Thinking Things Through
I have this image in my head of one of Lynn Johnston’s workers dropping the line, “It’s OK if snow gets in my hair, because it hides the gray.” I can see Lynn telling the worker she’s going to use the joke in For Better or For Worse and she says, “OK”. Lynn then decides to use the joke in today’s strip with Anthony dropping the line, even though I believe Anthony is Liz’s age of 26 and Anthony has blonde hair, making it difficult to see gray in the first place.
All I can is that at least Lynn Johnston thought this sequence through enough to make sure Anthony wasn’t wearing a hat, like Elizabeth and Françoise are, so snow could actually land on his head. I sometimes wonder if Lynn Johnston just gets so excited about something, she just has to do it without thinking whether or not it will fit, or make sense. That's happened to me before, certainly. I get a bee in my bonnet, and I have to do something, no matter how ridiculous it is.
I remember the odd sequence with Connie Poirier and Iris, where the Connie Poirier reprint strips were thrown in at random. I remember just this past week where Anthony Caine's appearance altered from panel-to-panel. Does Lynn Johnston get so excited about the things she is doing, she simply cannot think them through so they make sense? Can she not draw something she is excited about without considering the possibility of correcting it?
I remember seeing the CBC documentary where she showed how she drew the pencils for a strip, and it was so haphazard, and loose. I thought it must have been the way she did it for the sake of the documentary, but now I begin to wonder, if that's not the way she does it every time. So in today's For Better or For Worse, I have the impression Lynn wants to tell a joke, and nothing is going to stop her.
All I can is that at least Lynn Johnston thought this sequence through enough to make sure Anthony wasn’t wearing a hat, like Elizabeth and Françoise are, so snow could actually land on his head. I sometimes wonder if Lynn Johnston just gets so excited about something, she just has to do it without thinking whether or not it will fit, or make sense. That's happened to me before, certainly. I get a bee in my bonnet, and I have to do something, no matter how ridiculous it is.
I remember the odd sequence with Connie Poirier and Iris, where the Connie Poirier reprint strips were thrown in at random. I remember just this past week where Anthony Caine's appearance altered from panel-to-panel. Does Lynn Johnston get so excited about the things she is doing, she simply cannot think them through so they make sense? Can she not draw something she is excited about without considering the possibility of correcting it?
I remember seeing the CBC documentary where she showed how she drew the pencils for a strip, and it was so haphazard, and loose. I thought it must have been the way she did it for the sake of the documentary, but now I begin to wonder, if that's not the way she does it every time. So in today's For Better or For Worse, I have the impression Lynn wants to tell a joke, and nothing is going to stop her.
posted by howard at 10:49 PM
14 Comments:
That certainly explains her saying 'Get a life' in the podcast, doesn't it? By expecting the strip to make sense, she thinks we're trying to destroy the 'spontaneity' that drives her creativity. It also explains why we're supposed to approve of Elizabeth's throwing the life she built for herself in Mtigwaki away on a whim or Michael's out-of-the-blue departure from Portrait magazine. In Lynn's mind, good things happen if you follow your inconstant heart instead of being enslaved to your mind.
Well, Lynn has been amply rewarded for throwing this stuff out. Problem is, she was at the right place at the right time. What worked years ago, looks amateurish. Fans have also gotten sharper, which is why she never really had to make sense before, and now finds herself tripping over those little "throw-a-way" things. Unfortunately, showing Granthony lusting after Elizabeth throughout his engagement and marriage, Elizabeth screaming "wait" and deciding to leave Mtig after leading Paul on for months have not been forgotten by the more astute readers.
Oh, yes. "Get a life" is Lynn's take on "readers expect too much from me now." Yes, we expect a coherent story and character development that makes sense--Lynn set herself up when she decided to make the strip "realistic".
DJ
DreadedCandiru2
That certainly explains her saying 'Get a life' in the podcast, doesn't it?
As I recollect, “Get a life” was directly in reaction to her comment about people nitpicking over the details of her strip. I have some difficulty with this, because there is a certain element of art where the attention to details makes a huge difference. I remember my wife’s comment when she saw an old TV game show that involved drawing pictures to convey a message to a team, who had to guess what the message was based on the pictures. On one particular episode, one of the participants was a professional artist, and my wife remarked that the artist wasn’t that much better at the game than the other participants. This was true, but I had to point out to my wife, that a lot of times the difference is that an artist is willing to take the time to turn that a little sketch into a full-blown picture.
Another example I remember is from watching a critical take on the first Indiana Jones movie, hearing the critic say, “Look at this scene with the snakes. It doesn’t creep you out because of the snakes until you get to this scene where the director shows a snake crawling around the shoe the heroine dropped.” Then the critic made the point it was those details which turned the movie from an average action adventure movie into a great one.
So, I am little disappointed when I see Lynn Johnston do the “Get a life” comment about details.
DJ,
Unfortunately, showing Granthony lusting after Elizabeth throughout his engagement and marriage, Elizabeth screaming "wait" and deciding to leave Mtig after leading Paul on for months have not been forgotten by the more astute readers.
Those kinds of moments turned the Anthony and Liz story into a story about obsessive love, instead of a story about two nice kids who belong together. I find that I have less difficulty if I think of the two characters as self-obsessed, like in last week when Anthony is too busy helping Liz do dishes to help his daughter to bed, or when Anthony was too busy trying to kiss Liz to again help his daughter to bed (until Liz told him to go do it.) Those moments seems well in character with that view of Anthony.
Lynn set herself up when she decided to make the strip "realistic".
That is definitely true. People have a different opinion of “gag-a-day” strips than they do of ones trying to tell a story over months (or in Lynn’s case, over decades).
Her failure to pay attention to the details is, as we can both agree, what, of course, caused what could have been the story of two nice kids who belong togther into a story of nasty people enslaved by a ruinous obsession. Since she pays more attention to what she wants to say than how she's saying it, she thinks we are asking far too much of her.
Since she pays more attention to what she wants to say than how she's saying it, she thinks we are asking far too much of her.
This is the part that is dumbfounding. Lynn Johnston was the one who wrote and drew Liz Patterson getting the e-mail April about Anthony Caine’s divorce and saying “Wait!” She is the one who wrote Liz Patterson then within the same month making plans to leave Mtigwaki without telling her boyfriend Paul, until Vivian Crane told her she should. How could the person who wrote and drew those strips have been thinking, “Oh, Liz got homesick and decided to leave, just like I got tired of living in Lynn Lake.” That’s a pretty significant diversion from “what she wants to say” vs. “how she said it.”
In the real world, a woman in Liz's position would have rationalized away an impulsive, stupid decision like that after the fact, falsely ascribing to herself a homesickness that she didn't come close to having beforehand. Lynn seems to have done something much like that when she did the post "WAIT!!!" strips by pretending that Liz was homesick all along and any indication that she wanted to stay would have to be ignored. This would work out great if we were reading Arcihe comics that didn't have to make any coherent sense but since the Pattersons are supposed to be real, the cheats gag-a-day people get to use don't really work.
I really can't figure out Lynn's thinking on the inclusion of such repulsive behaviors in Liz and Anthony. My only guesses are: (1) Lynn has absolutely no morals or ethics and considers nothing wrong with lying to wives/boyfriends or obsessing about someone else when married (2)Lynn doesn't like the characters and doesn't care how flawed they appear (3) Lynn doesn't like her readers and wants to see how much she can manipulate them.
DJ
DreadedCandiru2
I can get it that Liz might have rationalized away her decision to chase after Anthony as homesickness to explain. What I found more confusing was the interview where Lynn Johnston said the same thing as Liz’s motivation. I would have thought the person who wrote in the "WAIT!!!" strip would know why the "WAIT!!!" strip was there. It implied that the homesickness excuse was the actual excuse Lynn intended all along as Liz’s motivation for leaving Mtigwaki. I was dumbfounded because it appeared to me it was not. There was a definite cause-and-effect between “Anthony’s divorced” to “I am leaving Mtigwaki” that Lynn put in there, and how could the author of the material be unaware of the material she did herself?
DJ
I have a different handle on “Lynn's thinking on the inclusion of such repulsive behaviors in Liz and Anthony”.
In the standard romance story of the nice boy and girl who are meant to be together, we have to see the following elements:
a. The partner with the nice girl or the nice boy is shown to be not very good for the nice boy or nice girl.
b. There have to be chance meetings where the nice girl and nice boy are together, so you can see how much better together they are together than their partners.
c. When the chance meetings occur, the nice girl and nice boy have to be wholly blameless in putting them together.
Lynn’s version deviated from this standard form, and each place where it deviated, it caused Liz or Anthony to be less appealing. Just a few examples:
1. Constable Paul Wright. He was played as a good guy. Eventually he cheated, but not until he had been royally abused by the heroine’s flakiness in her demands for job relocation and flaunting old boyfriends at him. Lynn was stuck pretty hard on this character, because she did not want to portray one of the venerated First Nations peoples as bad. However, she completely missed the opportunity to show why the good Constable would be bad for Liz, which didn’t involve all the job transfer junk. (a) The man is a policeman, and his involvement with dangerous things could have put her off. (b) She visits his family and they hate her. (c) She sees him dancing at a pow-wow and speaking Ojibway to his friends and realizes just how far apart they are in their cultures.
2. Thérèse Caine. Her evil was based on her excessive jealousy, which we could see was justified from the moment Liz started taking dance lessons to show her up at her wedding. There are so many easier ways to show an unpleasant woman, who is not right for Anthony. Lynn tried to go to this in the last retcon, where she showed Thérèse was rock-n-roll to Anthony’s country, and she picked on him. If she had only done this at the beginning, it would have gone much better.
3. The chance meetings. No problem when Gordon, Mike, or Elly put them together; but there were far too many occasions where Anthony is just plain stalking Liz.
In the spirit of the season, I challenge the snarkers of FBORFW to make one positive comment about tomorrow’s strip.
Good luck!
Anon NYC
Anon NYC,
Challenge accepted. Now is this Duck Season or Rabbit Season we are talking about?
FYI,
Check this link for updates on Rod and Lynn's personal life, if you are interested in such things.
Howard Bunt, shut up!
Oops! I said a bad word. Now I have to put $.25 in the charity box....!
Anon NYC
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