 |
|
 Many facts of
life can make you burst into tears
CHARLES Schulz: "Not long ago I had Linus' blanket-hating grandmother come to his
house for a visit. She tried to get him to give up his propensity for the blanket; so he
threw up to her the fact that she was drinking 32 cups of coffee a day!" [Gap 58]
One day, for no apparent reason at all, Lucy suddenly bursts into tears. "What's
the matter, Lucy? Can I help you?" asks Violet, rushing to Lucy's aid. "No, thank you,
Violet (snif). There's nothing you can do," Lucy tells her. "My problems are deep-rooted!"
[Gap 80]
 Much depends on
how you go on from there, and your friends
LUCY IS raising . . . the so-called "problem of evil," the problem of vindicating the
justice of a sovereign God in permitting the existence of suffering. Why must we endure
discipline in order to learn? [Gap 83]
Charlie Brown, who numbers himself "among the walking wounded," and frequently
becomes "sick and tired of everything," certainly is aware of that
Weltschmerz, that "world weariness," "from which there is no escape". [Gap 77]
 Most often it's
like this: The greater income, the greater oppportunities
FEEL FREE to try to make your opportunities concur with the opportunities of people whose
incomes are ten times greater than yours [Cf Edward S. Martin].
But "the penalty of success is to be bored by the attentions of people who formerly
snubbed you. [M.W. Little]" STAR
- Many facts of life can make you burst into tears.
- Much depends on how you go on from there, and your friends.
- Most often it's like this: The greater income, the greater oppportunities.
 You must grieve - it is natural - if you suddenly find you depend on friends
with greater income and greater opportunities than yourself.
The most
sincere expressivity hardly judges before the time is ripe
"YOU'RE crazy!" Charlie Brown tells (Linus). "All right, " replies Linus, "so you believe in
Santa Claus, and I'll believe in the 'Great Pumpkin'". Furthermore, the "great Pumpkin"
will only appear in "the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere."
We, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. [Gal
4:3]
According to quantum physics, our purpose to act as interpreters by pointing out
some of the themes and symbols that run throughout Peanuts, may or may not influence
the cartoon too. they may if there is connection, they may not, if the time for connecting
is past. [Cf Gap 29]
If the church fails to use the divine imagination given to it, to see the unseen, to
see "sermons in stones and good in everything", to see "that all that passes to corruption
is a parable," as Karl Barth has put it, it will constantly be embarrassed by a world
capable of far more imagination that the Church itself. [Gap 33]
Schroeder, who idolizes Beethoven, has been known to die a thousand deaths on such
occasions as forgetting his hero's birthday. [Gap 63] It is not until we seek first
the Kingdom of God and his righteousness that all the Schroeders of our lives can
then find satisfactory places in our lives. [Gap 64] Snoopy, like Christ, must know how it
feels to show up on an obscure little plot of ground. [Gap 108-9.]
"The Church, rather than always being annoyed by the arts, should encourage a
vanguard of men and women to be interpreters of these tongues, or arts." [Gap 17Q]
Historically . . . the Church has been impatient with the arts, just as many of Christ's
detractors were impatient with his parables and indirectness: "How long will you keep us in
suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly" (John 10:24).
What appears . . . as the immediately given reality of "thing" is transformed by the
religious view into a world of "signs". . . . All physical and material things, every
substance and every action, now become metaphoric . . . expression of a spiritual meaning. -
Ernst Cassirer, in Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. [In Gap 19]
"Do not pronounce judgement before the time," says St. Paul (1 Cor. 4:5) [Gap In
31] ◊
Grunwald: "the view of unfallen human nature is shallow and illusory . . . we have
made fools of ourselves in the cult of the child and in its origin, which is really the cult
of man." [In Gap 55]
It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of
the promise are reckoned as descendants. (Rom 9:8)
As natural men we wake up in life with faith in the natural and with a feeling of
well-being; as men of the world we come into the world feeling that both life and we
personally are basically good. It is not until we really wake up that we discover the
precariousness of our situation. [Gap 43]
Snoopy has . . . faults (or "character traits," as Linus likes to refer to
"faults"): he is lazy, his is a "chow hound" without parallel, he is bitingly sarcastic, he
is frequently a coward, and he often becomes quite weary of being what he is
basically—a dog. He is, in other words, a fairly drawn caricature for what is probably
the typical Christian. . . . it is good to remember Luther's teaching here that "Ecclesia
est abscondita," the Church is hidden, for it lives by faith and not by sight or works. [Gap
102]
The society
must depend on what is called respectable ones or respectability - it's mostly had by mere
habit
"THE THEME is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of
human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of
the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable." -
Golding. [In Gap 51]
"Knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men" (2 Cor. 5:11). [In Gap 87] Yet, in
the New Testament it is not the work of a man's hands, but only the faith in Christ
of a man's heart, or one's "hunger for righteousness," that can save or satisfy a
man. [Gap 45]
"Some of our adult habits are ridiculous." - Charles M. Schulz [Gap 18]
The Bible often speaks in a sort of "love your enemies—it'll kill them" sense.
(Cf Rom 12:20; Prov 25:21-22) [In Gap 22]— The admonition to "Remember!" is thrust
again and again throughout the Bible at God's elected people. [Gap 47]
"The cartoons contain shrewd comment on human nature . . . " - Expository Times.
[Gap, back cover] —There are, of course, many people who do not believe in the doctrine
of Original Sin. [Gap 56]
By becoming a direct communication (Christianity) . . . becomes a tiny superficial
thing. [Gap 29 Q]—Difficulty always arises for the Church when it forgets 'that the
spirit blows where it wills' (John 3:8). [Gap 47] ◊
But the psalmist anticipated the answer as well as the problem: / It is better to
take refuge in the LORD than to put confidence in man. It is better to take refuge in the
LORD than to put confidence in princes. (Ps. 118:8-9)
The inability of the Peanuts kids to produce any radical change for the
better in themselves—or in each other—is a constant Peanuts theme. [Gap
41]
Dance the
(figurative) security blankets away if you manage to do it
ALL PHONEY gods have one thing in common: it kills your soul to worship one of them. . . .
This is unfortunate. [Gap 61]
"To live is to dance!!" - Snoopy. [Gap 112]
Generally Snoopy, like Lucy, also is trying to get Linus' blanket away from him. . .
. As the "Dominican" of Peanuts—the Domini canis, or "dog of
God"—Snoopy is subject to frequent humiliations, not the least of which are
similar to those of the "suffering servant" of Isaiah . . . (Isa. 52:14; 53:3). [Gap
107]
To educate a man in mind and not in morals often amounts to making a menace more
effective. [Cf a saying by Theodore Roosevelt] 
You may also wish to know why something to believe in first has to be told about
before it is up to frantically sought, not why stars and strengthening ideals without solid
foundation under them, must shine.
- The most sincere expressivity hardly judges before the time is ripe.
- The society must depend on what is called respectable ones or respectability -
it's mostly had by mere habit.
- Dance the (figurative) security blankets away if you manage to do so.
1. In a sincere society the people is fond of dancing.
2. Expressivity is something managed for most part.
"I'm a great believer in the mild in cartooning. I'm a great believer in mild caricatures .
. . I hate this business of overreacting." - Charles M. Schulz
Be an artist to
give your family a respectable life and give millions to charities if you can
FOR A TIME in the 1950s Charles M. Schulz (November 26, 1922 - February 12, 2000)
was called the "youngest existentialist". And before that, before he was a one-week old
infant born to Carl and Dena Schulz of St. Paul, Minnesota, an uncle nicknamed him Sparky
after a horse the uncle was fond of.
In Kindergarten a teacher told him, "Someday, Charles, you're going to be an
artist." Schulz later recalled he thought he was born to draw comic strips. "I think I was."
The earliest ambition he could remember was "to produce a daily comic strip".
Late in life he repeated it, "My main job is to draw funny comic strips for the
newspapers." He didn't set himself up as a philosopher or therapist to the millions. He made
no statements about important issues. He sat on no commissions.
Using a Crow-quill pen dipped in ink, Schulz drew every day through the next three
decades. He always worked alone, without a team of assistants. The strip cartoon was an
ideal form for him: The strip cartoonist can get up, go to work, draw his daily panels, and
go to bed at night feeling he's done his bit.
Edgy, unpredictable, ahead of its time, "Peanuts" "vibrated with '50s alienation" -
Trudeau.
Success fell off Schulz. He was unable to take refuge in its rewards. With his first
wife and five children, he moved in 1958 to a paradise among the redwoods of Northern
California, where he briefly found happiness.
As American soldiers stenciled Snoopy onto their helmets and the Apollo 10
astronauts christened their command module Charlie Brown and their lunar landing vehicle
Snoopy, Schulz left his imprimatur on the Cold War's highest and lowest moments.
"Peanuts" became a refuge. Schulz became the patron saint of people who were putting
up with all they could take. As a young man he had suffered deep loss. Three days after his
mother's early death from colon cancer, he boarded a train for Camp Campbell, Kentucky, and
the war in Europe. The sense of shock and separation never left him. Nor did the
Scandinavian part of Schulz's character - a quality that took part in making him very
different from any other comic strip artist.
Schulz also possessed a strong independent streak against life's injustices - they
were piled up and at last found artistic expression in his most interesting characters: the
long-suffering Charlie Brown, exuberant Snoopy, philosophical Linus, domineering Lucy,
talented Schroeder, narcoleptic Peppermint Patty, became revered figures in Japan, beloved
in England, France, Germany, Norway, Italy, and known by sight in 75 countries throughout
Europe, South America, Africa, Australia and Asia.
At all levels of society "Peanuts" had a profound and lasting influence on the way
people saw themselves and the world in the second half of the 20th century.
Sensitive to slights and many rejections, Schulz experienced growing up as a
dismaying process, for he felt chronically unsupported. Like Charlie Brown he was willing
to admit that just to keep on being Charlie Brown was an exhausting and painful process.
"You don't know what it's like to be a barber's son," Charlie Brown tells Schroeder. . . .
He recalls how hard his father worked to give his family a respectable life. Schulz' father
was a barber too. ◊
He had few friends at school. In practically every thing he did at school, he felt
underestimated by teachers, coaches and peers. No one ever gave him credit for his drawing,
or for playing a superior game of golf. "It took me a long time to become a human being,"
he once said. He wanted only to exist in the extreme bottom right-hand corner of his own
panels — where it said "Schulz." He wanted to limit himself to being that little scribble
who had dropped having many illusions about what's really happening in people's
lives.
At his drawing table in Santa Rosa, he drew with the same old pens, the same old
nibs. He liked to say that he would stay at the desk until he wore a hole clean through it.
If he could draw his four panels a day, sign himself "Schulz," close up shop and go home,
all would be well.
But he married twice and raised five children. He dressed modestly in muted slacks
and pastel golf sweaters. He liked to sprawl after work in an easy chair, his long legs
pointing at the TV set. In his home and surroundings he was a smiling type, with straight
white teeth and a head of silver hair. But the unprecedented obligations of his new role as
world-famous cartoonist kept him in a state of anxiety and dread. He panicked on airplanes,
broke out in a cold sweat at the very idea of a hotel lobby. He refused very many requests
for public appearances and replied to mail instead.
Also, he became the most widely syndicated and beloved cartoonist of all time, with
huge success. He took little interest in accumulating money, gave millions away to
charities, insisting always that he was the same old Charles Schulz.
From modest
beginnings, extend your personal doubts and insecurity into universally popular, extremely
welcome art, based on regular, daily routines in a well ordered personal life
"PEANUTS" was proof that you were not alone when you woke in the middle of the night
marooned with your failures, staring into the dark, worrying that the world had gone
mad.
Charlie Brown reminded people, as no other cartoon character had, of what it was to
be vulnerable, to be human.
The Times of London called the Peanuts figures "international icons of good faith" —
perhaps not surprising for a cartoonist with a Dickensian gift for characterization.
Until 1965, Schulz set out consciously never to settle issues raised by the strip
and never to bring in issues from outside. Having established an idiom and a mode that
commented on modern ills such as commercialization, real estate development, generational
distrust, Schulz extended the area of doubt in modern life only insofar as he made it funny
to doubt. Basically, he had sustained the traumas of his adolescence far into adulthood —
far enough, in the end, to see them become a crucial element in the universal popularity of
his art.
He dreaded becoming a prisoner of success, perhaps because it meant he would lose
control. He wanted to be free and hated to talk about his enormous success.
How popular was it? An example: In December, 1969, when Schulz was 47 years old,
more than half the nation's television audience tuned in to the fourth airing of the Emmy
award–winning animated television special, "A Charlie Brown Christmas". It's popularity
confounded network executives. "That same night, a musical, "You're A Good Man, Charlie
Brown," was playing to sold-out houses in its second season on Broadway; and a
feature-length animated film, "A Boy Named Charlie Brown," was setting attendance records at
Radio City Music Hall; every few hours, 6,000 more parents and children would form a vast
line outside the "showplace of the nation." More than 150 million readers were following the
daily and Sunday "Peanuts" strips, while in bookstores "Peanuts" collections swamped the
best-seller lists, eventually selling more than 300 million copies in 26
languages."
This was not awfully bad for someone who had survived the Depression and World War
II, the alienation of his youth, and for a time had had no hope for the future. And who
later, as part of his morning routine, had an English muffin with grape jelly and drank
coffee from a Styrofoam cup, then sat down to his drawing table and the long, white
Strathmore board with the five-inch-by-five-inch panels in which he drew the daily strip.
Garry Trudeau, creator of "Doonesbury," thought of it as "the first Beat strip."
Schulz was bright in school. Because of it, he was promoted by half-grades above his peers,
and had to compete on those unequal terms. By the time he reached junior high school, he was
the youngest, smallest boy in the class, and felt lost, unsure of himself. Later, in his
art, he made Weltschmerz, loneliness, insecurity and a stoic acceptance of life's
defeats his earliest personal themes. ◊
Melancholy would dog Schulz all his life, as would feelings of worthlessness, panic,
and frustration. A shy, timid boy, a barber's son, rose from modest beginnings to realize
his earliest dream of creating a newspaper comic strip. This he did for nearly 50
years.
From 1965 onward, the strip and its characters had gone from being a campus
phenomenon in the late 1950s to a mainstream cultural powerhouse. Schulz took much pride in
the achievements of the strip, and at the same time struggled to believe that he was worthy
of the respect and love his admirers showered on him. "I just did the best I could," he
said. What was it?
As part of his morning routine, he ate an English muffin with grape jelly and drank
coffee from a Styrofoam cup, then sat down to his drawing table and the long, white
Strathmore board with the five-inch-by-five-inch panels in which he drew the daily
strip.
And then, what Schulz had achieved with pencils and paper, turned into a worldwide
industry. "Peanuts" captured and began to dominate new markets in stage, television, film,
book, record and subsidiary forms. "Peanuts" was expanding an industry that would
revolutionize worldwide entertainment into the our century. For the first time in the book
trade, booksellers of the late 1960s, started to sell not just "Peanuts" books but also
sweatshirts, dolls and an increasing array of paraphernalia that bore the image and form of
the characters in the books. Peanuts licencing brought in $1 billion a year to United
Features and made Schulz richer than any popular artist in the world.
He influenced two generations of comic strip artists, standup comedians and readers
in many countries. Unlike other seminal figures of American mass culture in the 1960s and
'70s — Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, Andy Warhol — Schulz was not inclined to be a
teacher, a guru, a manufacturer of lesser artists. "I don't know the meaning of life," he
once said. "I don't know why we are here. I think life is full of anxieties and fears and
tears . . . and it can be very grim." The experience of being an Everyman — a decent, caring
person in a hostile world — was essential to Charlie Brown's character, as it was to Charles
Schulz's.
The art of
Peanuts has helped persons talking with one another and expressing differently than they
otherwise might be able to
CHRONIC rejection and unrequited love are the twin pligths of Schulz's early life and later
work. He said with conviction, "My whole life has been one of rejection." He had became the
highest paid, most widely read cartoonist ever and a class all by himself. At the peak of
Schulz's popularity, "Peanuts" captured 355 million readers, and he was earning from $30 to
$40 million a year. What is more, throughout the '60s and early '70s, the visual and verbal
vocabulary of the strip was one of the only languages that kept both the younger and older
generation fluent with each other.
Schulz actively attempted to be ordinary . . . what he thought he had always been —
a regular person.
- Be an artist to give your family a respectable life and give millions to
charities if you can.
- From modest beginnings, extend your personal doubts and insecurity into
universally popular, extremely welcome art, based on regular, daily routines in a well
ordered personal life.
- The art of Peanuts has helped persons talking with one another and expressing
differently than they otherwise might be able to.
1. A well ordered artist may look different -
2. Many respectable-looking people may strive to appear that way through insecurities so
that their own expressivity flounders. Existential drowning may be next; then you do not
know what to say, even.
Literature
Gap: Short, Robert. The Gospel According to Peanuts. London: Fontana, 1966.
USER'S GUIDE to abbreviations, the site's bibliography, letter codes, dictionaries, site design and navigation, tips for searching the site and page referrals. [LINK]
DISCLAIMER: [LINK]
© 2001–2009, Tormod Kinnes. [E-MAIL]
|
