The Mischievous Young Lad
There was a time in our history in which the mischievous young lad was considered to be a popular character. Sticks and snails and puppy dog tails are what little boys are made of. I can think of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, or Jack Kirby’s Newsboy Legion or even Charles Schulz’ favourite old strip of Skippy. The idea is that these young lads would go about creating mischief, but would do so in such a clever way that you couldn’t help but be charmed by them, even though they were up to no good.
During the course of the past week of hybrid reprint strips of For Better or For Worse starring 5-year-old Michael Patterson, he is trodding on this well-worn path of charming mischief. He scalds his dad by turning on all the water. He embarrasses his dad by asking about sex. He gets his mom to provide him and all his friends with nearly free lemonade. He curses like a sailor, and antagonizes mail carriers in the spirit of good, clean fun. After all, no one is really hurt (except for his dad’s burns, and the mail carrier’s ears). Let’s try to forget that Tom Sawyer was punished by his Aunt Polly, the Newsboy Legion had Officer Harper, and Skippy had someone, I forget the name. But is this the way it should have gone? Isn’t it better than Michael Patterson is not punished?
When I was doing the character for April’s Real Blog of Constable Paul Wright, I saw Jesse Mukwa, the Objiway kid constantly getting into trouble, and I was curious as to what the Ojibway way of punishing kids was. After some research, I discovered the Ojibway method wasn’t about punishing. For example, if they told the kids not to go into the woods, because there were bears there, and the kids went into the woods anyway, the Ojibway method would be for someone to go into the woods and pretend to be a bear to scare the kids into compliance. The other method was to tell the children the stories of their ancestors, so they could, by example, learn the difference between right and wrong. The Ojibway writers who addressed punishment of children on-line were adamantly against the “white” method of punishing kids.
This matched pretty well with something I had read years ago, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, where the young explorers visited the Apaches and discovered that they did not punish their boy children, because they believed it would break their spirit. As highly-disciplined military men, during a time when flogging was considered an acceptable means of punishment, Lewis and Clark were appalled and annoyed by the Apache boys.
In this respect, I think Lynn Johnston has the Apache or Ojibway spirit when it comes to punishing young Michael for his behaviour. He is allowed to flourish in his methods of torturing those around him, and I think this is where he got the creative spark which allowed him to write a best-seller and the great Canadian novel. If he had been punished as a child, he probably would have ended up doing television video work or working as a ski instructor.
During the course of the past week of hybrid reprint strips of For Better or For Worse starring 5-year-old Michael Patterson, he is trodding on this well-worn path of charming mischief. He scalds his dad by turning on all the water. He embarrasses his dad by asking about sex. He gets his mom to provide him and all his friends with nearly free lemonade. He curses like a sailor, and antagonizes mail carriers in the spirit of good, clean fun. After all, no one is really hurt (except for his dad’s burns, and the mail carrier’s ears). Let’s try to forget that Tom Sawyer was punished by his Aunt Polly, the Newsboy Legion had Officer Harper, and Skippy had someone, I forget the name. But is this the way it should have gone? Isn’t it better than Michael Patterson is not punished?
When I was doing the character for April’s Real Blog of Constable Paul Wright, I saw Jesse Mukwa, the Objiway kid constantly getting into trouble, and I was curious as to what the Ojibway way of punishing kids was. After some research, I discovered the Ojibway method wasn’t about punishing. For example, if they told the kids not to go into the woods, because there were bears there, and the kids went into the woods anyway, the Ojibway method would be for someone to go into the woods and pretend to be a bear to scare the kids into compliance. The other method was to tell the children the stories of their ancestors, so they could, by example, learn the difference between right and wrong. The Ojibway writers who addressed punishment of children on-line were adamantly against the “white” method of punishing kids.
This matched pretty well with something I had read years ago, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, where the young explorers visited the Apaches and discovered that they did not punish their boy children, because they believed it would break their spirit. As highly-disciplined military men, during a time when flogging was considered an acceptable means of punishment, Lewis and Clark were appalled and annoyed by the Apache boys.
In this respect, I think Lynn Johnston has the Apache or Ojibway spirit when it comes to punishing young Michael for his behaviour. He is allowed to flourish in his methods of torturing those around him, and I think this is where he got the creative spark which allowed him to write a best-seller and the great Canadian novel. If he had been punished as a child, he probably would have ended up doing television video work or working as a ski instructor.
posted by howard at 10:28 PM
8 Comments:
SO, we've got a bit of culture clash going on here then. Lynn fools us by making Elly out to be some sort of WASP paragon when she isn't. No wonder the First Nations stilll like her despite the Mtigwaki incident; her child-rearing philosophy is their own.
howtheduck, you might be interested to know that the collection from which Lynn is drawing these strips has one where Elly tells Mike that if he's rude one more time, he has to go to his room for the rest of the day with no supper. As she walks away, he mouth-raspberries at her, and while he still has his tongue hanging out, she's grabbing him the the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants to haul him up to his room. Final panel has her thinking, "They always make you carry out the threats you wish you hadn't made."
The very next strip shows Elly holding a plate of food and telling John, "Maybe I could take Michael a little supper..." John says, "Honey, if you sent him to bed without supper, you can't go back on your word. Besides, he's a healthy kid... He should be able to survive the night." Elly says, "Yeah... but I don't think I can."
It will be interesting to see whether Lynn uses these.
aprilp_katje,
It will be interesting to see whether Lynn uses these.
I agree. Is this the only moment of disciplining Michael in this collection?
dreadedcandiru2,
I don't know what the current status of Lynn with the First Nations people is, after the last Mtigwaki adventure. Most of those awards they gave her were done back when she had Liz in Mtigwaki and they were a good and perfect people, and not the back-stabbers and thieves she turned them into in their last appearance in January.
They'd probably do what we've done; ascribe the whole thing to her domestic situation and move on. It's not their fault they got caught in the crossfire and deep down Lynn knows that.
howtheduck, because I love you as much as I do, I've gone through I've Got the One-More-Washload Blues in search of references to punishment. In addition to the strips I described above, I found:
Elly is holding Michael by the shoulders and saying, "It's not easy being a grownup, Michael. Sometimes I think being a mommy is the hardest thing in the world... I don't like getting angry. I feel bad when I have to punish you. Are you listening, honey?" Elly lets go and Michael points at Elly's nose while responding, "Yeah. Howcome a nose has only two holes in it?"
Next strip, Mike is sitting on a staircase by a wall that has crayon drawings on it. Elly is telling John, "Don't look at me like that. It's YOUR turn to punish him!" John retorts, "You're the one who caught him--you should do it!" Elly says, "Why should I always be the heavy? --He's your son too!..." Michael, having descended the staircase, touches Elly and says, "I want you to do it, Mom... You're weaker."
There are a couple of strips featuring John and Elly organizing and stacking receipts to prepare for doing their tax returns. In the third strip, John notes that they've made their neat piles of bills, receipts, and canceled checks. He goes for the calculator, Elly goes to make coffee and.. there is a panel that shows the neat stacks and a large "HIYAAH SUPERTEDDY" caption (no "kowabunga," however). Last panel, shows a worried-looking Superteddy landing in a flurry of paperwork.
The following strip shows Michael standing in his bedroom, with pain stars emanating from his read end--he puts one hand behind himself onto his tush while using the other to hold Superteddy, as he says, "It's not fair! Just 'cause I'm a kid you gotta pick on me! I didn't mean to chuck Superteddy into your papers, --honest, Ma-- HONEST!" Then he is thinking, "I was aiming at the back of Dad's head."
Not exactly punishment, but relevant to the swearing strip that ran earlier this week: Elly stoops to talk to a woebegone-looking Michael: "Michael, there are some words that you just cannot say! I know you hear grownups using bad words sometimes, but that's no reason for you to do the same!!"
Mike says, "That's not fair. To me, they're just words... Grownups know what they MEAN!"
In a strip where Michael has made Lizzie cry by pulling her hair, Elly grabs him by the shoulders and asks, "Michael, are you going to stop teasing Lizzie, or am I going to have to punish you?" And Michael says, "I don't know--what's the punishment?"
John has laid fresh cement in the walkway to the house, only to find a bunch of letter "M's," handprints and footprints. As he hauls Michael off by one arm, Michael asks, "How did you know it was ME?"
In the bathroom, Michael is saying to Elly, "It wasn't MY fault the water got on the floor..." Elly says, "It's not the water that upsets me, Mike. It's your lying about it! How can you tell me that your duck flooded the bathroom--when you know very well that you did it!" Finally, we see Mike using a towel to dry up the bathroom floor by the tub, as he glowers at his rubber duck and says, "..Next time you pull a trick like this... I'll rip out your squeaker."
aprilp_katje,
I love you too and I worship my continuity goddess. Let me see if I can count the punishments:
1. Holding Mike by the shoulders and lecturing
2. Mike prefers mom weaker spankings.
3. Mike gets spanked for Super Teddy aimed at tax records.
4. Elly lectures Mike about bad words.
5. Elly grabs Mike by the shoulders after he made Lizzie cry, while Mike points out that at least some of her punishments are ineffective.
6. John hauls Mike off by one arm
7. Mike cleans up a bathroom.
Total: 2 spankings, 2 lectures, 3 shoulder or arm grabs, 1 bathroom cleaning. If I compare that to what Mike has done this week and last week, we are about even.
This is like a forensic exercise called "Just how and why did Michael Patterson go so terribly wrong. ;)
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