Peanuts/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

{{work}}

* Why does Charlie Brown keep trying to punt the football when Lucy's holding it, if he knows she's going to pull it out of the way? And why DOES everyone in ''It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown'' blame Charlie for losing the Homecoming game when it was all ''Lucy's'' fault?

** Because Charlie Brown is the [[Butt Monkey]]. If he didn't get gimped continuously, the universe he inhabits would implode into a black hole.

****** You're right; he probably wasn't, and any message a reader takes from it is most likely their own interpretation than something the author intended. But still, it is about faith. Just like it is about a kid, even if it wasn't intended as a message about kids.

****** It's also about futility. Linus is the only one who never realizes his own futility - that the Great Pumpkin doesn't exist.

** Sorry, boys. [[Word of God]] says it is not about faith and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong and anything else is [[Misaimed Fandom]]. I heard Albert Einstein said, "God doesn't play dice", but Richard Dawkins says Albert Einstein didn't believe in a personal god. So why would he say God doesn't play dice? I don't know, that's his error for poor wording.

*** Albert Einstein was almost certainly a pantheist, who see God as being equivalent to the Universe. As such pantheists may use the term God and yet do not believe in a personal God. The term "God" to them can be replaced with "the universe" or "nature". This is made quite clear in Einstein's writings.

** It's not sadism. It's life. Our world has many nice, happy, friendly Everymen who are going to end up with bad luck and their faces rubbed in the dirt. Charlie Brown is the ultimate personification of that trope, with the entire friggin' universe in a conspiracy to make his life as miserable as possible. Does he give up? No! Sure, he may give a depressed monologue or two, complete with a "I can't stand it!", but in the end he always gets up and tries again. Shultz is making a quiet plea on the benefits of optimism and determination here. Charlie Brown has the worst luck imaginable, but due to his optimism and friendly nature, he's always "Good ol' Charlie Brown" to everybody he knows. No matter what life throws at you, if you keep a positive attitude, you'll get by. That's the lesson of Charlie Brown.

** Amen!

* Regarding the Halloween special-I know Charlie Brown is supposed to be a [[Butt Monkey]] and all, but what kind of bastard gives a little kid a rock on Halloween?

** People who are secretly Schadenfreudists? Or maybe they're mixing the holiday with April Fools' by giving out rocks randomly in their candy output.

** [[Rule of Funny|Because it's funny]].

* I for the life of me can not fathom why no one has brought this up yet, but ''why the hell does everyone hate Charlie Brown so much?'' Did he do some kind of horrible thing that tarnished his reputation, or is it just that [[Kids Are Cruel]]?

** If you look at the first few years of Peanuts, Charlie Brown could be a real [[Jerkass]] and smart alec sometimes, not to mention causing trouble for other through his obliviousness. Consider [http://comics.com/peanuts/1953/02/09 this], [http://comics.com/peanuts/1952/02/13 this], [http://comics.com/peanuts/1952/02/26 this], [http://comics.com/peanuts/1952/03/27 this] and [http://comics.com/peanuts/1952/03/22 this] and these are not even the worst examples. None of the kids were perfect, and Charlie certainly wasn't an innocent target himself.

** He's sympathetic, relate able, never gives up (even when he should) and you want him to succeed. But on on the other hand, he's also a navel-gazing chronic depressive who manages to be a wet blanket in social situations. I get the feeling that half of Charlie Brown's failures occur because he expects them to, despite the veneer of optimism he puts on. That doesn't excuse the level of jerkassery he gets from Lucy and the adults in the neighborhood, though. Also, he's the "drama" sort of person that will turn any conversation into one about their problems and how awful their life is while tuning out anything else. The point being, he's a nice guy and he doesn't deserve most of what he gets but you can see how you'd get sick of him sometimes even if he were one of your friends. What's really odd is that the two characters ''supposed'' to be closest to him (Linus and Snoopy) tend to treat him either callously (Linus doesn't go out of his way to be mean but also doesn't soften his opinions or the facts no matter how much he knows they'll hurt Charlie Brown) or indifferently (Snoopy doesn't give Charlie Brown much reciprocation for all the kindness Charlie Brown gives him) - and arguably Peppermint Patty and Marcy are the two characters in the cast who treat Charlie Brown with the most genuine affection and closeness (their introduction marked a definite shift in the strip to slightly more positive) but this isn't ever really commented on or acknowledged.

** It's widely acknowledged that in the strip's glory years, it was amazingly dark. Someone once said that the fourth panel of almost any 60s-era Charlie Brown strip is a perfect example of nihilism. Everyone hates Charlie Brown because Life hates Charlie Brown. He's the ultimate [[Butt Monkey]].

* Is "Schroeder" Schroeder's last name or first name? He could be trying to act like Beethoven or something and have everyone call him by his last name.

** Also schroeder was introduced when he was a Baby and couldnt speak. so maybe it is just the bell tag that said schroeder.

** There was one comic strip in which someone on the radio called him "Mr. Schroeder". It could be argued he only gave the radio station his first name, but there is actually a Peanuts [http://fivecentsplease.org/dpb/peantfaq.txt FAQ] that claims its his last name. BTW, you guys should really check this place out for answers. Great website.

* If Lucy annoys him so much, why can't Schroeder just lock the door so that she can't get in?

** A lot of Schultz's characters tended to fade in and out. Patty, Frieda and Violet kind of disappeared after a while, too (although I think Patty might've been ousted when Peppermint Patty became popular so people wouldn't be confused by two Pattys).

** I can understand that, since Peanuts was a long running comic strip, but sometimes it just seems to me that the reason Shermy was replaced with Franklin was because the strip needed a [[Token Minority|black guy]].

** Besides, Franklin didn't really appear all that often, either.

 

** I think someone mentioned that he just had very, very fine hair. (I prefer the bald theory, myself. And what's wrong with that for a kid?)

** Charles Schulz is supposed to have explained at one point that Charlie Brown has very fair hair and his father (who is, as we know a barber) keeps it cut ''very'' short.

* Here's something that I just can't get out of my head ... where do Snoopy and the birds keep buying weapons? And don't tell me they're all fake..there's a mid-80s sequence where Snoopy's playing French Foreign Legion with the birds, and has a cannon. And uses it..

** I haven't seen that one, but I'm gonna be guessing that it's his imagination, and in reality nothing was shot out of it. Unless Charlie Brown comes out and complains that his window was broken or something?