Weekly Peanuts: Be my Valentine, Charlie Brown!
A friend on Twitter had the wonderful idea that I should take time on this new page to throw out a weekly Peanuts strip with some commentary.
I love it. Let’s do it!
If you read Peanuts growing up or watched any of the TV specials, one constant in your memory is likely Charlie Brown waiting to receive a Valentine’s Day card.
Of course, this annual occurrence had plenty of good lessons for us as kids. We’re not alone in our difficulties. Be mindful of those who may feel alone around us and do what we can to let them know we care. Be thankful for Valentine’s we do receive, whether they’re the ones we’d hoped for or not.
But on one level or another, we all identified with Charlie Brown’s dilemma. There was someone’s attention that we were dying for and just never seemed to get it. It might be someone we new personally or someone we wish we knew. But there was someone out there who wasn’t noticing us and could put a cloud over the whole event. In fact, there is a whole niche industry for those who elect to abandon Valentine’s Day altogether!
Charles Schulz, the cartoonist behind Peanuts, new these feelings all too well. He first love had bypassed him to marry a mutual friend. His first marriage fell apart in despair. The anguish in Charlie Brown’s longing for the “Little Red-haired Girl” was nothing if not biographical. We identified with Charlie Brown because there was a very real and honest person behind him.
Ben Saunders of the University of Oregon has done some great scholarship on this topic of unrequited love in Peanuts. His chapter in The Comics of Charles Schulz: The Good Grief of Modern Life, breaks new ground in studying Schulz. Saunders points out that Schulz displayed “an acute sensitivity to the paradoxical notion that desire must be frustrated in order to be sustained.” In Charlie Brown’s suffering we find that “a measure of misery is necessary for the concept of happiness to be meaningful.” And since Charlie Brown, as real as he might feel to readers, is a cartoon character, he can carry that eternal burden of misery and frustration for us (or with us) again and again, like Wile E. Coyote following off the cliff for the hundredth time only to jump back up again.
Of course, all of this theorizing is little solace to poor Charlie Brown waiting at the mailbox for the Valentine’s cards that seem never to arrive. Good grief, indeed!
So as another Valentine’s Day comes around, whether it is the one you hoped for or not, know that we’re not in this alone.
And if all else fails, fire up A Charlie Brown Valentine for some old fashioned commiseration and a good laugh!
