Sunday, November 29, 2009

Everything Old is New Again

With today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse, we get to see Lynn Johnston blend together a number of her favourite themes in the new-runs:

1. I hate advertising.
a. John’s dislike of junk mail advertising
b. Elly’s dislike of the advertising for Whiffex 3.
c. Elly’s dislike of advertising for Hinkley’s Handy Haven

2. If the kids nag, Elly gives in.
a. Michael nags Elly to get treats in the store.
b. Michael nags Elly to go to the costume store.
c. Michael and Lizzie nag Elly to let them go outside.

3. The Pattersons have entertainment equipment which did not exist in this form in 1980. Today’s example is the TV remote control.
a. John and Ted go into a sports bar with a flat screen TV.
b. Michael and John play using almost modern video game boxes and controllers.

Despite all this repetition, the part of the strip that works for me is Elly discovering that children love repetition. My kids can watch the same movie or the same TV show over and over again. They can listen to the same songs over and over again. They can eat the same foods over and over again. They hate new things. They love the familiar and the repeated. Now you could argue that with Michael being 6-years old, Elly should have figured this out by now. However, when my daughter is watching an episode of iCarly, and I know that I have seen her watch the same episode at least 3 times, it still boggles my mind that she can stand to watch it again, instead of turning to another channel to see if there something else on she hasn’t seen.

Ironically, even though this is the part of the strip that works for me, Lynn Johnston seems to have missed it with her punch line: The most successful sales tool is repetition. I suppose I should take it for granted that if Lynn Johnston put something in her strip which was relevant to my life, it was by accident.

6 Comments:

Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

I have the distinct impression that if Lynn were to have somehow figured out that children love the familiar and fear the new, she'd whine about how unfair it is; thankfully, she can't imagine how the world looks to a kid and simply has Elly get gobsmacked by the obvious. Again.

10:04 PM  
Blogger howard said...

There is a fair portion of Elly whining about how unfair it is in today's strip. I think your impression is entirely correct.

5:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Aren't you not supposed to let your kids get their way all the time, Elly? I mean, my parents were reasonably indulgent but even they said no occasionally. I guess you have to pick your battles or something.

6:57 AM  
Blogger howard said...

This has been one of the strangest new trends in the strip. It used to be new-run Elly was a hardnose who wouldn't let her son play in the sprinkler, and whose daughter feared telling her that she peed her pants. Now she lets the kids get away with anything. I don't understand it.

10:13 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Above all things, Lynn feels that Elly works best if seen as a victim.

By making Elly such a raging battleaxe/hard-ass, it was extremely difficult for even Lynn to buy her as a continually perplexed li'l lost lamb.

So, by showing her as a perpetually unhappy push-over, she's hoping some of the old vulnerability will return.

2:47 PM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

It used to be new-run Elly was a hardnose who wouldn't let her son play in the sprinkler, and whose daughter feared telling her that she peed her pants. Now she lets the kids get away with anything. I don't understand it.

Maybe this was Lynn's way of reacting to criticisms that Elly was being too hardnosed. It's as though LJ can only do extremes.

4:04 PM  

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