I spotted a Calvin sticker while driving to work today. Usually I don't pay them any mind; they seem to be everywhere here in North Carolina, with Calvin pissing on any number of corporate or NASCAR logos. It's in spectacularly bad taste, but they don't elicit much more than a groan from me.
The sticker I saw today was different. It features Calvin kneeling and praying before a cross.
If you don't find this to be offensive, that's okay. But I do.
Now, I remember pop-culture images and phrases being co-opted for Christian messages before, and it's done nothing but offend me every single time. It's not just the in-your-face evangelism that gets to me (I just don't get how a denomination can be so insecure about itself and its beliefs that it has to sell itself, like religion is some sort of commodity.). What really gets to me is two-fold.
First, this message that's presented goes against the grain of Calvin's character as I remember it. He was a number of different things in the strip, but being reverent was not one of them. It would be closer to his character to see that cross being carried off by dinosaurs as he's daydreaming in a mass that his parents dragged him to. He would likely care less about the imagery of it all, and would be just as likely to use prayer as some sort of bargaining/extortion system to try and get what he wanted. In other words, he is inappropriate as a spokesman of Christianity as it's presented here in the Bible Belt.
Second, it's the apparent fact that someone, somewhere is okaying this as being clever and creative over something that may be original and interesting. How many Veggie Tales-like ideas are there being neglected in favor of warmed-over ill-advised knockoffs like this?
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