On a shelf in the slanty room under the stairs, next to her college textbooks, my mother kept a stash of inexpensive Peanuts paperbacks — dozens of them, which reprinted the newspaper strips, perhaps on a yearly basis, maybe more frequently.
I spent many a summer afternoon reading through those books, and I remember sorting the books in chronological order and noticing how the drawing style changed over the years. I remember noticing that Shermy and Patty (not *Peppermint* Patty — a different character) got relegated into background characters over the years, and how Snoopy, who started out spending most of his time on all fours, became gradually more and more human.
A key thesis of this Kotaku article is that as the strip centered on Snoopy and his human-like behavior (he took on the role of wise mentor to Woodstock, more conventional brother to Spike, serial victim of of the Cat Next Door), that left less room for Shultz to explore the childhood angst that made Charlie Brown such an iconic figure.
Yes, the movie will make a lot of money. And yes, it will likely put Charlie Brown and his friends back on the pop culture landscape, at least temporarily. But to be truly successful, it needs to have the thoughtfulness and sincerity that these characters were originally imbued with. Less Woodstock, more Linus. Less Snoopy, more Marcie. It needs to have a little darkness and a little sadness to balance with the silliness. Because as Schulz proved over 60 years ago, it’s the combination that will make the audiences laugh — and cry — even harder. —Kotaku
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At the risk of defending my childhood hero, allow me to comment. Snoopy was the fun one of the Peanuts gang, but he got increasing play over time because Charles Schulz liked drawing him. And he was no interloper; Snoopy’s debut came within days of Charlie Brown’s introduction in late 1950, before a single murmur of self-doubt uttered forth from his master’s lips. From the very beginning, Snoopy investigated our “try things on for size” imagination, the part of our childhood when we pretended to be something we aren’t yet, just to see how it fits. He became a balance to Charlie Brown’s introspective angst, not in a bad way, but in the innocent way that hero-worshipping imitation helps form our true personality. In many ways, he’s more Sparky than most of the other one-faceted characters in Peanuts; Charlie Brown was a self portrait, but Snoopy gave him depth and hope.
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I’ll give you another anecdote: the famous musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” exists in two versions, one from the late sixties and one from the late nineties. The most obvious difference is that Original Patty is the sixth character in the original and Sally Brown is the sixth character in the revival, but the tone is completely different: the original focuses more on childhood whimsy and gentle irony, because that’s where the focus and public perception of the franchise was back in its heyday; in the nineties, the darker and more grotesque elements were the focus. Lucy was a bitch, Sally Brown was aggressively stupid, Schroeder flew into rages at Lucy’s pettiness, Linus was insufferable. All of these are true to the characters, but more to the characters as forty years of pop culture prominence had presented them than as they were in their infancy “in the moment.”
In high school in the 80s, I was the
stage managerproducer for the 60s version… about five years ago, my kids played Linus and Peppermint Patty in the updated version (at Stage Right). Original Patty had very little to do or distinguish herself; with Sally so prominent in the revision, Linus has more complexity — even when Sally and Linus are not playing up their relationship, we’re aware of Linus’s vulnerability as the flustered object of her affection, rather than the intellectual pontificator we see in “A Book Report on Peter Rabbit.” Plus, Sally’s plucky and clueless optimism is a good foil to Charlie Brown’s crippling self-awareness.