On Being Traumatized By Charlie Brown Comics
I read many, many Charlie Brown comic books as a child; reading them was a sustained exercise in masochism. I hated them, each and every single page, but I kept on reading, from cover to cover. I would finish one, convinced of the utter, vicious, gratuitous cruelty of the world and its residents, and then, I would go get another one. Sometimes I would take one out on loan from a local library; sometimes I would borrow one from a friend. (Our family’s budget did not permit too many book purchases, but we were enthusiastic patrons of libraries, public and private.) I suspect this was because I could not shake off the dominant notion that comic books were supposed to be entertaining fun, even as my reading experience was providing numerous indicators that these comic books and their characters were anything but. That many of the cartoon strips I read and watched–like the Tom and Jerry series–were often such exercises in violent cruelty was only slowly becoming apparent to me.
The problem, of course, was that the Charlie Brown comics were not remotely escapist; they provided no bulwark of comfort against the outside world. They merely served to provide reminders of the schoolyard and its denizens, of which and whom I had had enough of during my awkwardly spent days. Witnessing the trials and travails of Charlie Brown provided no comfort, no solidarity; instead, I was merely reminded that indeed, the world was just as cruel as I imagined it to be, that even comic books had to bow down, tone down their silly frivolousness, and acknowledge this incontrovertible fact about it. So relentlessly downbeat were the Charlie Brown comics, so relentlessly downcast its central character, that I could not even bring myself to experience any solidarity or empathy with him. I had had the wind knocked out of me; I was Charlie Brown, lying flat on his back, staring up at the sky, wondering how he could have let himself fall for Lucy’s football trick all over again.
As the reader might have surmised, I have returned to this excavation of my childhood experiences because my daughter has just encountered Peanuts for the first time. Truth be told, I was not sold on the idea of her watching the DVD of A Boy Named Charlie Brown and only agreed with some reluctance to let her do so. Clearly, childhood scars run deep. My only reassurance was that this being a Hollywood production, it would not dare entertain a truly unhappy ending. This intuition was confirmed:
The film was partly based on a series of Peanuts comic strips originally published in newspapers in 1966. That story had a much different ending: Charlie Brown was eliminated in his class spelling bee right away for misspelling the word maze (“M–A–Y–S” while thinking of baseball legend Willie Mays), thus confirming Violet’s prediction that he would make a fool of himself. Charlie Brown then screams at his teacher in frustration, causing him to be sent to the principal’s office.
I am writing this post as my daughter watches the DVD; thus far, she has expressed some dismay at the meanness of Charlie’s friends but also commented on how much she likes Snoopy; I look forward to a full debrief when the movie is over.
Originally published at samirchopra.com on March 12, 2017 under the same title.