Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Another Coffee Talk Entry

It's been long enough since I submitted this one, I am sure it is not going in the For Better or For Worse website Elly's Coffee Talk. So, for your enjoyment and delectation:

After seeing the outstanding way Lynn Johnston addressed the problems of children with special needs using the Shannon Lake character, I was quite delighted to see Lynn Johnston portray the opposite end of the spectrum with Françoise Caine. Like Françoise, my daughter was developmentally advanced and she could speak in complete, multi-word sentences when she was a little more than 2 years old. In comic strips, the normal tendency with advanced children is to put them in odd clothing, wearing glasses, having “buck teeth” and being experts with a computer. My daughter does not fit any of those stereotypes and I was gratified to see Lynn Johnston went with a realistic portrayal. My daughter is currently a cynical 9-year-old and when I showed her the Françoise Caine strips, she was unimpressed when I told her she was the same way when she was 2 years old. As she put it, “I didn’t wear pig-tails, and I couldn’t ride in a swing like that when I was 2.” My daughter is too young and inexperienced to appreciate the significance of what Lynn Johnston has done, but I am not.

Since Elizabeth Patterson is a trained school teacher, I can’t wait for the time to come when she recognizes just how smart Françoise is, and tells Anthony his daughter is gifted. I still remember the first time I was told that about my daughter. I’ve been so impressed by the way Shannon Lake was handled, I look forward to seeing how Lynn Johnston tackles this new direction, with the relationship between gifted Françoise and school teacher / new mother Elizabeth.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for the post! It's great to see your submissions here, since the Corbeil Crew might have caught on and tend to be leaning toward most of the "FBoFW is so wonderful" group of submissions.

DebJyn

9:54 AM  
Blogger howard said...

The Coffee Talk monitor seems to be allowing more outright negative comments than she used to. My means of sneaking in a comment may no longer be necessary. I wonder.

11:45 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Howard, seems to me that Françoise is much too advanced for a 2.5 year-old, even if she is brilliant. My younger sister, who is blessed with photographic memory and was verbal as a toddler, would not have been trusted to go on swings alone. (In those days swings had metal seats, not rubber, and little kids only swung in baby swings. But still…)

Your post is still too schmaltzy (brown nosing) for my taste. Seems to me that you’re on a debating team, where arguments are determined primarily by the position that is assigned (i.e. where you are posting) rather than true beliefs. Well, what is your honest opinion?

I find the Shannon Lake character to be believable. When LJ described her as a package waiting to be unwrapped (something like that), I expected Shannon to end up a musical superstar. But she didn’t. She matured into a young woman who still deals with a serious disability, yet is capable of standing up (literally!) for her dignity. I think this is what most parents of children with disabilities pray for.

Brilliant children often have difficulty interacting with peers, and that can be an interesting problem. But I don’t think that Françoise will be portrayed as brilliant because it’s too complex a problem to address at this point in the life of FBORFW and I don’t think it would work well in the hybrid format.

I don’t think teachers are any better equipped to deal with their own children than the average Joe. Many child psychologists have troubled kids, so apparently skills that work in the office are not easily put into practice at home. It reminds me of a family friend who is an exceptional chef. He has catered dinners for presidents (no kidding) yet he NEVER cooks at home - he will carve the meat that his wife cooks, but that’s it. And he won’t eat cooked carrots, but that’s another story…

Anon

4:25 PM  
Blogger howard said...

Anon,

Well, what is your honest opinion?
My honest opinion is the same as yours, i.e. “Françoise is much too advanced for a 2.5 year-old” both mentally and physically. I think my quote from my daughter in the submission, expressed that opinion.

I have tried submitted things to the Coffee Talk that were overdone with Lynn Johnston praise, or were completely honest, or are what aprilp_katje refers to as “reverse snark.” The only ones I have ever had selected were those “reverse snark” submissions. These are where I express the opinion that Lynn Johnston is in complete creative control and has done exactly what she intended to do. In other words, I take precisely what the strip shows, and try to avoid any personal bias in analyzing it. In some respects, it is like taking a position on a debating team, as you suggest. In other respects, it is a part of me that does not react well to seeing people write criticisms of For Better or For Worse, like Lynn Johnston is some kind of idiot who doesn’t know what she is doing. People, who write “Lynn sucks” as a critique, irritate me.

Let’s take the appearance of Françoise Caine as an example. The two other children regularly portrayed in the strip, Merrie and Robin Patterson are no where near Françoise in speech and physical development. If Lynn Johnston truly did not know how to portray a child at 2 years old, then Robin would not be eating dirt and tacks and think his Gramma Elly was going to “blow up.” Those are 2-year-old-ish things to do. By comparison, Françoise, only 4 months younger than Robin, must be a genius child. If that is Lynn Johnston’s intent, then the next thing is to try to determine why she would make Françoise a genius. I guessed so her school teacher, soon-to-be step-mom, would realize it, and it would be an aspect of their relationship.

You are correct. That point-of-view is not my true belief about why Lynn Johnston chose to portray Françoise Caine as she did. I think Lynn wanted to show that Elizabeth was accepted by Françoise as her mother. At age 2.5 years, the age-appropriate way to show this would have been not by showing the verbal interplay, but the physical body language between the two, which used to be a hallmark of this strip. Either Lynn has recognized the person drawing the strip is not very good at communicating a story through body language, or she prefers to use word play to tell her stories these days. My guess is the idea that Françoise accepted Elizabeth was done the way it was, to accommodate the limitations of the strip’s creators.

Those are two guesses and neither may be right. I agree with you in part. I don’t think anyone is going to acknowledge Françoise is brilliant, but I do think that she will continue to be portrayed as brilliant and use complete sentences. Speaking as the son of a school teacher, I will have to disagree with your opinion about how well teachers deal with their own children. However, I know all about professional chefs cooking at home. My sister’s ex-husband is a professional chef, and when they were married my sister often complained she did all the cooking at home. He would do it for 10- 12 hours a day, and was quite tired of cooking, by the time he got home.

As for Shannon Lake, I do like the fact Lynn Johnston put Shannon AKA her niece Stephanie into the strip and appreciate the point she is trying to make. I found that her portrayal in the Fall, 2004 and Spring, 2005 strips was quite good. Then after that, I did not like it as much, primarily because Shannon was continually portrayed as the “anti-Becky McGuire” and not really as her own person, i.e. when Becky appeared to upset April, then Shannon would appear to calm her down.

To me, the low point of the Shannon story was her speech on the cafeteria table. As a father of a child with Asperger’s Syndrome, I would be horrified if I got a report that my son got on top of cafeteria table and started railing at the kids who had been picking on him. My son has had a real-life experience similar to that (thankfully not on a table), and we had to pick him up from school and the principal made us keep him at home for a few days after it. It was an awful experience; I hope he never, ever repeats.

Let me tell you a good story about acceptance and dignity. Last school year, as a school project my son put together a puppet show, with a puppet theatre, puppets and script he had written himself; which had a mixture of a lot of the elements of his own unusual brand of humour in it (along with facts about Brazil, the study topic). His mother was terrified something would go wrong, and the other kids would find his humour too off-beat for them. What happened was he did his puppet show and received overwhelming acceptance of his work by his fellow students, who thought he was creative and funny (which, by the way, he is).

My son got his dignity by showing the other kids how he was valuable. I would take that over a speech on a table any day of the week.

7:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

IInteresting comments! I agree with almost everything you say. FBORFW time is not 100% real time. For example, we know that Anthony and Liz graduated HS at the same time but Anthony graduated college a year before Liz. I seem to remember reading someplace that LJ kept Liz in college an extra year to increase the age difference between her children and the cartoon characters. You suggested in an earlier post that Francoise is being portrayed as an older child because that would work better as a hybrid. You now suggest that a 4-year old would have more interesting dynamics with Liz. Both reasons make good sense.

As for teachers, the same way that a professional chef doesn’t want to deal with cooking at home, the professional teacher doesn’t always want to deal with children at home. You speak from the perspective of the son of a teacher - I speak from the perspective of a teacher (high school science). I can tell you that there are teachers out there who are not willing/able to work with their own offspring. I’ve been in this business for 15 years and it still astounds me when a parent who is supposed to be a professional, behaves this way. I’ve also seen teachers who give nothing to their students yet complain bitterly when they perceive their biological child as being treated unfairly by his/her teacher. The double standard is alive and well everywhere, and I’m probably guilty of it myself.

I think Shannon is about 16, so her speech on the cafeteria table is a little more age appropriate than it would be for your son. I have had students with disabilities open up to the class. One girl spoke about being severely hearing impaired and why she was wearing hearing aids rather than cochlear implants. Another year a student spoke about his stuttering. I can’t begin to describe the positive effect this has on everyone in the classroom.

“People, who write “Lynn sucks” as a critique, irritate me” unless, of course, they post it on The FOOBiverse!'s Journal - with examples to back up this claim!

Anon

8:52 PM  
Blogger howard said...

Anon,

FBORFW time is not 100% real time.
Definitely. As another example, little Aypo stayed little Aypo for a looong time.

You suggested in an earlier post that Francoise is being portrayed as an older child because that would work better as a hybrid. You now suggest that a 4-year old would have more interesting dynamics with Liz.
I am remarkably inconsistent in my conjectures about the reasons why Lynn does things.

As for teachers,
I am not going to argue with 15 years of experience. I feel fortunate it was not my situation.

As for Shannon, I prefer all of your examples of students with disabilities to “Shannon on the cafeteria table.” Your examples sound like organized speech, and a controlled environment.

11:45 PM  

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