Why is peanuts so depressing

Even Snoopy longs to be a World War I flying ace, but has only a doghouse and the power of his imagination. In the original world of Peanuts , then, it's Snoopy who's most cursed. He, alone, can come up with an existence that isn't the spare, lonely one he exists in — where he can have complex thoughts but never communicate them to those around him — but he, alone, is doomed to realize how trapped he is. For the entirety of its run, Peanuts was the work of one man: Charles Schulz. Unlike many comics, Peanuts was never farmed out to other writers or artists.

It wasn't produced on an assembly line, as, say, Garfield is. It was, for the entirety of its run, the work of Schulz, who filtered his own darkest feelings into the trials and tribulations of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Linus and Lucy, and all the rest. In television interviews, especially late in his life, Schulz appeared to be a warm-hearted, paternal figure, who had a sort of gentle, Midwestern amusement at his own good fortune.

But Schulz included at least a little bit of himself in every character he wrote, and for years, Peanuts hinted at the sorts of personal grievances and frustrations he felt toward other people in his life and in his personal and professional relationships. For instance, as David Michaelis points out in his essential biography of the author, Schulz and Peanuts , when Schulz's first marriage was dissolving, he turned, again and again, to the theme of Lucy railing against Schroeder for caring more about his art than about her — which wasn't hard to read as Schulz's critique of his own wife.

The characters who proved to be the most successful were those who had singular obsessions — sometimes many of them — and great fantasies they could never quite escape, even if they were as seemingly harmless as believing there was a strange pumpkin who visited children every Halloween. For more on this, read Sarah Boxer in the Atlantic. The characters who never took off were either bland everykids like Shermy and Patty not of the Peppermint variety; a different one , or gimmick characters, like Pig-Pen, who lacked personality beyond a couple distinguishing characteristics.

Without something to strive for — or something to struggle against — they simply faded into the woodwork. Schulz might have achieved his childhood dream of becoming a successful cartoonist, but he was always driven by his own feelings of inadequacy. Thus, the longer you read Peanuts , especially its golden age from to , the more obvious it becomes that the strip is an extremely personal work.

It feels, at all times, as if you're looking directly into Schulz's soul to survey his values and cares. There are hints of gentle folksiness throughout that make the more depressing stuff bearable — but it's utter despair that makes the strip so bracing.

That's why Peanuts ' rise in the s was so precipitous. Here was an empty, stark comic strip for an age in which mankind had the capacity to destroy itself — and yet it was laced with a gag sometimes a very dark one, but a gag nonetheless every day.

It was the ultimate Midwestern expression: horror served with a smile. The most popular argument about what ruined Peanuts and "ruined" is a bit of a misnomer, as the strip continued to crank out occasionally great installments right up until the end — in very similar fashion to the way The Simpsons operates nowadays is that the increasing prominence of Snoopy and Woodstock in the early '70s eventually gave way to a cutesiness that Peanuts couldn't overcome.

The best version of this argument I've read appears in this Kotaku piece by Kevin Wong. Wong writes:. As the strip progressed, the beagle hogged more and more of the spotlight in increasingly negative ways. And the intelligence and darkness of the strip, which once made it so distinctive on the comics landscape, was replaced by more mainstream, cutesy humor.

Schulz himself even seemed a little rueful about how introducing other animals for Snoopy to pal around with ruined his relationships with the kids. The Atlantic's Boxer found a quote from the artist to this effect:.

There's a grain of truth to all of this. I've always said marks the fall-off point for Peanuts because that year's output contains some of my favorite strips of the whole run, but already contains some of the flaws that would become more apparent in the years ahead.

It's also the year before Snoopy's desert-bound brother, Spike whom I consider the weakest major character in the strip , made his debut. But is also the year Schulz resolved a major conflict with his syndicator, which granted him complete control over the creative content and licensing of Peanuts.

Up until that point, he could be overruled. From then on, he was completely in charge. The comic immediately lost some of its weightiness, now that he no longer faced a constant fight. This ties into the much more insidious reason fans can easily blame Snoopy and Woodstock for the perceived decline of Peanuts : They were by far the easiest characters to sell. Unlike Calvin and Hobbes 's Bill Watterson, who railed against merchandising and insisted that it cheapened comics' hold on the reader's imagination, Schulz had few qualms about signing over his characters to appear on all manner of products.

The subsequent licensing deals weren't always bad. The many, many TV specials featuring Peanuts characters which were often taken directly from Schulz's strips by the man himself count as some of the best television programs ever made — including A Charlie Brown Christmas , which turns 50 next month. While the four feature films made with Schulz's input were more hit-or-miss, Snoopy Come Home nicely captures the melancholy ruefulness of the comic strip, especially in its songs.

Their meditative, downbeat tone resonated with my understanding of life. They are comic strips full of the vulnerabilities of childhood: what satisfactions they offer us are subtle and hard-won — such as those of friendship. In the nearly 18, strips that Schulz drew over 50 years of his career , adults almost never appear, and when they do they are abstracted as legs.

In the animated films, on the rare occasions when they are permitted to speak, they honk unintelligibly in the background like geese. So much for the charms of adulthood. At its peak, Peanuts was syndicated in 75 countries, translated into 21 languages, and had a notional total readership of million. Red Baron Credit: Peanuts. Schulz died in , but his currency evidently lives on. If only Charlie and Co. Detail of Peanuts Who was its creator?

Schulz seems to have been Protestant to the core, in the old-fashioned sense. He loved hockey and ice skating so much that when he moved to California later in life he built a skating arena in his town.

For a prophet of self-doubt, he formulated and drew his strips with remarkable decisiveness , preferring to put ink directly to paper as he went.

Oh, and when he was young he had a dog called Spike who became the immortal god Snoopy. Blessed be his name. So we have an unremarkable-remarkable man, surely the most intriguing sort. The still waters of the Peanuts comic strips run deep. Charlie Brown is my wishy-washy and insecure side. Lucy is my smart alec side. Linus is my more curious and thoughtful side. Although he came from a Christian religious background, and in some ways identified as a Christian, Schulz also seems to have had existentialist and humanist leanings worthy of Jean-Paul Sartre or Samuel Beckett.

The philosophy of existentialism suggests that we live in an empty universe and have no choice but to strive to make sense out of it. Try again, fail again, fail better, says Beckett. Now Schultz is just being mean.

Now I just feel sad… Thanks… I guess…. Why Snoopy? I have quit Doctor Who… Nice… Post…………….. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email.

Notify me of new posts via email. I Am the Flipping Walrus! Skip to content. Home So what is this site anyway? Charles Schultz remained ludicrously funny for 50 years, which is pretty amazing.