Hallowe’en 2009 Part III
After our brief break to look for smutty books in contemporary English, we return back at Hallowe’en.
Elly may look gobsmacked at Michael with the pumpkin innards in his hands (or possibly at Michael’s rapidly receding hairline or his borrowing Charlie Brown’s wardrobe), but to me the most shocking thing is in Panel 1, where we actually see Elly Patterson spending a happy time reading to her daughter (now reduced back in age thanks to Lynn Johnston pulling this reprint of For Better or For Worse from an earlier strip). It is a rare moment when Elly spends time with her children, much less enjoys that time. I want to drink it in for a moment. Ahhh! Now back to panels 2 and 3.
As for digging out pumpkins, when my kids were 6, they could not have done it. I have been the scraper of the inside of the pumpkin up for my kids until the last few years when my kids got big enough to do it themselves. Some of those pumpkin innards don’t want to come out easily. I am impressed that 6-year-old Michael could do, and that he could manage to keep the mass of it together long enough to carry it. I doubt I could do that. That stuff would just slide right out of my hands.
Of course, in my house, the pumpkins being cleaned out are kept close to the sink with the disposal. I am a little surprised that Elly would set Michael to work cleaning out a pumpkin without making sure he knew where to put the insides. Well, perhaps, “a little surprised” is not the right term. I should say, “I am impressed at how many ways Lynn Johnston has found to show what a poor parent Elly Patterson is.”
Elly may look gobsmacked at Michael with the pumpkin innards in his hands (or possibly at Michael’s rapidly receding hairline or his borrowing Charlie Brown’s wardrobe), but to me the most shocking thing is in Panel 1, where we actually see Elly Patterson spending a happy time reading to her daughter (now reduced back in age thanks to Lynn Johnston pulling this reprint of For Better or For Worse from an earlier strip). It is a rare moment when Elly spends time with her children, much less enjoys that time. I want to drink it in for a moment. Ahhh! Now back to panels 2 and 3.
As for digging out pumpkins, when my kids were 6, they could not have done it. I have been the scraper of the inside of the pumpkin up for my kids until the last few years when my kids got big enough to do it themselves. Some of those pumpkin innards don’t want to come out easily. I am impressed that 6-year-old Michael could do, and that he could manage to keep the mass of it together long enough to carry it. I doubt I could do that. That stuff would just slide right out of my hands.
Of course, in my house, the pumpkins being cleaned out are kept close to the sink with the disposal. I am a little surprised that Elly would set Michael to work cleaning out a pumpkin without making sure he knew where to put the insides. Well, perhaps, “a little surprised” is not the right term. I should say, “I am impressed at how many ways Lynn Johnston has found to show what a poor parent Elly Patterson is.”
posted by howard at 10:10 PM
7 Comments:
I am a little surprised that Elly would set Michael to work cleaning out a pumpkin without making sure he knew where to put the insides. Well, perhaps, “a little surprised” is not the right term. I should say, “I am impressed at how many ways Lynn Johnston has found to show what a poor parent Elly Patterson is.”
I'll be impressed just as much by the letters on Coffee Talk that try to absolve Elly for her failure here; it's sort of obvious that somehow or other John will be blamed for this. I have faith that the Inmen will assume that he was with Mike and told him to clean up the gooey mess.
now reduced back in age thanks to Lynn Johnston pulling this reprint of For Better or For Worse from an earlier strip
You're right--she plucked this one out of collection #1. ::sigh::
Michael’s [. . . ] borrowing Charlie Brown’s wardrobe
I keep meaning to say--I hate it when LJ puts Pattersons in an homage-to-Schulz zig-zag. One thing I'd noticed by going through the collections is that she kept doing this over the run of the strip. Just... No, it's not cute, Lynn.
“I am impressed at how many ways Lynn Johnston has found to show what a poor parent Elly Patterson is.”
She seems to have an infinite number of ways to demonstrate this. Mike was in kindergarten when she first ran this strip. Who leaves a child that young in charge of scooping out a pumpkin? Only Elly.
DreadedCandiru2,
I'll be impressed just as much by the letters on Coffee Talk that try to absolve Elly for her failure here; it's sort of obvious that somehow or other John will be blamed for this. I have faith that the Inmen will assume that he was with Mike and told him to clean up the gooey mess.
The psychology of it is very odd. Pumpkin mess-making is a minor thing. I was amazed by the number of people who wrote into Coffee Talk saying how it was a normal thing to feed their toddlers alcohol. There is something about liking a strip that predisposes the readers to project good behaviour on the characters in the strip, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Once I got the idea into my head that Elly and John are bad parents, it made reading the strip a lot easier, aside from my one panel of shock in today’s strip.
aprilp_katje,
I keep meaning to say--I hate it when LJ puts Pattersons in an homage-to-Schulz zig-zag. One thing I'd noticed by going through the collections is that she kept doing this over the run of the strip. Just... No, it's not cute, Lynn.
Although Lynn has gone on and on about how she and Charles Schulz were good friends, I often wonder about these early strips, which were done before she would have had an opportunity to meet him. When I was very young, I used to imitate an artist’s style of doing things, because I liked the way it looked. However, the zig-zag on the clothing doesn't really fit into that category. Why would Lynn be so keen on using this homage over and over? I wonder if this is less of an homage and more of a way to try to say, “Look! My kids in my strip are like the kids in Peanuts. Buy my strip.”
“Look! My kids in my strip are like the kids in Peanuts. Buy my strip.”
Maybe. And the grown-ups in her strips are also like the kids in Peanuts (since she was equally likely to have an adult in a zig-zaggy sweater). One of the early Sunday strips features John having opened a Christmas gift from Elly, which is... you guessed it... a zig-zag sweater. IIRC, it was a painful color combination--maybe maroon with a green zig-zag. Elly is telling John that it's okay if he doesn't like the sweater. He admits that he doesn't like it, and she ends up blowing a gasket and shrieking that it's not her fault that he has no taste.
aprilp_katje,
And the grown-ups in her strips are also like the kids in Peanuts (since she was equally likely to have an adult in a zig-zaggy sweater).
This could have some appeal also, since there are no adults in Peanuts and certainly the adults in For Better or For Worse are much more like the kids in Peanuts than they are the model adults in Dennis the Menace for example. With my kids, if there is one product which is successful, then there are a whole host of imitators that pop up. My kids love Pokemon, and then there was Digimon, clearly intended to attract the Pokemon kids with same-style drawings and plotlines. According to Lynn’s podcast, her strip was picked up by more than 100 papers immediately, but it makes me wonder what the marketing was for it. I can imagine:
1. It’s like Peanuts except with adults.
2. It’s like Dennis the Menace, except the mom is a mom with flaws.
3. It’s like Cathy, except married with children.
4. It’s like The Lockhorns, except not as mean.
Before it was pointed out, I never saw the zig-zag sweater as a Peanuts thing. I think I did what so many of Johnston's readers do: I extrapolated something in my own life onto the sweaters that doesn't apply to the Pattersons at all. My grandmother was a wonderful knitter, and made us many very nice sweaters, some of which had zig-zag patterns. They were much prettier and more complicated than those in FBofW, but I just thought this was cartoonish simplification of a somewhat common style. But who in the Patterclan would make them?
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