Flexible Realities in Calvin and Hobbes

In “Calvin and Hobbes,” Bill Watterson consciously avoids resolving the true nature of Calvin’s stuffed toy/best friend, asserting, “Hobbes is more about the subjective nature of reality than about dolls coming to life.” The language of comics facilitates this ambiguity. 1/14

Every medium of expression has different tools to represent or transform realities or perceptions. Readers/viewers also bring different expectations to different mediums. Basic examples include: we generally don’t expect novels to have pictures and we generally expect movies to have sound. 2/14

Similarly, we tend to have different expectations of reality in drawn visual mediums, such as comics & cartoons, vs live-action visual mediums, such as films. In general, while live-action visual mediums are often spectacular, we expect them to have more fidelity to observable reality. 3/14

Case in point: comics readers immediately accepted Superman’s ability to “leap tall buildings” (and later, fly). But the marketing slogan for the 1978 Superman film, “you’ll believe a man can fly,” suggests film-goers had to be convinced that Superman could “look real” in live action. 4/14

Because comics realities are fully drawn, readers tend to more readily accept distortions of reality. While advances in CGI technology have made live-action more similar to cartoons, filmic adaptations of superhero comics still emphasize the perceived need to make characters feel “realistic.” 5/14

Darieck Scott and Ramzi Fawaz argue that in comics, “anything that can be drawn can be believed.” Within these fully drawn realities that customarily employ dramatic exaggeration & simplification, a dinosaur piloting a fighter jet is just as acceptable and believable as anything else. 6/14

Which brings us, at last, to Calvin and Hobbes. Watterson represents Hobbes in two distinct ways: as an obviously unalive stuffed toy and as a real albeit cartoonishly anthropomorphic talking tiger. In general, Hobbes is only “alive” when he’s alone with Calvin; everyone else only sees the toy. 7/14

The easiest (and most reductive) explanation for this dichotomy is that Hobbes is not alive, but simply imagined as such by Calvin. IOW: Hobbes is simply a stuffed toy turned imaginary friend (or, in some darker readings of the dynamic, a spectre of Calvin’s dangerously unstable mental health). 8/14

But Watterson also uses stylistic experiments to question the nature of reality within the comic strip, encouraging a looser, more subjective understanding of its world. For instance, some of the wilder forays into fantasy are rendered in a more realistic style than more mundane events. 9/14

For instance, in many of the strips where Calvin and Hobbes are sledding or careening through the forest on their wagon, the cartoonish, impossible movements of the characters are juxtaposed the philosophical nature of their discussions and the more subdued, realistic style of the landscapes. 10/14

Watterson also likes to experiment with more realistic drawing styles when depicting Calvin’s dreams about dinosaurs. While these dreams are clearly delineated as dreams, the juxtaposition of styles encourages us to notice and contemplate these juxtapositions of reality. 11/14

The relative realism of Calvin’s dreams could express the urgency of his dreaming. Or, Calvin’s comparatively lush, detailed dreams are rendered more realistically than our or other characters’ perceptions of simpler, more cartoonish realities to emphasize the subjectiveness of reality. 12/14

Time and time again, Calvin and Hobbes makes the real cartoonish and makes the cartoonish real. Here, Watterson uses the comparatively realistic style of soap operatic serials to depict Calvin & Susie’s presumptively realistic but ultimately ludicrously childish attempt to impersonate adults. 13/14

Douglas Wolk argues that “cartooning is, inescapably, a metaphor for the subjectivity of perception.” So maybe Hobbes’ reality is up to us. Or maybe it doesn’t matter, because in a comic, everything is real because nothing is real. This has always been true. But Watterson underscores it. 14/14