And Then There Were None (at the Party)
In today’s For Better or For Worse, April manages to get rid of Gerald and all appearances are she has gotten away with his visiting, because of the final joke of the last panel. It’s been an interesting week for April, because this week is truly her first week of doing something bad, and not just “talking catty about Becky” bad. There were dozens of strips like this for Elizabeth and Michael in their teen years, so I am quite gratified April is finally getting a turn.
As for snarking today, I had Howard hit up on some more Portrait snark. Mike’s monthly letters mentioned Martha McRae on several occasions and in one case a lunchtime meeting where the two of them played “What if?” Mike has mentioned Rhetta Blum a total of 0 times in his monthly letters, so the implication is that Mike still has some kind of emotions for Martha. Rhetta Blum ended the relationship with Mike, but with Martha, there were considerable forces at play to try to break him and Martha apart. I can understand why Mike might still have feelings. Back when the Mike party had been originally announced, I had written a letter from Martha McRae saying she would attend so long as Mike behaved himself. With the Howard post, it appears that Mike did not obey that restriction. I also implied that he had had more than one lunchtime meeting with Martha, which is something easily inferred from Mike’s monthly letters.
The other thing required was to retcon April’s Real Blog so that it appears as though Elly does find about April and Gerald. aprilp_katje practically dropped this in my lap when she said Elly and John were sleeping upstairs. Not only did aprilp_katje forget the location of Elly and John’s bedroom relative to the back porch, but it apparently slipped the mind of the great author herself when she had April’s voiced line in the back yard by the bedroom, and her thought balloon in the front yard. John Patterson delivers the final line to Elly, with no comment from Elly, so the strip could not have helped me more in my retconning.
The other addition areas to snark:
1. April’s 16th birthday song. Jeremy Jones gave a very kind review of it. The performance of the song was not unpleasant, but the song lyrics were so awful, no self-respecting 16-year-old girl could have written them.
2. The cover of the latest For Better or For Worse collection Teaching is a Learning Experience. A red-headed Caucasion boy and an Asian boy show up mysteriously and most of the girls do not have the long braids which appeared on the First Nations girls in the strip. If the appearance of these children was an editorial suggestion, so the book would appear more inclusive, it is ironic that such a change actually makes the cover of the book an insult to the First Nations people, as if images of their children are not good enough to sell a book, which is by and large about them. I remember when the Disney movie Pocohontas came out, and people complained Pocohontas looked like a model and was too pretty, the actor who voiced Pocohontas’ father was outraged at the idea that Native American women could not be attractive. I was reminded of that story, when I saw the cover of the collection. Naturally, I had Susan Dokis make a comment about it, even though I believe qnjones is officially signed up for that character. Sorry, qnjones.
Later in the day, aprilp_katje hinted that Michael Patterson should respond to qnjones’ Gerald’s post about “Like with Like” racial prejudice as a Patterson rule of operation. I know it is Lynn Johnston’s personal rule from the pairing of Duncan with Eva. However, there are parts of the Patterson story which don’t work, like the acceptance of Deanna Sobinski, who is from an immigrant family. Because of this, I think the rejection of Rhetta Blum and Paul Wright could well have been for religious reasons and not racial ones. I opted just to say Pattersons consider themselves to be better than everyone else, and using language which I found used to describe restrictions on Jewish wedding in Israel, substituted the witch of Corbeil as the final arbiter instead of the Orthodox Rabbinate.
Tomorrow’s strip: We seen it before, and it looks like it is self-contained and may not be continued next week.
As for snarking today, I had Howard hit up on some more Portrait snark. Mike’s monthly letters mentioned Martha McRae on several occasions and in one case a lunchtime meeting where the two of them played “What if?” Mike has mentioned Rhetta Blum a total of 0 times in his monthly letters, so the implication is that Mike still has some kind of emotions for Martha. Rhetta Blum ended the relationship with Mike, but with Martha, there were considerable forces at play to try to break him and Martha apart. I can understand why Mike might still have feelings. Back when the Mike party had been originally announced, I had written a letter from Martha McRae saying she would attend so long as Mike behaved himself. With the Howard post, it appears that Mike did not obey that restriction. I also implied that he had had more than one lunchtime meeting with Martha, which is something easily inferred from Mike’s monthly letters.
The other thing required was to retcon April’s Real Blog so that it appears as though Elly does find about April and Gerald. aprilp_katje practically dropped this in my lap when she said Elly and John were sleeping upstairs. Not only did aprilp_katje forget the location of Elly and John’s bedroom relative to the back porch, but it apparently slipped the mind of the great author herself when she had April’s voiced line in the back yard by the bedroom, and her thought balloon in the front yard. John Patterson delivers the final line to Elly, with no comment from Elly, so the strip could not have helped me more in my retconning.
The other addition areas to snark:
1. April’s 16th birthday song. Jeremy Jones gave a very kind review of it. The performance of the song was not unpleasant, but the song lyrics were so awful, no self-respecting 16-year-old girl could have written them.
2. The cover of the latest For Better or For Worse collection Teaching is a Learning Experience. A red-headed Caucasion boy and an Asian boy show up mysteriously and most of the girls do not have the long braids which appeared on the First Nations girls in the strip. If the appearance of these children was an editorial suggestion, so the book would appear more inclusive, it is ironic that such a change actually makes the cover of the book an insult to the First Nations people, as if images of their children are not good enough to sell a book, which is by and large about them. I remember when the Disney movie Pocohontas came out, and people complained Pocohontas looked like a model and was too pretty, the actor who voiced Pocohontas’ father was outraged at the idea that Native American women could not be attractive. I was reminded of that story, when I saw the cover of the collection. Naturally, I had Susan Dokis make a comment about it, even though I believe qnjones is officially signed up for that character. Sorry, qnjones.
Later in the day, aprilp_katje hinted that Michael Patterson should respond to qnjones’ Gerald’s post about “Like with Like” racial prejudice as a Patterson rule of operation. I know it is Lynn Johnston’s personal rule from the pairing of Duncan with Eva. However, there are parts of the Patterson story which don’t work, like the acceptance of Deanna Sobinski, who is from an immigrant family. Because of this, I think the rejection of Rhetta Blum and Paul Wright could well have been for religious reasons and not racial ones. I opted just to say Pattersons consider themselves to be better than everyone else, and using language which I found used to describe restrictions on Jewish wedding in Israel, substituted the witch of Corbeil as the final arbiter instead of the Orthodox Rabbinate.
Tomorrow’s strip: We seen it before, and it looks like it is self-contained and may not be continued next week.
posted by howard at 10:12 PM
9 Comments:
aprilp_katje practically dropped this in my lap when she said Elly and John were sleeping upstairs.
Yup. Totally forgot that the master bedroom is on the ground floor. Morning brain is not a pretty thing.
It worked out great for me, so I think your morning brain is quite attractive.
That's a relief. :)
Yeah, I am a little disappointed that you chose to soft-pedal Lynn's blatant racism, but hey, it's not just my blog.
By the way, the Sobinski thing seems to have a pretty obvious explanation for how it fits in. Wilf and Mira are loathsome people, and they have exaggerated Eastern European features a la Lovey. But Deanna and her sister Andrea are both very blonde and WASPy looking. They do not resemble their parents at all. And not that they do not act like the children of many immigrants--they don't speak any Polish, don't emphasize Polish culture at all (except that Dee made cabbage rolls once), etc. The children of immigrants that I know still speak some of their parents' first language and the "home culture" is still very much a part of their lives.
Lynn whitewashed Dee so that she would be suitable. Dee's non-WASP family is still shown to be appropriately hideous. And, even so, the Sobinskis are European non-Jews.
Lynn really disgusts me on this point, which is why I like to snark on it.
Hey, I just enjoy the idea of April having some more options open to her so that Gerald has to be somewhat less cocky. ;)
I can imagine Lynn having some kind of weird "Duncan" exception to her unacknowledged racism (you just know she'd deny it and she'd probably even believe herself when she did so).
OTOH, I guess we'll really never get to find out, as April will be frozen at age 16.
Yes, this is why I suspect we may see April date Duncan. The issue of April's marriage will never arise in the strip. Therefore, the issue of interracial marriage will never come up with her, so it's okay to date someone who is non-white. Her conservative readers won't clench up, thinking that little April will make only second-rate brown grandbabies for Elly.
I'd bet cash money that if the strip went on and on and on, we would see April marry someone who is lily-white. It's telling that even in the year 2007, we can only have biracial characters (Lawrence and Paul and Eva) if their parents' mixed-race marriages/relationships are kept off-screen. The closest we've gotten to seeing a mixed-race marriage is Gary and Viv, who are different types of Native (Ojibwe and Metis), and they have no kids.
Lawrence and Nick? But they don't exactly get a whole lot of "air" time.
Lawrence and Nick are not married. Pointedly not. Even though they could be, they are not. I think this is another example of Lynn's conservative bias. I think she has deliberately not married them off because her conservative readers do not agree with gay marriage. Also, I suspect the racial thing isn't as big a deal to Lynn in a gay couple where biological children of both Lawrence and Nick are not possible.
Lynn whitewashed Dee so that she would be suitable. Dee's non-WASP family is still shown to be appropriately hideous. And, even so, the Sobinskis are European non-Jews.
The Sobinskis are most likely Catholic, which is not too difficult a mix with the Anglican Church, assuming they are not very strong Catholics. Rhetta seemed to be pretty whitewashed also. I have no recollection of seeing Rhetta Blum being overtly Jewish, but I have no collections of her to verify this. However, Blum is easily a name of a family with a Jewish background, and it would have come up in a wedding. This is where I get my belief the prejudice in this particular case is religious and not racial. I think Lynn wanted Mike to marry a virgin, and I think she wanted a nice Anglican wedding with no complications, and Rhetta did not fit that bill.
On the other hand, a case of race can be easily made with Duncan. Duncan and Becky were April’s original pals, but Gerald showed up with no reason to exist than to be the acknowledged boyfriend of April. The same thing was done with Anthony to his Liz. The only difference there was that Liz didn’t have any guy friends prior to that point. To introduce a guy as boyfriend, when there is a guy friend already there, makes the point that Duncan is not acceptable.
As for Michael Patterson, I cannot imagine his character ever confessing to Pattersons having admitted racial prejudice, even if they did. His confessions of prejudice are much funnier (to me anyway) if they are indirect, like saying it’s good April picked a new best friend from an ethnic background.
As for me, I introduced the idea of Jeremy Jones or Duncan Anderson as potential childhood sweethearts for April, for no other reason than to give aprilp_katje story material, in the event she should decide to have April date around. However, with 5 months left on the strip, I would be very surprised to see strip April date Duncan, even if Lynn would consider Duncan dating her to be OK, since they won’t ever get married.
The monthly letters have hinted at a Gerald / Becky hook-up and a Duncan / April hook-up, but when it comes to issues of romance, the letters are on a completely different page from Lynn Johnston. Remember the 2-hour nightly talks between Liz and Constable Paul Wright? There is no way Paul Wright did those and cheated on her.
As for other character’s marriages, I think those could happen. The Lawrence and Nick marriage has been mentioned. There are hints Weed and Carleen may be moving in that direction. And then there is the letters-only long term engagement of Dawn Enjo. If Lynn ever allows Liz to get into a marriage mood with Anthony, having her attend someone else’s wedding would be an excellent way to set the tone, and to visit some long forgotten characters.
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