The lasagne-loving orange cat has experienced an unexpected meme-driven resurgence in 2022. What’s that all about?

Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to inform you that we are well into the Garfpocalypse. I can’t seem to go a day without seeing countless Garfield edits as I scroll through my Instagram feed. Every move I make, every corner I take, there is a smug, lasagne-loving cat, taunting me. But how and why has a cartoon created in 1978 made such a resurgence into our collective conscience?

For me, it all started when I saw a T-shirt in Thrift Wellington last November. Seemingly normal from the front, with a tiny Garfield logo on the upper right, it could pass as any pink tee – except for the giant mural of Garfield that embellished the back. It reminded me of my childhood and simpler times. I hadn’t thought of Garfield in about a million years, but seeing a familiar flash of orange in the overstimulating experience of thrift shopping brought me a sense of peace… so I bought it instantly.

In June, he snuck his way into the workplace. My coworkers played ‘Hey Mama’ by the Black Eyed Peas (a key track from in the Garfield movie soundtrack), and jumped around as they recreated the infamous scene, dance-battling an imaginary Odie. At this stage it felt that Garfield was not quite “trendy” yet; his appeal rested firmly in a zone between irony and nostalgia.

Then all of a sudden, Garfield was dominating my Instagram page. Hundreds of accounts seemingly popped up overnight, each with thousands of followers, posting ridiculous (yet sincere) images of Garfield in various situations. My entire Discover page is now orange.

The account @garfieldfrommemory haunts the back of my brain daily, painting ungodly portraits of Garfield as Jesus on the cross, as the Mona Lisa, as giant wheels of cheese. I have never had so much tangible evidence that each day we stray further from God’s light.

User @garfielfcore posts pictures of Garfield themed tattoos, while @jmcgg showcases Garfield T-shirts that make me question my own sense of humour. @Garfsgram edits Garfield into album covers and movie posters (self described as “Artfield”),  @Garfigment is in the business of shitposting, and @dharfields_gharma explores religious ideologies and philosophy through the medium of Garfield. (These accounts stand on the shoulders of Tumblrs like Garfield Minus Garfield, the YouTube account lasagnacat (both started in 2008) as well as Robot Chicken’s semi-regular Garfield subversions.)

Now it’s broken the banks of the internet: Garfield merch is being sold at Typo. Garfield mugs, socks, phone cases, calendars – you can even buy a giant hollowed out Garfield head to keep your pens in if you felt so inclined. Apparently there’s a new Garfield movie in the works for 2024, with Garfield to be voiced by Chris Pratt, and John Cena is there for no reason (again). People are selling overpriced Garfield memorabilia on Facebook Marketplace, and Vice is using Garfield imagery as thumbnails for seemingly unrelated articles. Last month, objectively cool™ indie pop artist Remi Wolf posted a photo of herself on the Tonight Show wearing a Garfield dress. Why on earth is Garfield cool now, in the lord’s year 2022? 

To understand this sudden revival, I asked myself to consider my personal relationship with Garfield. What makes him so iconic? 

I remember going to see the Garfield movie in 2004. I remember the smell of salty popcorn and the electric blue glitter on the walls of the cinema and laughing with my cousins in the dark. I remember going to the library after school with my brother and issuing all of the Garfield comics we could get our hands on (which was not many, as they were a hot commodity). Poring over the pages of Garfield Goes Bananas, I laughed so much – as a primary school-aged child, I too hated Mondays. 

Recently I revisited my childhood library to get the same books out again. That week, instead of doomscrolling on TikTok for 3 hours before falling asleep, I read Garfield comics. I came to an epiphany: Comics are the original TikTok. They’re entertaining, and only take 30 seconds to read, which is conveniently the length of my attention span. However, the core difference was that instead of being shown distressing true crime content, being diagnosed with ADHD / having high cortisol / being an Aries by a complete stranger, or watching news stories about tragic current events, I was being shown pictures of a cat thinking about his teddy bear in big, fluffy thought bubbles. That week, I fell asleep faster than I had all year. 

This is when it hit me: Garfield was not merely another internet meme – he is a fat orange coping mechanism in a post-pandemic world. 

Garfageddon is our collective attempt to time travel just a little bit, back to when life was a fraction easier, and our only problem was which ice-block to choose at the dairy after school. As a generation who turned into adults during lockdowns and spent our 21st birthdays on Zoom calls, who haven’t been on our OEs and who may never be able to afford a house, adulthood can feel like something far away in the distance rather than a reality.

Faced with an ongoing pandemic, the climate crisis, an attention-hungry billionaire controlling our social media platforms and supermarkets charging $7 for a capsicum, who wouldn’t prefer to think about Garfield instead?

 

During lockdown, many young adults found themselves back at their parents’ house and living in their childhood bedrooms for the first time in years. We had the chance to go through our old drawers, play our old games, and pretend to be our old selves. It was an extraordinary circumstance where we were forced to look at how our lives are now and how they used to be. The rise of Garfield memes feels like a symptom of this phenomenon – a way of pulling familiar, nostalgic content forward into a reality that feels increasingly uncertain each day. After all, unprecedented times call for unprecedented memes.

Maybe you love Garfield because you see yourself in him as you age, becoming cynical and increasingly unwilling to leave your bed. You might love him because of his extensive activism in the body-positivity community, and his role in the revitalisation of lasagne as a backlash to the extreme diet culture of the 90s and early 2000s. Or you could just love Garfield for the simple reason that you used to. You used to watch the movies, you used to read the comics, you used to not think twice about the news, you used to be carefree. You used to be eight years old. And that is enough.