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| © Bill Watterson |
Calvinball
“Calvinball,” the sport that Calvin makes up after his less than enjoyable experience participating in team sports is both a commentary on competition, games structure, the way that extreme competition kills the fun of a game, and another example of an imaginative approach to solving a problem while being unconfined to artificial limitations. During the weeks leading up to Calvin’s creation of Calvinball, he suffers humiliation, ridicule by other kids, and dejection and:
a moment of direct imaginative conflict, as the fly ball Calvin catches also happens to interrupt one of his Spaceman Spiff daydreams, which he’s indulging in while standing by himself, so far in the outfield that he has to squint to see Homeplate; true fun is thus spoiled by socially mandated derivative.” (Hingston 38)
Calvin addresses these conflicts by creating Calvinball, a game where the rules are made up as you go and is never played the same way twice. The strip in which the sport originiates is at the top of this page and is yet another example of Watterson’s imagination working against social norms and inviting, through Calvin’s unapologetic self expression, the reader to join in on the imaginative trip.
The Calvinball idea is so popular that people emulate Calvin’s antics. See video below: