He Expressed Our Anxieties, Dreams, Fixations and Ideals
"It was a dark and stormy night" when the presses of 2,600 dailies in 75 countries and 25 languages, printed the last comic strip drawn by Charles M. Schulz. It was anticipated by 350 million readers, who knew it would be his last. Snoopy's last flight on his flying doghouse in pursuit of the Red Baron, Charlie Brown's last failed kick, Schroeder's last sonata, Lucy's last scolding.
Their author had announced a few days earlier: "I am no longer able to maintain the schedule demanded by a daily comic strip". He had drawn 17,000 of them during a half century of professional life, a creative work that combined — like his characters — children's games and adults' anxieties, and had decided that his last strip would run on 13 February.
It was early morning that same day when three generations of readers learned that the creator of the most popular characters had died with them by a remarkable coincidence.
The pencil was broken after bringing a smile each day to a broad cross section of humanity. Broken forever, because Schulz, aware of the illness, which he still intended to fight, had already decided: "My family does not wish Peanuts to be continued by anyone else". In fact, he himself did not want his paper children to fall into someone else's hands: children are not sold; they are not given away.
He had a little tribe of them, full of innocence and mischief, like all children. Paper children, plus a daydreaming dog, and a whimsical bird. The group and the strip were first called L'l Folks; later the name was changed to Peanuts, suggesting something of little consequence. A Gospel option for the "little ones"? Some thought so, going so far as to give religious interpretations to his strips.
The paper creations were analyzed by psychologists from every viewpoint and according to every ideology, even though Schulz protested: "Why can't you let someone just be a cartoonist, without wanting to turn him into a philosopher?".
But it is true that by an exchange of roles between the world of children and that of adults, he mirrored and revealed our anxieties, dreams, fixations and ideals. Never a reference to current events, never a reference to actual facts, but a penetrating insight into human psychology expressing the conflicts that, are always with us.
The author said that Peanuts was popular because people laugh at the misfortunes of others. It is too simple an evaluation, like the five-cent psychoanalysis Lucy pretended to offer. It is an expression of modesty. In fact, we can all see ourselves and our various moods in that gallery of characters: depressed and defeated like Charlie Brown; full of complexes and fanciful like Linus; dreamy and unrealistic like Snoopy; meddling and aggressive like Lucy, sensitive like Woodstock, impetuous like Patty.
It has been said that Schulz revolutionized the world of comics. He was an innovator, but he had two even greater merits: he popularized the comics by enabling everyone, from ordinary people to university dons, to take note of this language and its communicative potential, and he raised it to the level of art and intellectual expression. It could no longer be taken for granted, but now had to be studied in order to understand both its new way of communicating and its young audience. He gained popularity, money and universal renown without ever using vulgarity, thus giving a lesson of moral principle to young cartoonists: psychology and romanticism can create situations that make us smile. A lesson in style that should give cinema and television writers something to reflect on when they are too eager for vulgar humour ... perhaps because it is all they know.
This item 2662 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
