Thursday, February 05, 2004

Good Grief! Charlie Brown, Existential Character!

Poor Charlie Brown. It isn't bad enough that Lucy pulls the football away every fall. It isn't bad enough that the baseball team loses game after game. It isn't bad enough that Snoopy leads a more interesting life than his owner. Now, we know why Charlie Brown never gets anywhere. He is an existential hero. If this is (fair & balanced) philosophizing, so be it.



[x Philosophy Now]
Sartre & Peanuts
Charlie Brown is an existentialist.
by Nathan Radke

Our anti-hero sits, despondent. He is alone, both physically and emotionally. He is alienated from his peers. He is fearfully awaiting a punishment for his actions. In desperation, he looks to God for comfort and hope. Instead, his angst overwhelms him, and manifests itself as physical pain. There is no comfort to be found.

Poor Charlie Brown. He waits outside of the principal’s office, waiting to hear what will become to him. He offers up a little prayer, but all he gets is a stomach ache.

When we are exposed to something every day we can eventually lose sight of its brilliance. Newspaper readers have been exposed to Charles Schulz’s comic strip ‘Peanuts’ for over half a century. Even now, a few years after Schulz died, many newspapers continue to carry reruns of his strips, and bookstores offer Peanuts collections. His characters are featured in countless advertisements, and every December networks dutifully show the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. Is there any philosophical insight that can be gleamed from such a mainstream and common source?

There has been much discussion concerning Peanuts as a voice of conservative Christianity, including several books such as the 1965 work The Gospel According to Peanuts. This is not without reason; even a cursory glance at a Peanuts anthology will reveal enough scripture references to fuel a month’s worth of Sunday school classes. However, to suggest that Schulz’s philosophical insights didn’t make it past the church door would be a mistake. While Schulz had a great interest in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ, he was also highly suspicious of dogmatic pious beliefs. In a 1981 interview, he refused to describe himself as religious, arguing that “I don’t know what religious means”. Charlie Brown was no comic strip missionary, blandly spreading the word of organized religion. Upon reflection, the trials and tribulations of the little round-headed kid provide deep and moving illustrations of existentialism.

This mixture of Biblical teaching and existential thought is not uncommon. The Danish Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard was one of the first existentialists, and his religious beliefs impelled his philosophy, rather than limiting it. Kierkegaard was forced to confront his deeply held belief in the existence of God with the tremendous empty silence that returns from the prayers of humans, and the results were his vital and compelling theories of faith and freedom.

It should also be noted that while Schulz did not consider himself religious, neither did he refer to himself as an existentialist. In fact, he was unfamiliar with the term until the mid 1950s, when he stumbled across a few newspaper articles about Jean-Paul Sartre. He was certainly not formally schooled in philosophical works. And yet, his simple line drawings provide illumination into the questions and problems raised by existentialism.

In order to identify examples of Schulz’s philosophy, a bumper-sticker version of existentialism should prove helpful. In his seminal 1946 work L’Existentialisme est un Humanisme, Sartre outlines some of the core aspects of his theories. A key aspect is the idea of abandonment. Kierkegaard felt that there was an unbridgeable gap between God and Man. Sartre goes even further, and argues that even if there is an unknowable and unreachable God, it wouldn’t make any difference to the human condition. Ultimately, we exist in an abandoned and free state. We are responsible for our actions, and since Sartre argues that there is no God to conceive of a human nature, we are responsible for our own creation.

How does this apply to Peanuts? Like the existential human in a world of silent or absent deities, Schulz’s characters exist in a world of silent or absent adult authority. In fact, the way the strip is drawn (with the child characters taking up most of each frame) actually prevents the presence of any adults. Schulz argued that, were adults added to the strip, the narratives would become untenable. While references are sometimes made to full-grown humans (normally school teachers) these characters are always out of frame, and silent. The children of Peanuts are left to their own devices, to try and understand the world they have found themselves thrust into. They have to turn to each other for support – hence, Lucy’s blossoming psychiatric booth (at five cents a session, a very good deal).

An ideal example of abandonment is the relationship between Linus and The Great Pumpkin. Every Halloween, Linus faithfully waits by a pumpkin patch, in the hopes that he will be blessed with the holy experience of a visitation by The Great Pumpkin. Of course, The Great Pumpkin never shows up, and He never answers Linus’ letters. Despite this, Linus remains steadfast, even going door to door to spread the word of his absent deity. Does The Great Pumpkin exist? We can never know. But from an existential point of view, it doesn’t matter if he exists or not. The important thing is that Linus is abandoned and alone in his pumpkin patch.

Sartre did not deny the existence of God triumphantly. Instead, he considered it “... extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven.”. Without God, everything we do as humans is absurd, and without meaning. Certainly, spending all night in a pumpkin patch would qualify as embarrassing as well. In the absence of any parental edicts, the characters in Peanuts have had to become very philosophically minded in order to establish for themselves what is right and wrong. When Linus gets a sliver in his finger, a conflict erupts between Lucy’s theological determinism (he is being punished for something he did wrong) and Charlie Brown’s philosophical uncertainty (when the sliver falls out, Lucy’s position crumbles). At Christmas time, Linus dictates a letter to Santa, questioning the validity of Santa’s ethical judgments regarding the goodness or badness of the individual child. “What is good? What is bad?” asks Linus. Good questions.

Another key aspect comes from this monstrous freedom that abandonment allows, and this aspect is despair. In a nutshell, we are created by our actions. We are responsible for our actions. Therefore, we are responsible for our creation. What we are is the sum total of what we have done, nothing more and nothing less. But why should this cause despair? To answer this, Sartre examines the characteristics of cowardice and bravery. When Sartre describes the position that opposes his own, we can see how it may be comforting to not be responsible for one’s creation:



If you are born cowards, you can be quite content, you can do nothing about it and you will be cowards all your life whatever you do; and if you are born heroes you can again be quite content; you will be heroes all your life, eating and drinking heroically. Whereas the existentialist says that the coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always the possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being a hero.

(Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism 1957)



It is this very possibility that causes despair. Why does Charlie Brown tear himself into knots over the little red-haired girl? The very possibility that he could go over and talk to her is far more distressing than its impossibility would be; he must take ownership of his failure. When she is the victim of a bully in the school yard, Charlie Brown’s despair threatens to leap right off the comic page. He isn’t suffering because he can’t help her, but because he could help her, but won’t: “Why can’t I rush over there and save her? Because I’d get slaughtered, that’s why...” When Linus helps her out instead, thereby illustrating his freedom of action, Charlie Brown only becomes more melancholic.

In order to combat despair, Charlie Brown succumbs to bad faith, which is to say, he denies his freedom: “I wonder what would happen if I went over and tried to talk to her! Everybody would probably laugh ... she’d probably be insulted too ...” It is only by falsely denying his freedom that Charlie Brown can overcome his despair. But by hiding behind bad faith, he does himself no favours. Another lunch hour is spent alone on a bench with a peanut butter sandwich.

Existence is problematic and disturbing. In one weekend strip, Schulz succinctly describes the horror of discovering one’s own existence in the world:



Linus: I’m aware of my tongue ... It’s an awful feeling! Every now and then I become aware that I have a tongue inside my mouth, and then it starts to feel lumped up ... I can’t help it ... I can’t put it out of my mind. ... I keep thinking about where my tongue would be if I weren’t thinking about it, and then I can feel it sort of pressing against my teeth ...


Sartre devoted an entire book to this experience – his 1938 novel Nausea in which his character Roquentin is alarmed to discover his own actuality. But Linus sums the point up very well in a few frames.

Existentialism has been accused of being defeatist and depressing (and Sartre didn’t help his cause with terms like "abandonment," "despair," and "nausea"). But Peanuts also demonstrates the optimism of the philosophy. Why does Charlie Brown continue to go out to the pitcher’s mound, despite his 50 year losing streak? Why try to kick the football, when Lucy has always pulled it away at the last second? Because there is an infinite gap between the past and the present. Regardless of what has come before, there is always the possibility of change. Monstrous freedom is a double edged sword. We exist, and are responsible. This is both liberating and terrifying.

Schulz should be considered part of the generation of authors who saw active duty during World War II; he is in the company of writers such as Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, and of course Sartre himself. It is foolish to disregard literature simply because it appears in the funnies section of the daily paper. Schulz’s simple line drawings and blocky letters contain as much information about the human condition as entire shelves full of dry books.

While it is difficult to say what Sartre would have thought of Peanuts, we do know what Schulz thought of Sartre: “I read about him in the New York Times, where he said it was very difficult to be a human being, and the only way to fight against it is to lead an active life – that’s very true.” If any character has shown us the difficulties in existence, it is Charlie Brown

© NATHAN RADKE 2004

Nathan Radke teaches workshops and tutorials in philosophy at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada.

All quotations in this article come from the following books:
Charles M. Schulz: Conversations edited by M. Thomas Inge, University Press of Mississippi 2000.
Existentialism and Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre, Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1957.
Peanuts Treasury by Charles Schulz, MetroBooks 2000.

© 2004 Philosophy Now. All rights reserved.




Vintage Cobra and It's Not Even About W

Maureen Dowd is back. This time, it's Colin Powell and his son, Michael Powell, and their problem with what should have been there and wasn't. For Colin Powell, as Secretary of State, it's WMD. For Michael Powell, as chair of the FCC, it's Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction. If this is (fair & balanced) sanctimony, so be it.



[x NYTimes]
Purity of the Powells
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON — Washington is in the virtue business this week.

Center stage is a riveting father-son drama. (No, not that one.)

At the Federal Communications Commission, Michael Powell is trying to save America's virtue, while over at the State Department, his father, Colin, is trying to save his own virtue.

They are both obsessing about something that should have been there, but suddenly wasn't.

The son demanded an explanation for Janet Jackson's missing material, while the father wrestled with an explanation for Saddam Hussein's missing matériel.

The son opened an inquiry into something everyone had already seen, as the father defended his speech making the case for war based on something nobody has seen.

(Who could have guessed that Saddam's W.M.D. would be less scary than Ms. Jackson's pierced metal sunburst, a Weapon of Mammary Destruction aimed at the CBS chairman, Les Moonves? Or, as Jon Stewart points out, that a government so reluctant to investigate intelligence lapses is so eager to investigate a breast lapse?)

Asked in a Washington Post interview on Monday whether he would have recommended an invasion if he'd known that Iraq had no weapons, the secretary of state replied, "I don't know," adding that the "absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get."

But the words had barely left his mouth before furious White House aides forced Mr. Powell to eat them. Just as Janet Jackson had to repent for revealing too much, so did the top diplomat. Secretary Powell had to go out and clarify his remarks to reporters, telling them the war was justified even if weapons are never found.

Rummy stuck to his Orwellian guns, telling Congress yesterday that just because we don't find the weapons doesn't mean they're not there. Or, as postmodern professors say, absence is presence. (At least Ms. Jackson, like David Kay, had the grace to say, "Unfortunately, the whole thing went wrong in the end.")

Once more, Colin Powell was left trying to square being a good soldier with preserving what's left of his reputation. His twin concerns — wanting everyone to think he is a man of purity and not wanting to fight a battle he might lose — have come into fatal conflict because of Iraq.

The younger Powell failed to appreciate the consequences of not curbing big media companies gobbling up rivals. Colin Powell failed to appreciate the consequences of not curbing Dick Cheney, Rummy and Wolfie as they gobbled up foreign policy.

The son vowed in 2001 that he would be patient with cultural excesses: "I don't want the government as my nanny. I still have never understood why something as simple as turning it off is not part of the answer."

But here he is, the biggest nanny in government since William Bennett, starting a little culture war to improve his ratings. The F.C.C. asked CBS for a Super Bowl halftime tape to determine whether standards were violated. What, the F.C.C. can't pop for a TiVo? Next, the F.C.C. will ask the C.I.A. to provide satellite photography of the rogue bustier.

The Janet and Justin show was unbelievably tawdry, but also unbelievably banal — another rehearsed pseudoshock that the media, and now the government, gladly play along with. Isn't the power of social opprobrium in a free society enough?

It's already out of control. Ms. Jackson lost her spot as a presenter at the Grammys. And NBC's affiliates forced the network to take out a scene from tonight's episode of "E.R." because a breast was exposed for a second and a half. It was the breast of an 80-year-old woman dying of a heart attack. Sizzle, sizzle.

Besides, should all the indignation be about a "wardrobe malfunction" when there were all those icky ads — financing our annual festival of testosterone — about erectile dysfunction? (One father I know tried telling his curious 10-year-old son the ads were about "electile dysfunction.")

Michael Powell should stop interfering where he doesn't belong. Colin Powell should start interfering where he does belong. The secretary should get off the sidelines where the vice president and Pentagon banished him and stop waiting for them to fail so he can be vindicated. He should get more involved in rescuing Iraq from chaos.

The hawks' war to make Iraq free and secure is slowly descending into anarchy and ethnic conflict. That's indecent.

Copyright © 2004 The New York Times Company

The Trickster On Campaign 2004

William Safire was the Trickster's speechwriter. In the second of his interviews with the Trickster in Purgatory (for his Republican apostasy with price controls in the early 70s), Safire offers the Trickster's cynicism about the political process and the candidates it produces. In the first assessment, the Trickster dismissed Richard Gephardt as a credible candidate because Gephardt had no eyebrows. It all comes down to an October surprise. Crises help incumbents? The Iranian hostage crisis sure didn't help Jimmy Carter. If this is (fair & balanced) cynicism, so be it.



[x NYTimes]
The View From Purgatory
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Reached on his picture-taking cellphone in Purgatory, where he is halfway through expiating his price-control sin, Richard M. Nixon — winner of innumerable primary elections — agreed to a brief interview with his former speechwriter.

Q: What's your reading of the results of yesterday's round of primaries?

RN: Southern charm sells in South Carolina. I like this Edwards; he's a helluva salesman of the old Truman "special interests" line. And his victory speech was straight out of Jesse Jackson's convention rouser. Edwards was willing to roll the dice, too, saying he had to win that first Southern primary or he was finished. Gutsy.

Q: But doesn't he seem a little young to run for president?

RN: He's 50, three years older than I was when I ran against Kennedy in '60.

Q: What's his vulnerability?

RN: Slick lawyer. Beat $25 million for himself out of doctors and hospitals in malpractice suits, and that money came out of average families' pockets in the form of higher insurance premiums. That, plus the trial lawyers' lobby, bought and paid for him on tort reform. Some oppo research could rough him up a bit, but not enough to kill his chances.

Q: Not inexperience?

RN: I'd hate to see him in a room with Putin, and Chirac would eat him for lunch. But even if Edwards doesn't make it, he's a slam-dunk for running mate. And if the Democratic ticket loses, all the exposure — and the national experience — would make him a natural to take on Hillary for the top spot next time. He's a comer.

Q: You're certain, then, that Kerry has the nomination in the bag?

RN: He got up off the floor and made a good comeback, and I like the comeback story, as you know. And last night, Kerry won big in Missouri, where the delegates are. Picking up delegates is like washing dishes by hand — one by one, state by state till you have the magic number and the nomination. Then the hell with 'em.

Q: How did Kerry manage to turn it around?

RN: You want me to say "electability" like all those jackasses yakkin' it up on cable. That's what Rockefeller tried on me, but only the hacks and the hot partisans put electability first. It's one element, but it can get loused up in fluctuating mano a mano polls, and it vanishes as an asset when the election campaign begins. No, Kerry came back because he's an homme serioux — that's French for a man with gravitas — which is what people want, and it doesn't matter that he has a face like a horse.

Q: What happened to Howard Dean?

RN: Dean fell in love with his early press clips and the clapping of the antiwar bunch, but he couldn't take the heat and blew it. I feel for him in a way — all those pretty-face media types kissing your ring when you're flying high, and then the minute you stumble, they smell blood and turn on you like a wolf pack. But put my media feeling on deep background — it's something I'm supposed to be expiating.

Q: After losing everywhere last night, can Dean come back?

RN: If he could get Kerry to debate one on one, sure. But Kerry's no dope. Never debate when you're ahead.

Q: Who would win in a televised Kerry-Bush debate?

RN: Kerry on debating points, but Bush on personality, optimism and all that stuff that Kennedy and Reagan had down pat. But Edwards would lose to Cheney — against a steady hand, there's such a thing as too much charisma.

Q: Will the dominant issue in the campaign be jobs or Iraq or health care?

RN: You forget the Quemoy-Matsu syndrome. What decides a close race is how candidates react to an October surprise. What if bin Laden is caught, or "Dr. Germs" spills the beans about Iraqi anthrax, or our casualties continue? What about a White House scandal, or some revelation about a candidate's liberalism, or an accident or a heart attack? What if the market falls out of bed or there's a terrorist attack or the Chinese move on Quemoy and Matsu?

Q: Yes — what if?

RN: Most crises help incumbents.

Copyright © 2004 The New York Times Company