What's the Big Deal About Peanuts?
by Gary Scott Beatty
gary@comicartistsdirect.com.
The world is mourning the loss of Charles Schultz, creator and sole writer/illustrator of the Peanuts comic strip. Younger readers might be a little confused by the outpouring of affection for these characters and this cartoonist. It takes a certain historical perspective to understand how fresh and new Peanuts was in the 1960s, when slapstick family strips, romance and adventure strips dominated newspaper comic pages.
Schultz was the first strip writer I remember addressing the human condition. His characters constantly questioned their place in the universe and their station among friends. In a gentle way, they asked timeless questions and came to profound conclusions. Pretty cosmic for a group of silly kids.
But the 1960s were a cosmic time. Hippies, black rights activists and feminists were asking the same questions as the Peanuts gang, often with tragic consequences - students were shot at Kent State University, the Black Panthers were using violence as a tool, and bra burnings, regardless of the jokes they elicited from males, were angry protests. Most wanted to get together but few knew how. The Russians were beating us into space. This new entertainment called television was delivering shows with families from a decade past. It was a time of great love, great hate and great misunderstandings. I remember asking my mom about some race riot when I was six years old and being very confused when this pantheon of wisdom declared, "Honey, I don't know." It was a time of awesome societal change. And it was scary as hell.
Enter Charles "Sparky" Schultz, with his gentle children talking, talking, talking. Every day they tried to figure out their world and their place in it. They thought global, but their answers were always local. Friendship starts with the person standing next to you. World peace cannot be achieved by those who cannot get along with their own neighbors. Peace of mind is a simple, happy thing. And self esteem, Charlie Brown, is internal - stop looking for the world to tell you how valuable you are. You know. You've always known.
Goodbye, Mr. Schultz. I can't think of one artist in my lifetime who had a bigger impact on the way we think. Thank you.
All artwork is copyright © 2005 by its respective artists and publishers.