Charles Schulz was a spiritualist, a god amongst men, a Joseph Campbell with a pen sketching out a gaggle of philosophical and depressed round kids. Timeless, contemporary, salient for the post-Industrialites. A guru on a hill.
He knows the childhood demons as they hitchhike aimlessly on each of our brain maps. He created the martyr Charlie Brown, the Athenian Peppermint Patty, the micromanager busybody Lucy, the ratting-out, annoying sister Sally, the misunderstood romantic artist Schroeder, the sarcastic, aloof-woof Snoopy and his Colin Powell advisor Woodstock, and who can forget the helpful, philosophizing, thumb-sucking, blankie-dragging Linus.
All of them – parts of ourselves.
Charlie Brown’s biggest problem – with girls, with Lucy, with his baseball game – in my mind, was he was just sad, perhaps even grieving. Look at those eye circles, would ya?
Maybe it was the loss of his innocence at the hands of a dream-deferred coach. Maybe it was the collapse of certain lobes of his brain from falling on his head so many times from that hateful Lucy’s hijinks.
Maybe it's something deeper, something so horrible, and something with such gravity and elusiveness of the human condition that Charles Schulz had to channel it through the carelessly thoughtful kids that circled the wagon around this bald kid in a yellow striped sweater.
Maybe Charlie Brown was just flipping down – Kurt Cobain blue, Bukowski screwed up. And Lucy crippled his healing, Linus confounded his simple way in this world, and that damn red-haired girl down the street made him feel less of a man. Maybe the neglected Pigpen was the only one really that could reach across the Grief Divide, but he had enough of his own problems at home to deal with.
I’m just sayin’ … Charlie Brown is sad.
This Sunday, read it closely. There’s something in there about each of our own brands of social mangling and emotional impotence that the world around us will just have to deal with.
~~~
Photos courtesy of:
http://euroross.blogspot.com/charlie%20brown%20tree.JPG
and
http://www.overworm.com/NothingToSeeHere/NTSH%20Images/CharlieBrownLucyFootball.gif
1 comment:
Charles Schultz made Charlie Brown based on his own biography... Just a compilation of trials to get a life. It seems like he lost in all aspects bt one - to make a comic story that is a pop cult icon. And he made it right =) If not, at least I like his stories a lot hehe
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