New Trends in Old Strips
One of the more interesting things about looking over old reprints with the critical eye of 30 years is when you see trends that you had previously never noticed. With today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse, I saw a new trend. Just like in the strip reprinted on November 30, 2008; we have a sequence where John attempts to parent while sitting on the old green-striped chesterfield, does a miserable job of it, thinks he has done a great job and Elly makes no comment one way or the other about it. In fact, Elly is completely silent in both strips.
In these strips, we see that John Patterson has flaws and he usually makes some kind of ironic statement which indirectly points out what that flaw is. It is unusual because it puts it on the reader to make a moral judgment about John as opposed to what happened in the later strips when the Pattersons would make moral judgments about other characters in the strip. It is almost as if over time, Lynn Johnston grew to trust the judgment of her readers less, and felt the need to have some character spell out the moral in words, to make sure that everyone got exactly why someone did something that was wrong. In my mind that is a huge error because, as we have learned, what Lynn Johnston considers to be the moral of a story is oftentimes very different from the way I would interpret the moral to be. It’s better for the reader to draw their own conclusion than to peer into the moral fabric of Lynn Johnston.
In today’s reprint, the joke is that John thinks his family is communicating when they watch television together. I might think that the indirect comment is that a family who watches something together is not truly communicating. However, I noticed that the TV program that the kids are watching is one with a lot of guns shooting. In the mind of Lynn Johnston, it could well turn out to be that she believes the program with guns shooting is bad because it features policemen. Lynn has done enough strips over the years which feature the police in a negative light, this could well be the case. If Lynn had Elly make a comment about how she doesn’t like that program because of the police in it, then she would spell out how she thinks, while at the same time spell out to us how she feels about the police. How she handled it in today’s is much better. Because she doesn’t spell it out, I think the joke is about how watching TV is not communication. I don’t get the impression that Lynn Johnston is mentally disturbed and has issues with law enforcement.
In these strips, we see that John Patterson has flaws and he usually makes some kind of ironic statement which indirectly points out what that flaw is. It is unusual because it puts it on the reader to make a moral judgment about John as opposed to what happened in the later strips when the Pattersons would make moral judgments about other characters in the strip. It is almost as if over time, Lynn Johnston grew to trust the judgment of her readers less, and felt the need to have some character spell out the moral in words, to make sure that everyone got exactly why someone did something that was wrong. In my mind that is a huge error because, as we have learned, what Lynn Johnston considers to be the moral of a story is oftentimes very different from the way I would interpret the moral to be. It’s better for the reader to draw their own conclusion than to peer into the moral fabric of Lynn Johnston.
In today’s reprint, the joke is that John thinks his family is communicating when they watch television together. I might think that the indirect comment is that a family who watches something together is not truly communicating. However, I noticed that the TV program that the kids are watching is one with a lot of guns shooting. In the mind of Lynn Johnston, it could well turn out to be that she believes the program with guns shooting is bad because it features policemen. Lynn has done enough strips over the years which feature the police in a negative light, this could well be the case. If Lynn had Elly make a comment about how she doesn’t like that program because of the police in it, then she would spell out how she thinks, while at the same time spell out to us how she feels about the police. How she handled it in today’s is much better. Because she doesn’t spell it out, I think the joke is about how watching TV is not communication. I don’t get the impression that Lynn Johnston is mentally disturbed and has issues with law enforcement.
posted by howard at 11:41 PM
10 Comments:
I don’t get the impression that Lynn Johnston is mentally disturbed and has issues with law enforcement.
Neither do I. But I can't help but get the impression that Lynn Johnston thinks (or thought, back in the '80s) that violent TV shows with lots of gunplay was/is OK for toddlers and five year olds to watch for some reason - and I find this rather disturbing.
howard,
It’s better for the reader to draw their own conclusion than to peer into the moral fabric of Lynn Johnston.
That's for sure; this way, we don't get reminded how looking through her fantasy bubble distorts how she sees the world. Her issues with law enforcement (based possibly on how unsympathetic a police constable was to her tragic plight when she simply HAD to lock Aaron out) are a case in point; time and again, we see a killjoy in a blue uniform standing in the way of the Pattersons wishing to visit mayhem on their evil enemies.
Anonymous,
But I can't help but get the impression that Lynn Johnston thinks (or thought, back in the '80s) that violent TV shows with lots of gunplay was/is OK for toddlers and five year olds to watch for some reason - and I find this rather disturbing.
If you are going to go that route, then you will notice that the program which ends up sending the kids to bed is “Farms of the Future”. That way you have “gunplay is OK for toddlers and 5-year-olds, but Farming and / or showing the potential future is not OK.” This would maintain Lynn’s well-established bias for the city (Corbeil) over the country (Lynn Lake). In either case, the point is made that the Pattersons are flawed, but it is the reader who makes the case and not the characters. You find that the gunplay for the kids at their ages is disturbing, but the Pattersons do not express an opinion at all. This would not be the case for later strips, where the Pattersons would watch a TV program and make a judgment of something because of the program or someone for watching the program.
DreadedCandiru2
Her issues with law enforcement (based possibly on how unsympathetic a police constable was to her tragic plight when she simply HAD to lock Aaron out) are a case in point; time and again, we see a killjoy in a blue uniform standing in the way of the Pattersons wishing to visit mayhem on their evil enemies.
Lynn loves the firemen, in the strip and also in real-life, letting them tromp around her house with their boots on. In the strip, the fireman was the guy hand-delivering Deanna’s burnt apartment stuff to the house, while April is slobbering over his looks.
I wonder how the Corbeil police took it when she did her Howard Bunt trial storyline and tore into them for their slowness to prosecute and then tore into the judicial system for being unjustly lenient, and her condemnation of Constable Paul Wright because of his job requirements.
howard,
I wonder how the Corbeil police took it when she did her Howard Bunt trial storyline and tore into them for their slowness to prosecute and then tore into the judicial system for being unjustly lenient, and her condemnation of Constable Paul Wright because of his job requirements.
Probably as well as the people of Lynn Lake took it when she referred to their city as a hotbed of adultery. Let's just say that the friendly folks at the local OPP detachment probably aren't fond of the dentist's crazy ex-wife.
Well, having been a kid in the 1980s, I can say that this was pretty typical parenting. I can't remember ever having been told I couldn't see something because of violence, and it never happened while at my friends' houses either. In fact, movies that were considered "kids movies" were often violent and scary. The original Star Wars trilogy was pretty violent, for example. ET had the threat of cops possibly willing to shoot kids (which Spielberg later took out, but was scary to me at age 6). Fairy Tale Theater was for kids, but I remember it being terrifying, what with all of the kidnappings and whatnot. I remember frequently running out of the TV room scared of something I saw on the tube that was intended for kids.
I don't think the worries about what your kid watched on TV really came in until the 1990s. Before that, as long as there was no sex in it, we were allowed to watch it. And sometimes even if there was some sex in it.
Yup, this looks like normal 1970s/1980s parenting to me.
qnjones, you mean like when I was eight and my parents took my brother and me to see JAWS? I still remember how terrified I was!
Violent shows weren't watched at my house, because I didn't like them and my parents didn't either. I liked Star Trek (cartoon violence), hated horror, and hated cop shows. We watched lots of Nick at Nite (Mr Ed!) and PBS. The first really violent TV show I saw was I, Claudius when it was re-run on PBS. I think I was 13 or so.
Anyway, even beyond violent shows being watched by toddlers, this wasn't parenting in my household. My parents would never be so incredibly moronic as to think they had "communicated" with me or each other by sitting around staring at the TV all night. We tended to talk a lot even while watching TV, but it wasn't like John's, "yay, we're doing great because we've watched TV and now my wife is completely ignoring me still but I don't notice" imbecility.
I was referring only to the TV shows that were watched in front of the kids, not the communication thing.
OMG, yes, Jaws! Every kid I knew saw Jaws, it was almost treated like a children's film!
My kids have seen Jaws. They thought the final scene with Bruce the shark was very funny. I have to admit the special effects were not so hot with giant rubber sharks in those days.
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