Gay Guy,
You know I'm a comics guy, and Peanuts is still the gold standard. (Wikipedia check: 18,000 strips for 300 million readers in 21 languages.) Critics find him repetitive and a sellout, but it's not that simple.
Schulz was a man of melancholy who famously quipped that he woke up everyday "to a funeral-like atmosphere." It's a long sad story that leads many (including me) to the conclusion that his depression was a cornerstone of his success. There was plenty of gentle humor in the Peanuts strip, but the recurring themes were always loneliness, doubt, and rejection. Charlie Brown never wins because "Happiness is not funny."
Anyway, there's a new 3eanuts Tumblr with simple premise:
"Charles Schulz's Peanuts comics often conceal the existential despair of their world with a closing joke at the characters' expense. With the last panel omitted, despair pervades all."
I'm hooked. It's a little trick that reveals a lot. Here's a couple more...
--Straight Guy
6 comments:
He's got a point, I'll give him that. Quite a valid one, too.
Not the direction I expected. Seeing the first two, I thought the post was about Schultz's recently discovered gay/lesbian subtext. I saw a special about him, after his death, he was one depressed and sometimes mean mother.
I think most funny people suffer or have suffered from depression. There's an edge to it. It's also a defense mechanism. There is so much humor in despair.
But didn't Schulz also create the "Happiness is..." campaign?
ML: I hat to support despair, but in this case...
Upstate: Yeah, I pulled the first two because they had a gay/straight subtext.
Jen: So if I want to be funnier, I should suffer more, right?
May B: Yes. He did. As a child of the 70s I remember that well. Happiness is a warm blanket. Happiness is a warm puppy. Etc. Not sure if that was his voice, or the marketing syndicate, though. Wouldn't be surprised. As a kid, I always thought a Hallmark Peanuts greeting card was top of the line.
I didn't get that there was a missing final frame until you said it. I couldn't believe how depressing these were and thought what were the paper publishers thinking putting them out there.
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