RSS
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
Slate has put up a good essay/slide show about Charles Schulz and Peanuts, inspred by a new biography that explores Schulz’s troubled life. The essay nicely captures the strip’s often grim tone as it grappled with themes of failure and depression.
The Peanuts merchandising machine and the treacle of A Charlie Brown Christmas allow Peanuts to be remembered as something sweeter, kinder, and more lovable than it truly was. The cognitive dissonance represented by the mass-merchandising success of this prickly, often despairing, sour, and snide work might have been worth more thought in a book of this scope than Michaelis gives it.
Many also forget how excellent the strip was. This is due to the sickly-sweetness of Peanuts merchandise but also because Peanuts peaked in the ’60s and ’70s, and by the late ’80s to the end of the strip Schulz’s powers were in decline.
November 26th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
While it’s true Schulz was a troubled man, there was a sense of genius in his cartoons. I suspect the universal appeal of Peanuts was and still remains the fact we all see a touch of ourselves in his various characters.
November 26th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Schulz had, what Keats would call, a certain negative capability.
November 27th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
A tremendous read is “The Parables Of Peanuts” by Robert L. Short. I received it for my last birthday from my parents who encouraged my earliest attempts at cartooning as a foray into politics. In large part, that’s what we’re all doing now.