Lights, Please...

I had a fairly recent revelation, and I felt I should tell you all.

Now, this is something I never thought I'd say, but I had moment this year while I was watching the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. You know the one: "Christmas Time is Here", they dance a lot, there's a sad Christmas tree. Ol' Chuck is a hardcore Debbie Downer, but then, every one of his classmates is a supreme prick to him, so it's not hard to figure out why. Eventually, Linus gets up on stage, and asks them to turn the lights off, and he says some things about some baby. Then Chuck goes home, defeated by the spirit of commercial Christmas. The Peanuts crew, realizing they've probably destroyed Chuckie B's cred forever, all show up at his place, fix up his tree, and sing at him.

Here was the moment: I really, really dug it.

I never liked Charles Schulz's Peanuts until watching the very touching and by all means classic holiday special this year. This year. I'm almost 30, and I never once gave a single fuck about Peanuts. Not one. I was aware of it. I never got into it though. I never even tried, really. You know all the references, even if you're not a fan, I'm sure. The mean-spirited Lucy likes to pull the football away when Charlie tries to kick it. Snoopy doesn't talk, and has a bird pal (who also doesn't talk). There's a dirty dude, a dude who plays piano, and possibly some budding lesbians. But I think what I never really got, and excuse me if this seems silly, because I feel silly admitting that I never understood this, is that these are all children speaking with adult voices.

Now, I think part of the reason I never cared much for Peanuts was because I grew up in a different generation. One that had its own comic strip of children speaking with adult voices: Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes.

I was (and still am) a Calvin and Hobbes fanatic. No other printed comic strip has ever come close to capturing my adoration or attention ever. Webcomics, well, webcomics are a little different. You can all recall I was a fan of Achewood, and certainly there are other webcomics that are excellent, but I've never gotten into most of them.

It's fair to say that a lot of my love for Calvin and Hobbes comes from the sentimentality of it. I got the first book when I was very young, and collected everything else that was released while Watterson was still writing it. What made Calvin's character so special was that he was obviously extremely intelligent for his age and imaginative. I thought I was like that too. In fact, I'm sure many of the Calvin and Hobbes readers of my generation felt the same way.

But I think where Peanuts differs from Calvin and Hobbes is that while Calvin by and large is a child, and we explore his world through the eyes of a child, Peanuts attempts to take child like characters, and represent them as young adults. Not like 15 year olds, but adults embodied by children. There's a certain maturity to Charlie B and his thug buddies that just kinda yawns out of the newspaper page at you. This is further reinforced by any actual adults never appearing in frame, and, at least in the animated version, never speaking comprehensible words. In fact, the children act enough like adults on their own. Lucy runs a psychiatry booth, for example. Not a lot of real world children are even accredited psychiatrists, let alone able to run their own licensed psychiatry stand.

... Hang on. Let's watch that dance again.

(An aside: Your favorite guy in that dance is probably the kid in the orange shirt. He doesn't have any lines, which is probably good because he doesn't appear in any of the other parts of the cartoon. Honest. Watch the special and try and find him in any scene that doesn't involve him boogieing down) 

This is of course speculation. I'm sure Schulz has totally released all kinds of print about his methods and ideas about the world he was creating. Heck, I vaguely remember reading Watterson talk about it in his 10th Anniversary Calvin and Hobbes Book. Watterson was definitely influenced by Peanuts, I just never really understood why. Or how.

In Watterson's world, however, there are plenty of adult characters. And most of the children we see act like children. Only Calvin has that adult voice thing going on, and even then, most of the shit he gets up to is obviously children-oriented. Either he's out sledding, or making a cardboard box into some kind of machine, or getting into a physical brawl with his imaginary friend (who seems to always win). This, to me, seems naturally more enchanting to a young audience.

I think that's the ultimate difference between the two: Peanuts would draw in a whimsical, but fairly mature audience that long to return to the days of their youth, while Calvin and Hobbes was most successful with the generation of kids who grew up reading it. It's pretty much a lock they'll try to pass it down to their kids in the hopes that they too will consider themselves misunderstood child geniuses.

So, the question is, now that I've had this revelation, should I pick up the entire Peanuts Collection? If I liked the special so much, maybe I'd really get off on the antics of Chuckie B and friends. There's a certain sweetness to what goes on there. Sally and Linus have a pretty special thing going on. I mean, I'm sure they eventually end up together, right? Snoopy probably has some really insightful stuff to say. And so long as they don't start jumping around, biting each others bums and turning into a questionable racial stereotype, it can't be so bad, right? Why don't we all have a look at the first strip together.

... oh. Okay. Mmmmmm... Pass. But I do think I'm gonna make an honest attempt at bringing back 'Good Grief' in 2013. If we survive the apocalypse.