"You Were A Good Man, Charles Schulz"

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Tuesday 22 February 2000

I was 12 years old when I discovered the ending to Citizen Kane. I wasn't happy about it. Far from it. I'd stumbled across the secret of Rosebud quite by accident in a comic strip. A girl taunts a round-faced boy with her superior knowledge of popular culture. "Have you seen Citizen Kane yet?'' she asks, all fake innocence. "No'' comes the reply.

"Rosebud was his sled,'' she announces, and walks away. In the final panel, the boy is seen clutching his head: "Aaaargh!''

For ages, I puzzled over the meaning of the word sled, not realising it was a simple Americanisation. For years, I tried not to remember that strip.

I was aware, even at that precocious age, that I would almost certainly see Citizen Kane one day. But the cryptic element of the phrase made the strip unusually poignant to me. I never managed to forget the ending. Lucy had ruined it for me as well as Charlie Brown, for, of course, the round-faced little boy was Peanuts' central character, and his tormentor was that arch-cynic among children, Lucy Van Pelt.

It later puzzled me that the strip's creator, Charles Sparky Schulz, could have been so mean, to give away an ending to a classic film for the sake of a punch line. It seemed uncharacteristic of the strip's general tone - a generally comforting, comfortable world despite all the characters' many concerns and traumas. It was a strip where no adults were ever allowed to intrude. It wasn't a strip designed to destabilise the reader, despite the many heady claims made for it later by social commentators.

A long time afterwards I learned that there had been a storm of protest over that simple, four-panel strip. Clearly, I wasn't the only one to take Peanuts seriously.

IT isn't so far from the truth to say that Peanuts was the first general signifier of popular culture that I - and countless others - encountered growing up in the "60s. It was also our first glimpse into the world of the self-absorbed, everyday American - even if we didn't realise it at the time.

Before Peanuts, the concept of children in comic strips having personalities was unheard of. Children were simple, attention grabbing creatures - the pathos and one dimensional humour of Nancy and Little Orphan Annie, the slapstick humour of the Katzenjammer Kids. When United Features first syndicated Peanuts (on October 2, 1950) teenagers had barely been invented, the postwar depression was just lifting. The initial Peanuts strips reflected this - kids being nasty to other kids, mostly ending with a conventional punch line. Yet there was something weird even in those early outings, initially called Lil Folks. (Schulz hated the title Peanuts.)

These characters had feelings.

Over the next decade, Schulz developed his characters into the names that are now known all over the Western world. The neurotic Charlie Brown, the bullying Lucy and her too-smart-for-his-own-good kid brother Linus, the Beethoven-loving Schroeder ... and, of course, Charlie Brown's dog, the Walter Mittyesque Snoopy. By the time the "60s began, the Peanuts gang had its own fully formed set of neuroses and fears. All of which were very much indicative of American kids growing up in the shadow of the bomb and the Cuban missile crisis.

This never concerned me when I was younger, though. I simply liked the jokes, the simple cartoon aesthetics and the straightforwardness of the humour.

I loved it when Charlie Brown would rush up to kick the football, and Lucy would always pull it away at the last moment. He never learnt, but never lost hope either. I loved it when Snoopy would go on his flights of fancy over the skies of Europe during World War 1, with his battlecry ``Curse You, Red Baron!'' ringing in my ears.

I loved the kite-eating tree, Lucy's psychologist booth, Linus' battles with his blanket hating grandma, Charlie Brown's unrequited love for the little red-headed girl. And who could resist his baseball team, always more concerned with discussing philosophy than hitting a homer.

Put simply, I loved Peanuts for its humanity. The fact that its two dimensional, eternally young characters faced the same problems as myself. What schoolchild, office worker or president couldn't identify with Charlie Brown and his constant failures? As Lucy shouted in frustration after another victory achieved through underhand tactics: ``You're no fun even to beat, Charlie Brown ... Beating you is like beating nothing!'' Who couldn't relate to that?

Schulz wasn't saying it was OK to be Charlie Brown. That would have run contrary to the whole American ethos of loving a winner, and loving competition. Charlie Brown never competed, not even on his baseball mound.

He was only up there because he thought that was how normal kids behaved.

All Schulz was saying was that there are Charlie Browns everywhere among us - and inside us - and that sometimes underdogs can be lovable too. The winners didn't always carry the day in Schulz's world. Lucy was the winner, and she wasn't lovable. Far from it. She was a tyrant.

There was one Peanuts strip that stood out for me. It was a continuing series - unusual for Schulz, who liked to create his little world within the confines of a four-panel daily strip, or longer Sunday page.

One morning, the sun rose over Charlie Brown's head in the shape of a baseball. Shortly afterwards, a mysterious new character - whose features were obscured by a brown paper bag - appeared in the strip. He was an instant hit with the other kids, and could do no wrong. For weeks, they hung on his every word, followed his every deed, until one day the bag was lifted and ...There was Charlie Brown, back to his old loser self. The magic had gone.

Of course, one can draw parallels between all the burning childhood issues in Peanuts and the outside world. Sometimes, it was difficult not to.

Linus and his reliance upon his blanket. Snoopy's escapist fantasies and perpetual dream of becoming an established writer. Charlie Brown and his everyman loser aspect ... remember, when Peanuts started, the American public had barely even heard of psychology. After Peanuts became successful, it seemed that every white American was seeing a shrink five times a week - and, of course, newspaper cartoon strips involving children were never the same again.

Peanuts is arguably the most successful newspaper cartoon strip ever. It has spawned numerous books, the annual Valentine's Day TV special, and merchandise spinoffs.

Charlie Brown and Snoopy have featured on the front of Time, Life and Newsweek, and have had space modules named after them. Schulz - who started the strip after hearing that it was possible to make $1000 a week, drawing comics - ended his life worth an estimated $US55 million ($A88 million). He had his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a standing invitation to meet Pope John Paul II.