Le maudit Mo D.

lucy was a stone-cold bitch

The Old Gray Lady has been running frequent articles about the release of the new Charles Schultz biography, which apparently reveals that the man behind ultra-depressed/Borderine personality-disordered 8-year-olds was himself a suffering, isolated, sad artiste. Now the Schultz family is upset because this book portrays Dear Old Dad as some kind of Van Gogh/Plathian black-clad bundle of depression.

I had my fair share of Peanuts swag. Anyone remember the Peanuts Glass Tumbler Collection that McDonald's included with their Happy Meals circa 1981? We had those, and we used them for a bloody long time.

The Peanuts characters are bundles of pathologies:

BORDERLINE: LUCY. Lucy took joy in the suffering of others and connived her way into perpetrating repeat attacks on Charlie Brown's dignity and self-worth.
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME: CHARLIE BROWN. Charlie Brown was treated like dirt by his peers and tended to sympathize with their opinion. The whole football thing with Lucy--over and over he kept convincing himself that he could trust her--proved that he identified with his abuser.
DELUSIONAL/ATTACHMENT DISORDER: LINUS. Still carrying around that blanky and believing that the Great Pumpkin is going to appear despite evidence to the contrary. Also, some sibling shit with Lucy, for sure.
PARENTAL NEGLECT: PIGPEN. No adult around to bathe him.
AUTISTIC SAVANT: SCHROEDER. Brilliant at piano but unable to form meaningful interpersonal relationships.
SLURRED SPEECH: MISS OTHMAR. Hwa hwa! Hwa hwa hwa HWA!
NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER: PEPPERMINT PATTY. And what's up with that Gertrude/Alice dynamic she's got going with her girlfriend Marcie? Marcie needs to find a more loving and emotionally generous girlfriend instead of wallowing around that tyrant P. P.

Hell, the only normal characters are the animals. Snoopy is confident and has a rich inner life and despite his small stature, Woodstock is able to rise above Snoopy's occasional arrogance and put him in his place.

I have no problem believing that Charles Schultz wasn't exactly a bundle of funzies. Peanuts, like a lot of midcentury so-called children's literature, is F-ed up if you think about it long enough.

Posted by Zerd at October 14, 2007 12:36 PM