Aw, Schultz
Posted by michelle on 19 Oct 2007 at 09:13 am | Tagged as: books, comics, responses/reviews
NY Times ran a great article about the tortured life of Peanuts’ creator, Charles Schultz. This graphic by Kim Scafuro had me in stitches. A new biography by David Michaelis spurred the article. Michaelis paints a melancholic picture of the beloved cartoonist, seven years post mortem. Reporter Randy Kennedy makes good use of references from Balzac to Toulouse-Lautrec with lots of levity in between. The last line lets Schultz speak for himself and it makes me wonder if Pig Pen wasn’t Schultz walking around with a little, scribbly cloud hovering above him everyday.
Another excerpt?
“But in the case of Mr. Schulz, the dispute seems to bring up a more fundamental question, whether almost two centuries after outlaws like Byron and Chateaubriand linked suffering and creativity, a connection that probably would have baffled Shakespeare or Swift, we still have a deep-seated need to believe in the idea of the tortured artist, to think that the only enduring ones are the really unhappy ones, even if we’re talking about syndicated cartoon-strip artists.” -Randy Kennedy for the NY Times, October 14, 2007
There are two types of people: those that talk the talk and those that walk the walk. People who walk the walk sometimes talk the talk but most times they don’t talk at all, ’cause they walkin’. Now, people who talk the talk, when it comes time for them to walk the walk, you know what they do? They talk people like me into walkin’ for them.”
love is “evil”… “an extremely violent act.”
“it’s not just nothing, there is something,
things are out there and it means something went terribly wrong.”
“a cosmic imbalance” …”in this quite formal sense, love is evil.”
I’ll jump into the pool and I can’t even swim
Howdy,
The Colonel here checking in to see if the comments are still just as consistently retarded as before. Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing much. Alright I’m going back to physical therapy now and then perhaps water aerobics after that. I’ll check back in around 2046 to see if anything’s changed.
dismissed
the Colonel of Truth
A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man
bike the stop summit.
jinx!
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you owe me a coke.
it always seemed to me that there was more than a hint of existential despair in peanuts. sorta depressing, but still dependable, like sisyphus.
my cat’s breath smells like cat food.
Hey, Colonel, you are what’s known in OG Emvergeoning terms as “dismissed.” You add fictional old-fartery to the discourse and your obsession with the bike summit is pathetic.
My two Steve Peraltas.
:)
hey, i think TLC is actually Elvis.
The Fisher King or the Wounded King figures in Arthurian legend as the latest in a line charged with keeping the Holy Grail. Versions of his story vary widely, but he is always wounded in the legs or groin, and incapable of moving on his own. When he is injured, his kingdom suffers as he does, his impotence affecting the fertility of the land and reducing it to a barren Wasteland. Little is left for him to do but fish in the river near his castle Corbenic. Knights travel from many lands to heal the Fisher King but only the chosen can accomplish the feat. This is Percival in the earlier stories; in the later versions Percival is joined by Galahad and Bors.
Confusingly, many works have two wounded Grail Kings who live in the same castle, a father (or grandfather) and son. The more seriously wounded father stays in the castle, sustained by the Grail alone, while the more active son can meet with guests and go fishing. For simplicity, the father will be called the Wounded King, the son the Fisher King where both appear in the remainder of this article.
The sun rises from behind the flowery green hills each morning, and shines happily on the teletubby world all day. It sinks back at the end of each day. Sounds a bit like the real sun, doesn’t it?
But wait, this sun is also a living creature with a congenial personality. Its pretty, blue-eyed baby face giggles when the Teletubbies play happily together and do nice, expected things. It often frowns when a teletubby is separated from the rest or does something unexpected.
That sounds innocent enough. What could be wrong with a happy face framed in the sun’s bright rays? Could this feel-good image be anything more than simple, whimsical fantasy? Nobody would take it seriously, would they?
Probably not. But that’s part of the problem. Children fill their minds with images that represent the new global paradigm, and few take either message or the effects seriously. But leading educators who call themselves “change agents” are dead serious about the visual tactics they use to reach their goal. They seek to mold minds that embrace the new global paradigm (worldview) and reject the old Christian paradigm. “The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students,” admits Dr. Benjamin Bloom, the “Father of Outcome-Based Education, in his book, All Our Children Learning.”7
Bloom and his followers have come a long way. Suddenly earth-centered spirituality – with its sun-gods, nature spirits, and occult rituals from around the world – has become the favored model for the new sustainable communities. This new ideology is reinforced through today’s movies, television, books, and schools. As a result, most children face an irresistible array of pagan images that support the new paradigm. Many already consider paganism far more normal and acceptable than Christianity.
Our political, education, and media leaders want to introduce these influences early — before children become “indoctrinated” with Biblical truths. (See “Clinton’s War on Hate Bans Christian Values”). They know that if parents follow God’s command to “train up your child in the way he should go,” their children might not start school with the “open-mindedness” needed to create social solidarity. Biblical values would stand in the way. Therefore “early childhood education” has moved to the forefront of the “lifelong learning” agenda.
America’s PBS and its British partner, BBC, fit right into the international program for pre-school education. Their words as well as their programs show their desire to introduce small children to new images and “thinking skills so that [they] will be ready for more formal training.”8 In the context of the new education outcomes, that means opening young minds to global beliefs and values. The Teletubby world is their best attempt to touch pre-schoolers with the seeds of the new ideology.
The envisioned global spirituality blends the world’s earth-centered religions into a more universal belief system. Both major and minor civilizations through history – Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Mayan, Celtic, etc. — worshipped sun gods that watched the earth and mingled with humans. These man-made gods shared human characteristics and responded to human activities with favor or anger, according to man’s compliance with their self-centered standards. In other words, men and women had created gods in their own image.9
I, for one, welcome our comment loving overlords.
Khufu ship
Here’s another story about the new biography, this time from the New Yorker. The deathbed scene with his mother is heart-rending. They have a great picture of Schultz as a child, looks just like the outline of Charlie Brown.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/10/22/071022crbo_books_updike?currentPage=all
good piece, thanks for pointing it out, michelle.