Peanuts: Search and Destroy

i recall a long and rather heated discussion on the now-gone TCJ message board about what message schulz was trying to convey with that one

whoa! i don't remember that one... yeah that is messed up.

found this:

http://www.thesneeze.com/art/franklin/letter.jpg

back story here: http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000485.php

Wow.

Well, Schulz wasn't just pointing out that fact; he had Patty use it to discourage Franklin from practicing hockey. "There's hardly any Black NHL players, Franklin, so give up" was how I interpreted it.

i think i come down on the side of the point being 'peppermint patty is being a jerk,' though that is maybe the single jerkiest thing i have ever seen a peanuts character say.

i wrote a fan letter to schulz in the early '90s but got a form letter back; now i'm kinda wondering if i'd have gotten a response if i'd written something to piss him off!

that is all pretty depressing, guilty lols at the little picture of Snoopy typing up defensive responses to people who've accused him of racism that appears at the bottom of the letter, though

i'm seeing it as a clumsy and tasteless punchline that's somewhat uncharacteristic for schulz (and p. patty).

"number one snoopy place".

Later on, when Franklin was introduced into the strip, the little black kid—I could have put him in long before that, but for other reasons, I didn't. I didn't want to intrude upon the work of others, so I held off on that. But I finally put Franklin in, and there was one strip where Charlie Brown and Franklin had been playing on the beach, and Franklin said, "Well, it's been nice being with you, come on over to my house some time." Again, they didn't like that. Another editor protested once when Franklin was sitting in the same row of school desks with Peppermint Patty, and said, "We have enough trouble here in the South without you showing the kids together in school." But I never paid any attention to those things, and I remember telling Larry at the time about Franklin—he wanted me to change it, and we talked about it for a long while on the phone, and I finally sighed and said, "Well, Larry, let's put it this way: Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit. How's that?" So that's the way that ended. But I've never done much with Franklin, because I don't do race things. I'm not an expert on race, I don't know what it's like to grow up as a little black boy, and I don't think you should draw things unless you really understand them, unless you're just out to stir things up or to try to teach people different things. I'm not in this business to instruct; I'm just in it to be funny. Now and then I may instruct a few things, but I'm not out to grind a lot of axes. Let somebody else do it who's an expert on that, not me.

also, like, ppl have made the point that Franklin was just introduced and one of the gang with no set-up, no big political statement, no nothing; which is pretty radical in 1968, considering, as this piece points out, this is the stuff Dennis the Menace was running two years AFTER franklin was introduced

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/files/2008/11/27/dennis.jpg

I have to say, I didn't know much (any) of Franklin's backstory, either as a character or in Schulz' introduction/incorporation of him into the strip. The hockey strip stuck out in my memory largely because Franklin seemed to be the butt of the joke. But based on how he was introduced, and Schulz' threatening to quit, I can see that strip now as an awkward attempt to say the opposite of how it comes off.

It's totally in character for Peppermint Patty to be that much of a jerk. (It would be for Lucy too, but Lucy's about honing in on people's insecurities; Patty is more accidentally insensitive when aiming to drop truths on people.)

xxp yeah that's the odd thing about this strip. are there any others where the fact of franklin being black is explicitly mentioned?

most unsettling thing about franklin's first appearance is the casual vietnam reference imo:

http://museumofuncutfunk.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Franklin-5.gif

he was in a war, too, but i don't know which one.

pretty definitive third panel there.

There does seem like a lot of "code" with Franklin's first appearances:

http://museumofuncutfunk.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/pe681016.gif

http://mashable.com/2014/11/26/franklin-black-peanuts-character-history/

http://gothamist.com/2015/10/30/lucy_had_a_lumpy_head.php

Kathie Lee and Woodstock speak the same dialect anyway.

In the behind-the-scenes package, Kathy Lee actually said "Why do I have to be Woodstock? He doesn't talk!" and I kept thinking "you have all the pieces, now put them together"

http://i.imgur.com/WXSQMqP.jpg

I can say, without reservation, that those are the most frightening costumes I have seen or will see this Halloween season. What the everloving fuck were they thinking.

it reminds me of that creepy snl sketch where brendan fraser is charlie brown and gets a severe head injury
http://www.oocities.org/sunsetstrip/disco/6857/brown4.jpg

Holy Jesus

http://c300221.r21.cf1.rackcdn.com/alien-from-talosian-star-trek-1360238035_b.jpg

is there anybody at all that wants to see this movie? do kids even know who the Peanuts gang are these days (apart from those kids of ILX0rs that are way into the Fantagraphics reprints)?

Swear to God, if there's a fart joke in this movie...

... you will see it multiple times in the theater?

this film seems destined to satisfy noone

http://www.bbkingblues.com/inc/artists/606-3.jpg

He certainly looks satisfied.

Mrs. Brown, you've got a lovely daughter.

Hell, PN even looks like one of the new Peanuts.

I got some piece of spam about the movie that blurbed "the Peanuts gang in their FIRST big-screen outing" blah blah...

If it happened before Star Wars, it didn't happen.

If it's genuinely in the spirit of the strip and/or the original movies and animated specials, I'd give it a shot. I'm extremely wary, though (because, yes, potential for farts, and also Black Eyed Peas songs or whatever). And while I love Peanuts, I'm totally in agreement that owning the rights to a 50+ year old property doesn't mean that there's any real reason to adapt it to another medium at this point or that there's any real market for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2AS51xJ9iE

im not sure i trust the favorable reviews that have come out, but this is an interesting look at how they worked to keep the imagery in line with schultz's drawings as possible (keeping the motion lines, etc.) http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/03/movies/08the-peanuts-movie-scene.html

I guess I should clarify: "If it's genuinely in the spirit of the strip and/or the pre-'80s original movies and animated specials, I'd give it a shot."

^^ WHY IS CHARLIE BROWN SMILING AT THE END OF THAT FOOTBALL CLIP?

Because he just farted, beat you all to it.

i would be stunned if they can even muster the spirit of the metlife commercials, but i've been wrong before

There's gonna be turf warfare with the Family Circus clan iirc

For people who get their newspaper comics fix online, comics.com now offers "Peanuts Begins," really early strips, separate from the more recent Peanuts strips.

Maybe I posted these before, but Schultz did some Peanuts ads for the Ford Falcon in the early '60s...

http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/fordad.jpg

https://triviahappy.com/images/articles/03182014charliead.jpg

http://www.grayflannelsuit.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/1963-ford-falcon-peanuts-ad-charlie-brown-lucy.jpg

https://media2.wnyc.org/i/620/372/l/80/1/charlie_brown_and_lucy_ford_falcon.jpg

The Falcon campaign also boasted the first Peanuts animations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EHtX2FEVyA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u43ExlkXmQs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x58TMNiQ_5Y

Cool. I'm always interested in ancillary Peanuts stuff. Hopefully, since there's only one more Fantagraphics reprint still to be issued, they'll compile a book of extras to fill out a twelfth box set.

Okay, so it appears that two of Schulz's sons are the writers and Paul Feig is a producer and there's no obnoxious stunt voice casting from what I can tell. Aside from a Meghan Trainor song and a Flo Rida song (which I hope good sense will relegate to the end credits), nothing is jumping out as glaringly troublesome. Maybe this will be okay?

Speaking of the Fanta reprints, the 1995-1998 slipcase came out last week. I'm determined to complete the collection at this point, but this is, eh, not exactly top-shelf material. If it needs to be said.

i'm cautiously excited about this but sort of bracing myself bcz i'm not really 100 percent convinced that anyone but schulz can write peanuts dialogue.

^^ WHY IS CHARLIE BROWN SMILING AT THE END OF THAT FOOTBALL CLIP?

― pplains, Tuesday, 3 November 2015 20:48 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

I read an interview with Feig that sounded very promising.