a comic strip way back in 1978, Garfield’s gender was never a discussion. Fast-forward to the socially progressive times of 2017, and it is one that, apparently, needs to be had.
Podcast host and professional troll Virgil Texas began the internet war when he declared the cat “gender-neutral” on Twitter and made a note of this on the Garfield Wikipedia page this week, leading to a 60-hour back-and-forth edit and re-edit session as fans debated the cartoon’s true gender. According to the Washington Post, the ceaseless debate led to the page being locked down to prevent continuous edits, as is the risk of a user-written reference.
Long-time fans have remained adamant that the cartoon is male, also citing Bill Murray — a self-identifying male — voicing him in the 2004 and 2006 movie adaptations. But, as one Wikipedia user noted on the page’s edit history log, “Gender is fluid. He may have been a boy in 1981, but he’s not now. Do better.”
Seeing as how Garfield cannot speak for himself, it seems fair to ask Jim Davis, the creator, for the truth. Which, fortunately, is something he commented on in 2014 to Mental Floss, saying, “Garfield is very universal. By virtue of being a cat, really, he’s not really male or female or any particular race or nationality, young or old. It gives me a lot more latitude for the humour for the situations.”
While that is all well and good, and Davis’s sentiments should be reason enough to settle this debate, quite frankly, that answer is the definition of not helping. It’s not good enough for me and it clearly isn’t good enough for the internet. So let’s settle on what we do know — or thought we knew. Being of a particular orangey hue, Garfield could very easily be in the same species as a certain human president, but we do know he is a cat. That has been long established. He lives for lasagna and hates Mondays. With a youthful heart and the energy of an elderly man, his age is debatable, but his gender? Come on now.
Let’s not make this a debate on self-identification (because frankly, that just erodes the actual debate on actual self-identification). God knows Garfield can’t defend himself, him not being a real cat and/or person and all.
In nearly every Garfield comic, in the ’80s and more recently, the cat has been referred to as a “he” or a “him,” at times even “sir,” which one therefore assumes is Garfield’s desired identification. Sure, we simply cannot know for sure, as Garfield questioning his identity and gender has never appeared on a single panel.
In which case, you might be led to believe it is up to you, the fan, to decide how you view Garfield. But in these difficult times, when there are so few things we can rely on in the world, and remnants of our childhood continue to be bastardized, take heed: Garfield is male. But Odie, that’s a whole different can of worms.
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