The Impact of Diary of a Wimpy Kid

if you ask me to name the top ten things I thought to find my generation I would list things like iPhones memes and spongebob but I would also write down a certain book series that in the grand scheme of things seems more like a footnote than anything else in May of 2004 cartoonist Jeff Kinney began uploading posts of an idea that had been brewing in his mind since 1998 about a middle school weakling named Greg Heffley who would write about his life in a journal the writings and illustrations were uploaded on fun brain and daily installments until 2005 in the meantime Jeff Kinney worked on an abridged adaptation and showed it to a publisher in New York the eventual book became an instant hit and the online version received around 20 million views as of this video there have been an astonishing 14 books in the main series plus a spinoff two movie Diaries and two do-it-yourself book in total more than 200 million copies have been sold that is quite a lot for one book series and it leads one to wonder why is it so successful what makes watching the misadventures of this teenage doodle so entertaining for millions of people and could it possibly have had a significant impact on the mean culture of today Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a fascinating book series both in its illustrations and in its writing if you tried to pitch to me a children's book series about a sociopathic middle schooler who is pretty much a jerk to everyone around him with characters that are drawn in a very synthetic stiff colorless slightly grotesque art style I would have thought you were crazy admittedly that's simplifying things a lot but it's still kind of amazing that this book series was an instant success when you really think about it it's kind of rare to find a children's book protagonist who does not resemble a role model in any way there's been mischievous protagonists sure even morally dubious ones but I can't recall many child-friendly main characters who are mostly narcissistic [ __ ] for their entire fictional lives in Jeff Kenny's own words Greg is not a hero he's full of imperfections and having a flawed character is a little bit more interesting than having a character that always does the right thing I've enjoyed lots of books where the character is heroic but with the title alone I wanted to tell kids that Greg is not the most outstanding or admirable character there is something a little bit different about him and that's putting it lightly Greg could be seen as an outright villain in some cases Diary of a Wimpy Kid is pretty much a tragic comedy it's writing as hilarious and surprisingly clever but when you think about him as a character he's pretty sad and pathetic I mean Greg Heffley is obsessed with his own success he manipulates other people to fulfill his desires he steps over anyone who gets in his way he has little to no remorse for his actions any kind of selflessness is extremely rare he's stupid he's a liar and worst of all he's a simp these observations are nothing new people have pointed them out in much richer ways than I have and with many more examples I don't need to go into too much depth but what keeps this idea alive what makes you want to follow this deeply flawed adolescent character is the writing there's so much dare I say subversion of expectations like take this classic example from the first book where Greg and Rowley are patrolling some kindergartners at some point Greg borrows rally's jacket and patrols the kids himself while Rowley is taking a quiz eventually he starts messing with the kids by terrorizing them with worms one of the neighbors catches sight of him with the jacket and believes that Rowley is messing with the kids even though it was Greg so later the leader of the Patrol falsely punishes rally Greg learns about this prompting him to wonder if he should come clean about the whole situation his mom notices something is clearly bothering him and talks with him about how he should try to do the right thing usually in a situation like this when your best friend is falsely accused and punished and you are the one who actually should be dealing with that situation you use your common sense realize that not speaking up would seriously damage your friendship and jeopardize your trustworthiness and sucking it up and coming clean no matter the superficial penalty would be the best decision but instead he decides that the right thing is to let Rowley take the fall for it in fact not only does he not even understand what he did wrong that started this whole mess after he confesses to rally that he was the one who messed with those kids he tries to shift some of the blame onto Rowley saying his lesson was be careful who you lend your coat to and to add even more insult to injury Greg gets rewarded by his mother who has the false impression he actually did the right thing it's this kind of awful turn of events that makes these books so entertaining Jeff Kinney just has this way of writing wonderfully wicked scenarios that gradually get worse and worse and when they're seen through Greg's lens of the world that's where the comedy comes in but why does this appeal to so many children well it's because children are [ __ ] yeah they look cute and they seem oh so innocent on the surface but they are little devils not pretend that children are incapable of doing wrong there's so much children's media where the worst word they're allowed to say is crap no no don't it's too late come on dude don't it's already in motion well put it out of motion you pissed me off but let me tell you I've been in elementary school cafeteria sessions that had so many f-bombs you could have sworn it was directed by Martin Scorsese Diary of a Wimpy Kid nowhere near approaches that level of cursing but just using the word [ __ ] plenty of times is enough to stand out from most of the sanitized kids books out there and a lot of children's shows for example the moral lessons are resolved in like a single episode it's clean uncomplicated and tied up in a nice little bow but in Diary of a Wimpy Kid Greg will make mistake after mistake after mistake each compounding on the next and sometimes he gets away with it and sometimes he doesn't that's how the world is for a lot of children their problems are similar and doing the right thing is sometimes not clear or even desirable the books don't moralize at you they depict the world more cynically I would also say more accurately but that's up to personal experience sometimes it's appealing to just show the unflinching selfishness the pettiness the misguided immaturity of adolescence because the truth is kids can be absolute little monsters to each other lord knows I was teenagers especially are obsessed with themselves to some degree and that's what the appeal is it's like kid representation we're all flawed more so than we'd like to admit and that's what makes the character relatable when I was younger sometimes I agreed with Greg's decisions and sometimes I didn't but now with slightly more life experience I see that most if not all his decisions were bad and that's not me making a moral judgment about those decisions I just think that Greg's tactics were bad like I said he's not the brightest um I I also think that his decisions are morally bad of course anyway now I don't think this book series teaches to be morally questionable I think children around the age group it's directed at mostly know that Greg's behavior is not desirable it's also not about glorifying bad behavior Greg does face consequences for his missteps but not always which again is more accurate to the real world and he does have brief moments of selflessness Greg at the very end of the first book takes the fall for rally and says that he got rid of the infamous cheese giving him the cheese touch which effectively destroys his reputation so he's not incapable of selflessness but it takes a very long time to get to this point and by the time of the next book he's back to his old ways which is appropriate in real life you don't just entirely change your behavior by one good deed it's kind of like Bojack horseman as weird as that comparison is to make you also have to consider that while rally is far more innocent he's not entirely exempt from flaws notably he seems to have trouble with boundaries however another thing to consider is that Greg Heffley is an unreliable narrator he could be taking these stories and exaggerating them to try and make himself look good for all we know although he's not doing a very good job whether Greg is a full-on sociopath or a deeply flawed teen with misguided principles it's kind of up to interpretation so really when I asked how can a book series be so successful despite the main character being such an [ __ ] the answer is the book series is so successful because the main character is an [ __ ] it's like watching a train wreck and kids love train wrecks it's good to acknowledge this because when you consider the qualities of the art style the iconography that litters the pages and pops up into your mind anytime anyone mentions Diary of a Wimpy Kid you'll find that the writing and the art say even more things about each other the art style of Diary of a Wimpy Kid is extremely good at accomplishing its goal it's clean enough and refined enough to give off sensations of professionalism but it's just off enough and goofy enough to give it that a mature teenage Doodle look I have to praise Jeff Kinney for finding this delicate balance in creating such memorable illustrations but it also kind of sucks in a good way that's confusing let me just take this step by step there are only two colors pitch black and the tone of the paper this definitely makes objects and characters pop when necessary but with only two colors you'll sometimes have things blend into one another the line weight is extremely consistent for every single element of every drawing text that isn't Greg's own handwriting will often be placed on documents without any consideration to the shape of the paper perspective is strange sometimes and really is only there to show the depth of something and not really how it corresponds with a vanishing point the characters are stiff both in the variety of ways they can move their body and their facial expressions their bodies are noodles and their hands are bloated sausages the Heffley family is essentially a bunch of cookie cutter faces and bodies and Greg's signature vacant frown is just copy and paste which probably makes making a new book far more efficient essentially they're glorified stick figures but where the art style really shines is in the faces the faces for characters outside of the Heffley family are kind of grotesque they're either fat potato shaped or have extremely large noses and there are not many exceptions to this rule in fact has anyone ever noticed that the girls Greg likes seem to have the same face that he does yes his brother has the same basic face as well but that's probably just because he's related how come every other character besides the desirable females and his brother have unique distorted faces the only reason that comes to my mind is that Greg seems to only view anyone desirable as himself Jesus Christ I could also bring in shape theory how intentionally or not Jeff Kinney seems to kind of use it shape theory is a very basic thing in character design that pretty much uses common geometry and ascribe certain attributes to them the circle is often known as being cute and appealing which of course is how Greg Heffley draws himself along with his family but that's probably more so because they're related and then you have Rowley as a square usually associated with being sturdy and stubborn like his absolutely stubborn nature of insisting he keeps Greg as a friend no matter how much he's abused and then we have the triangle often associated with wickedness and danger and who do we know has a distinctly triangle-shaped head that's right fregley if you think that's a bit far-fetched I don't blame you but hey if the shoe fits but let me make one thing clear none of this is to the detriment of the art style quite the opposite actually it all fits perfectly as the style of a teenager trying to doodle his experiences but with a bit more of a professional clean up this suckiness gives it its iconic look its appeal if we compare it to a similar book big nate you'll see that it has a more traditional newspaper cartoon style which makes sense because the original comic strip was launched seven years before the Wimpy Kid series was ever even conceived oh and you may notice that the examples I bring up are slightly drawn over and that's because like five years ago me and my brother for some reason decided to vandalize each and every page of this book with our own jokes which mostly consisted of farts vomit stitches and mechanical devices poking out of people's heads I guess it's a good thing this is all done in pencil I'll just show a few highlights [Music] this more aesthetically pleasing style with its dynamic line weight the energetic poses the cross-hatching and attention to textures gives off a very different mood and this is also reflected in the writing while nate is mischievous sarcastic envious and narcissistic he's not like malicious or manipulative to the point of seriously damaging his relationships with everyone around him this is why I think the Wimpy Kid art style is genius anyone can draw Greg with relative ease and anyone can recognize that weird three haired Charlie Brown looking head and most importantly the style does the job of getting into the main character's mind really showing us how we've used the world through his twisted lens now I've only just started to catch up with the series again and unfortunately I've noticed that the art style has seemed to decline now Jeff Kinney must have had a lot of complaints about the lack of diversity in this series because there's a lot more black people in the newer books for some reason these bizarre silhouettes have become more and more prominent I get using it for large crowds but in some of these pages these are main characters the excessively blacked-out characters start to appear in book 10 old school and by book 12 the get away they are just everywhere I don't know if this is just out of laziness or some recent stylistic choice but I would rather actually be able to see the characters faces silhouettes were used even in the first book but they were rare and had more of a purpose I guess you could argue Jeff Kinney has started blacking out people to put more emphasis on certain characters or objects in the scenes but I just think it's overkill it's also amusing to see how as the more books are made the less color options are available to differentiate them first you had red blue green yellow purple then slightly lighter blue for snow that makes sense then Brown even black then double down is red with a yellow striped spine and then wrecking ball is like what hey man you can't just start adding different textures that's supposed to look like a real diary and now you're adding rivets the art style combined with the writing makes you realize Greg's narcissism is profound it's in everything it can be found in the art style it can be found in his stories it can be found in how he views desirable people his narcissism leaks from each and every page but Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a comedy first and foremost like I said it's not here to teach lessons or guide the youth and having a narcissistic manipulative character is a great way to get comedic moments Diary of a Wimpy Kid is kind of similar to it's Always Sunny in Philadelphia in this way most of the comedy in the show comes from watching these awful people doing awful things to each other and concocting elaborate schemes to achieve their selfish desires Diary of a Wimpy Kid achieves this at a childhood level it's humor is often extremely sarcastic cynical and above all else bizarre when you look at meme culture today you'll find the usual styles of comedy the referential the pun based but I think more recently with the help of the Internet this generation has pioneered humor that is utterly psychotic [Music] [Applause] and I think our childhoods had a lot to do with it there are many things that anyone born between 1997 or so - like 2004 will share fond memories of simply because of our easy access to media Nickelodeon Cartoon Network Disney viral YouTube videos weird global events they all had an impact on probably 99% of youth at the time and a lot of it was humor based if anyone who watched a single episode of icarly or asdfmovie or mad will know the kind of stuff we watched was weird like really weird yes but the planet can hi gang I'm Al Gore and the planet is our responsibility so the next time and I think that's manifested itself in mean culture to the point we laugh at bass boosted microphones and the letter e so it's no wonder older generations who didn't grow up with this weirdness are confused my mom once glanced a look at her Facebook page and found this meme she asked me what the hell it meant and all I could do was stare at her blankly because how on earth could I possibly explain why I thought this was funny let's take one of the most iconic stories from the first Wimpy Kid book for some reason there's this piece of cheese that was left outside and no one not even a passing janitor bothered to clean it up resulting in an extremely moldy piece of food which the children in the school used to create a superstitious game called the cheese touch I mean that that's pretty weird but it's also pretty clever setting up a somewhat plausible plot point that's paid off later in just a brilliant way I think there's a lot of parallels between the humor of the internet and that of the Wimpy Kid books and that's why I think the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series had and still has a significant impact on our generation of course not solely on its own but enough to be notable and our generation has given back you may have seen the Twitter accounts and posts that take illustrations from the book and make them extremely shocking and offensive or you may have seen those weird strangely depressing fanfictions on places like our / loded diper we're just taking the weirdness of the media we consumed to its next logical step but are there even more secrets to be discovered for example in page 165 of the first book Greg talks about a comic strip called wacky dog that used to be made as a humorous strip but then it was used to handle the creator's personal business so basically this wacky dog does an uncharacteristic thing and when do ackee dogs usually do uncharacteristic things that's right our slash Doge lore Jeff Kinney predicted the resurgence of doge memes okay but seriously while the memes around the Wimpy Kid series are far less abundant than say Sponge Bob and Phineas and Ferb I think the essence of the humor is more prevalent the basic ideas and even if the essence isn't directly influential it is very similar again it wasn't just a singular piece of media the Wimpy Kid series is just one actor in a joint effort to make our childhoods as weird cynical and nihilistic as possible and thank God it was I feel honored to live in the generation where humour is pushed to the point of complete insanity the first book was released thirteen years ago and most of the kids who read it when it was first published are adults now I know it shaped my sense of humor yes sir the Wimpy Kid books were a notable period of my life as you can see by the sheer amount of them my family owns it's kind of funny how by laying out the suckiness of his childhood Jeff Kinney has given many of us were at least me some cherished childhood memories I'll always remember the cool air late September and early October when book fairs were plentiful and in the years of late elementary and early middle school me and everyone else in my grade would go out purchase the Guinness Book of World Records or Calvin and Hobbes and of course the newest Diary of a Wimpy Kid book and read it all in like three days here's to you Greg you hilarious cold-hearted bastard

Channel: Solar Sands

Views: 4,583,538

Keywords: Solar Sands, Art, Drawing, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Art Style, Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney, Memes, Meme Culture, Gen Z, Wojack, Essay, Video Essay, Gamer

Id: SR2MJZLd2OE

Length: 22min 40sec (1360 seconds)

Published: Mon May 04 2020

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