I just finished watching A Boy Named Charlie Brown, which I haven’t seen in a number of years.
At first, I thought it was a refreshing break from the sugary, frenetically-paced, computer gimmicked cartoon movies of today. Charlie Brown seemed to have a realistic type depression going on, and you just don’t see that in cartoons for kids anymore.
But as I watched, I realized that this movie’s message was downright disturbing.
If you remember, Charlie Brown is convinced he can’t do anything right. The girls in this show are out and out bitches who call him “failure-face”. To prove he’s not a loser, he enters the school spelling bee and wins. He’s the champ of the school, but that only means he has to compete nationally. He goes to New York, comes in second, and goes home.
Now, there are a lot of eyebrow raising things about this cartoon. New York is mysteriously deserted, there are NO grownups anywhere, and apparently Linus can take off by Greyhound bus to New York and wander around alone at night without even asking permission from his folks. So okay, no grownups was a convention of the strip, and you just have to suspend your disbelief. Fine.
But here, Charlie Brown is in the National Finals of the Spelling Bee, (which is a HUGE deal. In fact, the match is televised, and Lucy and the gang watch him from his hometown.) and Charlie gets down to the final two! Yes, the word he missed was easy, but goddamn, he won second place! If this were the Olympics, he’d be bringing home a Silver Medal.
So, he was a loser at everything, but now he’s taken the Silver in spelling in a nation-wide contest, and it is implied that he is still a loser???
The movie has him coming home, and no one is there to pick him up from the bus depot. He and Linus walk home, and Charlie Brown spends the next day in bed.
Linus comes to see him. Linus, he’s the wise one, right? So, what does he say to Charlie Brown? “You studied so hard, and you probably feel that you let everybody down, and that you made a fool out of yourself…”
WTF??? He beat every kid in the contest but one!!! How the fuck did he make a fool out of himself??? Is this movie trying to say that unless you are the absolute champion of the entire nation, all your work and effort are worthless? Is every marathon runner a loser because some guy from Kenya won again?
And then, wise Linus says, “The world didn’t come to an end.” Thank you, blanket boy. Tell your folks to put you on the milk cartons if they can’t find you next time you run off.
Charles Schultz was a strange man.