When April Met Johnnie
In all probability the discussion between Connie Poirier and Elly Patterson about young Michael Patterson on Saturday will lead into some 1979-80 strips about Michael starting on Monday. Normally, I would dread such a period; but this week I will be at the top of lovely Mt. Lemmon at the Camp Lawton Boy Scout Camp for a week and away from anything technological. So, I actually hope it is reprints, so I don’t miss any of the action.
Today’s For Better or For Worse strip is a strange one which caps off a whole week of strange. Mutilated heirloom dresses. Deanna demonstrating hitherto unknown sewing skills. Deanna’s lecture to Elizabeth about how she is not ready for the brutalities of married life. Deanna and Elizabeth squabbling over who can use Elly for a full-time babysitter / parent in order to prove which one is the worst mother or mother-to-be. The view of Connie Poirier’s side yard. Connie Poirier hitting new heights of ugly. And to top it all off, we have 8 solid panels of John Patterson having an orgasm in a massage chair. That’s pretty long for a man-gasm; unless John is faking it, like Meg Ryan did in When Harry Met Sally. I believe April Patterson is taking the Billy Crystal part.
On the one hand, it is easy to tear about the basic idea behind today’s strip as stupid. Or the easy target is to make a joke about how long it has been since John has gotten any, and that’s the reason for his extreme reaction. However, I will note that what we have here is a passive Patterson letting his emotions run free. For 8 solid panels in a For Better or For Worse strip, we can see genuine joy on the face of a Patterson. Really, how long has it been since there has been a happy Patterson featured so prominently in the strip? Too long, I would say. So, John Patterson, if you are able to throw off those Patterson shackles and enjoy yourself to the fullest, then I say, here’s to you. Don’t let April repress you with her embarrassment. Be happy! Enjoy life! I am so glad to see a happy Patterson, I don’t care if the reason he is happy is he had an orgasm while fully clothed in a public massage chair.
Today’s For Better or For Worse strip is a strange one which caps off a whole week of strange. Mutilated heirloom dresses. Deanna demonstrating hitherto unknown sewing skills. Deanna’s lecture to Elizabeth about how she is not ready for the brutalities of married life. Deanna and Elizabeth squabbling over who can use Elly for a full-time babysitter / parent in order to prove which one is the worst mother or mother-to-be. The view of Connie Poirier’s side yard. Connie Poirier hitting new heights of ugly. And to top it all off, we have 8 solid panels of John Patterson having an orgasm in a massage chair. That’s pretty long for a man-gasm; unless John is faking it, like Meg Ryan did in When Harry Met Sally. I believe April Patterson is taking the Billy Crystal part.
On the one hand, it is easy to tear about the basic idea behind today’s strip as stupid. Or the easy target is to make a joke about how long it has been since John has gotten any, and that’s the reason for his extreme reaction. However, I will note that what we have here is a passive Patterson letting his emotions run free. For 8 solid panels in a For Better or For Worse strip, we can see genuine joy on the face of a Patterson. Really, how long has it been since there has been a happy Patterson featured so prominently in the strip? Too long, I would say. So, John Patterson, if you are able to throw off those Patterson shackles and enjoy yourself to the fullest, then I say, here’s to you. Don’t let April repress you with her embarrassment. Be happy! Enjoy life! I am so glad to see a happy Patterson, I don’t care if the reason he is happy is he had an orgasm while fully clothed in a public massage chair.
posted by howard at 11:01 PM
9 Comments:
howard,
Too bad the only reason John is allowed to enjoy himself is because Lynn hates Rod. If she liked and respected him, he'd be complaining about the new-fangled abomination like a good little Luddite.
I ope you have a pleasant week. It's bound to be better than what we're about to see.
Wow, I wasn't even thinking of orgasm until you mentioned it.
Ugh! Now I can't erase my mental image of John having an orgasm! Ew! I think I'll be sick for the rest of the day.
I am sure we're about to see reprints, so enjoy your trip!
An interesting way to think of this strip: John is showing naked, unabashed enjoyment of sensual pleasure (massage) in public, and April, acting as an Elly stand-in, is horrified and embarrassed. Good Pattersons do not show enjoyment or pleasure in public and avoid items like the Massage-O-Matic chair as contributing to loose morals. Remember, if you have time on your hands, you should make housework for yourself to do, and then complain about housework!
The IRL parallel? Rod took off to enjoy a rather public sexual affair with a woman in their social circle, thereby humiliating Lynn. Does April here stand in for Lynn, who is delivering a message to Rod about how much he embarrassed her?
To be fair to April, I think this would be a legitimately embarrassing situation (imagine your dad making the o-sounds and faces in a massage chair at a store). o_0
Hey, qnjones, I believe you got a comment posted to Coffee Talk 6/23/08 (Lana L.)? Well done. :)
I have been reading FBoFW on and off since the mid-1980s. It has always been one of my favorite strips, up there with Calvin and Hobbs and The Far Side. I grew up abroad, in continental Europe, and FBoFW portrayed a version of my home and my culture. It showed a loving, English-speaking, Anglo family. This was a family that dressed casually and valued children, domestic warmth, and togetherness.
FBoFW and the culture it drew from were a far cry from my expatriate observations of a formal adulthood (no woman would be caught in public without high heels, EVER), where children were tucked out of sight, ate separately in the kitchen, and sometimes used formal address when speaking to their parents.
FBoFW focused on the small ups and downs of North American family life, and it rang very true to me. I followed the strip happily for many years, even after I returned to the U.S.
My first glimmerings of disquiet came when I was pregnant with my first child. Michael and Dee had had Meredith a few years before, and Dee was pregnant with Robin. I was eager to read about their experience with a new baby, to see the ups and downs of family life that I might expect to see myself in a few months.
I had bought "David, We're Pregnant," and enjoyed it very much during my own pregnancy -- it rang very true to life. It showing a well-balanced and humorous look at pregnancy. I looked forward to the same insight into new parenthood.
I was disappointed. To my dismay, I read strip after strip about Meredith and eventually Robin, and ALL of them were negative. Having children, it seemed, was a horrible experience -- sleepless and miserable and thankless. The children themselves were horrible. All the humor revolved around how awful children were. I kept waiting for a moment of sweetness, of love, to lighten the tone of these stories, but it never happened.
I now have two small children, just like Michael and Dee, and my dissatisfaction with Lynn's portrayal of a young family has done nothing but grow. I discovered that having a baby and a toddler is indeed tiring, but it is also joyful and rewarding -- something FBoFW did not portray.
As I raise my own small children, and interact with many more, I also became aware that Meredith, Robin, and Francie are psychologically bizarre. They do not behave like little children. They are far too advanced in many ways -- their language skills and cognition as toddlers were more like a 6 or 7 year old child. Francie, at age 2 or 3, was using full sentences and expressing abstract fears about the future of her family at an age when most toddlers are worried about whether they will get milk or juice in their sippy cups. Robin, too, was using full sentences when he should have been in the low-baud modem phase of toddler communication ("Outside! Tickle!"). At other times, Robin seemed strangely delayed. Their drawings are irregular, too, sometimes appearing as though they have adult heads (mini-Michael and mini-Dee) on strangely shrunken bodies.
All in all, the children did not ring true to me. I flinch whenever I see a strip about them. They are so far from real children that they are almost monstrous at times.
Taken at face value, the children might be geniuses or might be developmentally delayed, but I don't think that is Lynn's intention. I think she intends to show normal children, to show the ups and downs of family life as she always has, but she is so far removed from that life that she has lost touch. Her memories of her children's childhoods are probably very compressed, and she can no longer remember the abilities of the toddler vs. the preschooler, the differences in behavior between age 2 and age 3, or age 3 and age 4.
The next thing that disenchanted me about the strip was the implosion of the Patterson family. Instead of branching out, the adult children were sucked back into the family sphere. Liz and Michael were both yanked back from their independent lives to live under their parents' roof. It was nauseating. Michael and Liz were infantilized, rammed backwards in time into the narrow life they had left. It was like watching the destruction of their adulthood, their independence, watching someone take a bird and try to force it back into the nest, clipping its wings, trying to reconstruct the eggshell around it.
The Liz-Anthony pairing was just icing on the cake. Liz abandons a blossoming adulthood for a pseudo arranged marriage with a loser from her childhood, a man who ruined his first marriage and has a lot of baggage, including a child. Lynn portrays their relationship as mature, predestined, and beautiful, but I see it as depressing, claustrophobic, blighted, and doomed.
I no longer identify with the FBoFW world. The characters no longer resonate for me. I am ready for the strip to end. I rather wish it had ended before this, so I did not have to watch this train wreck happen to a family that I had grown to love.
anonymous,
It was like watching the destruction of their adulthood, their independence, watching someone take a bird and try to force it back into the nest, clipping its wings, trying to reconstruct the eggshell around it.
That's a disturbing image; unfortunately, it is the correct one. What's more horrific is the number of people who either think the infantilization of Mike and Liz is somehow good or, more likely, deny that it's happened.
w00t, I got a comment over on the FBOFW coffee slog.
I signed it Mimi R. It questions why suddenly Ellie/Lynne is anti-daycare, when it was good enough for her own daughters, and why you'd have to slice up a "perfect" heirloom wedding dress.
I recently found this blog, so I did what I always so and went back to read the archives. I started in the 2006 archives. Wow, it is simply amazing how you predicted pretty much everything that would happen. Well, perhaps not amazing, but sad. This comic has gotten to the point where you can literally say everything that's going to happen in the end. No surprises. No shocks. You predicted the fire, how the break up was going to happen, everything. And yet Lynn still goes on the same track. I keep hoping that she blindsides us with something completely shocking, like finding out Anthony was originally a woman or SOMETHING that throws the Pattersons out of whack. Something, anything. Have April run away from home and live on the streets. But don't, please don't, end this strip the way everyone is predicting, Lynn.
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