The Real Charlie Brown

Yes - a very revealing look into the true life of the man behind the dog. Apparently all those years as a child while I curled up reading the Peanuts strip religiously I was being exposed to the innermost demons of a very depressed man.

His hypocrisies were life-sized, his selfishness and tendency to withhold common among midwestern men then and now.

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What?

ColoradoGuy said:

Hey--I'm from the Midwest. What's this "selfishness and tendency to withhold" thing.

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You refuse to buy vaccum cleaners from door-to-door salesmen?

I had an interesting experience this week. I'm a preschool teacher and have a class of young 3 year-old children. For the past week or so, one of my students had become progressively more negative in his talking and in his behavior. Even his countenance has become more negatively pronounced.

During this period he has shared tidbits he has picked up from watching various Charlie Brown movies; the halloween program and several others.
He has taken to yelling as loud and he can the word "No" in response to different activities.

Thursday, when asked to pick up his toys and prepare to go eat lunch, he began yelling "No", he did not want to put up his toys. When it was time to transition from the room to the lunchroom area, I took his toys and put them on the shelf. In response, he screamed as loud and ferouciously as he possibly could, "I'm going to KILL you!".

While discussing the incident with his mother, she speculated that there was a possibility that he had picked up his yelling no and the "I'm going to KILL you" messages from Peanuts. His mom said that Lucy used that kind of language in the program.

I thought it was an interesting coincidence in light of what I have been reading of "the dark side" of Peanuts.

We had similar feelings after playing the Great Pumpkin cartoon this past Halloween. My husband heard about this on NPR and after watching the movie for only a few minutes, he turned it off. Both of us saw Charlie Brown as the local whipping post. Most of the other children were insulting and rude, (including Snoopy). I knew there was a reason why the only Peanuts character I liked was Woodstock.

What about Marcie and Linus?

Turkey Lurkey said:

Most of the other children were insulting and rude, (including Snoopy). I knew there was a reason why the only Peanuts character I liked was Woodstock.

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Um...yeah, that's the point. The character, Charlie Brown, gets discouraged, picked on, bullied, etc., and yet never lies down on the ground for long. Or doesn't try again.

And Woodstock can be a cruel little bastid, when he wants to be.

robeiae said:

What about Marcie and Linus?

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Yes, they were nice.

Rllgthunder said:

Um...yeah, that's the point. The character, Charlie Brown, gets discouraged, picked on, bullied, etc., and yet never lies down on the ground for long. Or doesn't try again.

And Woodstock can be a cruel little bastid, when he wants to be.

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And still continued to interact with those who continually picked on him.

I only remember Woodstock going after Snoopy, and personally, I would have neutered that dog a LONG time ago!

I hope to god after I'm dead nobody decides they're going to attribute my life's work to all my inner demons and faults, as if they know even the first thing about me. As if they could judge the inner workings of my heart.

My hometown is where Schultz spent the majority of his life. My mom used to work for him. He was a nice guy, and he did a lot of great stuff for the community. I think he would want to be remembered as a nice guy. I grew up on Peanuts (the strip, not the videos, which I think are substantially different), and there's nothing wrong with me.

Well, nothing substantial, anyway.

Jonightshade,

I appreciate your post. My no means was I attempting to malign Shultz or Peanuts. I loved them as a child and still enjoy reading them.

With young children, just about anything they watch can affect their behavior. One year, we had to send letters home to the parents of our students because they were slamming each other into the walls and down onto the ground while they sang "Bad boys, bad boys what you gonna do when they come for you". Another time, it was the Ninja Turtles that inspired some aggressive behavior that needed intervention.

As I said in my earlier post, "I'll kill you" was the objectionable phrase that Lucy uses in the cartoon. When my brothers and I were young, we said we were going to "kill you" all the time. The other phrase was "mertilize". These phrases we picked up from the Three Stooges which are classic for them.

Definately, there is something affecting my little student in a negative way. It could well be mom and dad are having problems. I don't know, it just seem to coincide with his new found interest in these movies.

kid

robeiae said:

What about Marcie and Linus?

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My favorite was Pigpen. Sadly, Schulz stopped using Pigpen in the strip long before he died.

I actually met Charles Schulz at a writers' convention about ten years ago. He was polite and amusing, suffered from tremors (Parkinson's, I think), but still drew his strip himself, refusing always to let anyone else do it. He drew a big picture of Snoopy for a kind of door prize (I didn't win it).

He would hardly be the first humorist, in whatever medium, to suffer from depression, and have other detractive foibles. What matters now that he's dead is his work. Which is the way it should be.

Faulkner was a drunkard; Hemingway, too. Bertolt Brecht was, by all accounts, an absolute horror as a person. Ezra Pound was virulently anti-semitic, H. P. Lovecraft virulently racist.

The work remains.

caw

It was sad watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" with my family again this year.

I'm a sophomore home from college, and my family (parents and an older sister) have watched that movie every holiday season since I can remember. It was just interesting-- the conversations we were having as a family surrounding the film were a lot different than they had been in past years.