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The Comfort Zone

When the subject of comic strips comes up in conversation, and I espouse an undying love for Peanuts, invariably someone will say, “I never liked Peanuts… it’s just not funny.”

I usually then burst into a rant about how it’s not about the jokes—it’s about loss and sadness and longing and humiliation and the beauty of it all.  It’s a mess of words that is usually met with a look that translates as “Give me a break.  This is Snoopy we’re talking about.”

Jonathan Franzen just published a story in the New Yorker entitled The Comfort Zone: Growing Up with Charlie Brown that I will defer Peanuts naysayers to from now on.

In the true-life account, Franzen illustrates how, perhaps even unknowingly, Peanuts played an integral role in his growing up. And he, too, has had his love of the strip questioned.  He points the blame at the commercialization of the characters in later years that overshadowed Schulz’s bittersweet message. 

What first made Peanuts Peanuts was cruelty and failure, and yet every ‘Peanuts’ greeting card and tchotchke and blimp had to feature somebody’s sweet, crumpled smile.

He knows that those who question his fandom simply didn’t make the same connection with the strip during their childhood—at least, not enough to look past the lunchboxes and greeting cards.  To me, Peanuts was as much a part of my childhood as any of my real friends or family.  Charlie Brown was a kindred spirit.  I thought I was Charlie Brown.  There was a realness and a magic to it that other cartoons didn’t have, which is perhaps why I never questioned the strip’s funniness.  I read Peanuts to absorb myself in its world; I didn’t read it for the jokes.

Franzen points out a strip that says it all:

In another archetypal Peanuts strip, Violet and Patty are abusing Charlie Brown in vicious stereo: “go on home! we don’t want you around here!” As he trudges away with his eyes on the ground, Violet remarks, “It’s a strange thing about Charlie Brown. You almost never see him laugh.”