I Want My Mom (Hint. Hint.)
About 3 minutes into the 1980 CBC interview with Lynn Johnston is her physical re-enactment of today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse. It’s fun to see that interview considering that 50% of the strips we have seen over the last year came from Lynn during that time period.
As for the claims of Elly Patterson, they are pretty much the case. We have seen her take care of the kids when they were sick, read them stories (and maybe not rocking them to sleep), and we have seen Elly rub John’s back. The part which strikes me at this point, after 30 years of observing the strip is the phrase “I want my mom!”
In later years, Grandma Marian became a port-mortem, sentimentalized favourite, but it was a rarer occurrence when the real-life Grandma Marian was still alive. However, when it comes to illness, Grandma Marian did still receive positive notice from Elly Patterson as in this strip. Whatever ill feeling Lynn had towards her mother, she seemed to appreciate the positive attention her mother gave her when she was sick.
At the heart of the matter though, is the idea that no one takes care of a sick mother. With my wife, taking care of her when she was sick during our courtship years, was a significant test as to whether I was husband material. Although we saw John make arrangements for the kids in Saturday's strip, I notice that even in the new-run strip on Friday, John does little more for Elly than tell her to go to bed and promise her that she can take tomorrow off (a promise he fails to keep).
After all, it’s one thing to say that your husband doesn’t help you with the kids or around the house, but even the traditional 1950s husband would step up when his wife was sick. Nevertheless, I am sure that many men don’t do this for their wives and let them fend for themselves even when they are sick. No doubt today’s strip strikes those women where they live. This is a significant slam against John Patterson. After all, the line is:
For better or for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish;
from this day forward
until death do us part.
John is failing the sickness part, and back in the 1980 CBC interview, this, of all strips, is the one that Lynn Johnston chose to re-enact. Even 29 years later looking at it, I feel for Dr. Rod Johnston. I can imagine the first time someone said to him, "Dr. Johnston. What kind of doctor are you that you don't take care of your wife?"
As for the claims of Elly Patterson, they are pretty much the case. We have seen her take care of the kids when they were sick, read them stories (and maybe not rocking them to sleep), and we have seen Elly rub John’s back. The part which strikes me at this point, after 30 years of observing the strip is the phrase “I want my mom!”
In later years, Grandma Marian became a port-mortem, sentimentalized favourite, but it was a rarer occurrence when the real-life Grandma Marian was still alive. However, when it comes to illness, Grandma Marian did still receive positive notice from Elly Patterson as in this strip. Whatever ill feeling Lynn had towards her mother, she seemed to appreciate the positive attention her mother gave her when she was sick.
At the heart of the matter though, is the idea that no one takes care of a sick mother. With my wife, taking care of her when she was sick during our courtship years, was a significant test as to whether I was husband material. Although we saw John make arrangements for the kids in Saturday's strip, I notice that even in the new-run strip on Friday, John does little more for Elly than tell her to go to bed and promise her that she can take tomorrow off (a promise he fails to keep).
After all, it’s one thing to say that your husband doesn’t help you with the kids or around the house, but even the traditional 1950s husband would step up when his wife was sick. Nevertheless, I am sure that many men don’t do this for their wives and let them fend for themselves even when they are sick. No doubt today’s strip strikes those women where they live. This is a significant slam against John Patterson. After all, the line is:
For better or for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish;
from this day forward
until death do us part.
John is failing the sickness part, and back in the 1980 CBC interview, this, of all strips, is the one that Lynn Johnston chose to re-enact. Even 29 years later looking at it, I feel for Dr. Rod Johnston. I can imagine the first time someone said to him, "Dr. Johnston. What kind of doctor are you that you don't take care of your wife?"
posted by howard at 8:36 PM
11 Comments:
howard,
John is failing the sickness part, and back in the 1980 CBC interview, this, of all strips, is the one that Lynn Johnston chose to re-enact. Even 29 years later looking at it, I feel for Dr. Rod Johnston. I can imagine the first time someone said to him, "Dr. Johnston. What kind of doctor are you that you don't take care of your wife?"
I feel even sorrier for him; that's because whenever he came to her with complaints about how John's horrible behavior had real-life consequences on how people treated him, he was dismissed out of hand and told to get a life; the reason that so many letters that tell us to not take what we see the least bit seriously is that she doesn't want to have to admit that the strip has any negative impact on her family,
DC2
that's because whenever he came to her with complaints about how John's horrible behavior had real-life consequences on how people treated him, he was dismissed out of hand and told to get a life
I can imagine the response to Rod's complaint being, "Lighten up: it's just a comic strip!"
DreadedCandiru2,
I feel even sorrier for him; that's because whenever he came to her with complaints about how John's horrible behavior had real-life consequences on how people treated him, he was dismissed out of hand and told to get a life;
That might be true. I know that in one interview, Lynn mentioned that Rod asked her to ease up on him, and that did not happen. However, I also know that once Rod agreed to move from Lynn Lake, the character of John Patterson became less of an ass than he was during their Lynn Lake years. One of the reasons post-divorce Lynn Johnston may still be beating up on John Patterson is she knows what effect she had on her real-life husband when she beat up on him using the character in the past.
forworse,
I can imagine the response to Rod's complaint being, "Lighten up: it's just a comic strip!"
Possibly for Rod, although Lynn does like to tell the story about how she froze the ages of the characters for 3 years so they did not match that of her children exactly, at her children’s request. Of course, aprilp_katje has done a thorough analysis of the strip through the years and discovered there was no such 3-year freezing, but more like an “occasionally one year will take 2 years” over a long period of time. What Lynn takes credit for as her response to her children, could well have been Lynn ignoring her kids’ request, but accidentally forgetting what age the kid characters are.
I don't really see how freezing Mike and Liz's ages temporarily would have helped their real-life counterparts that much. After all, Aaron and Katie's classmates would still have known that their mother was the cartoonist who did FBOFW, and the correspondence between the comic strip children and the real children would still have been obvious, regardless of whether the events depicted in the strip had actually happened to Aaron and Katie.
Interesting interview.
I couldn't help but notice how Lynn had a workplace in the basement---just like Anthony's weird workplace with the baby jail.
Anthony sure seems to have become Lynn's avatar later on; single parent, ex-spouse who wants nothing to do with him and child....and of course just a perfect person.
Joshua
After all, Aaron and Katie's classmates would still have known that their mother was the cartoonist who did FBOFW, and the correspondence between the comic strip children and the real children would still have been obvious, regardless of whether the events depicted in the strip had actually happened to Aaron and Katie.
That’s a good point. This may fall into the category of something Lynn says in order to make herself feel better about what she was putting her children through, when she did true stories of their lives in her comic strip, which the people around them would recognize.
debjyn,
Anthony sure seems to have become Lynn's avatar later on; single parent, ex-spouse who wants nothing to do with him and child....and of course just a perfect person.
Especially when you add to that, Lynn used stories from her own romance with Rod as the basis for Anthony’s post-divorce romance with Elizabeth.
Now, I can understand that if your husband were the primary breadwinner and worked in a more corporate setting, he might be unable to take time off to care for his sick wife. (This happens quite frequently.) My husband and I have discussed what we'd do if I fell ill and he were unable, (no more sick days, busy time at work, etc.), to take time off to care for me. We are lucky enough to still live very near to our families, so we agreed that we'd ask my mother to come if I were sick, and my husband had to work. (Though, I'd probably mainly get her to care for the baby.) I could understand Rod being unable to get the day off to care for an ill Lynn, as well, if there were someone with some kind of serious dental emergency that needed to be seen to. However, this doesn't make much sense in John's case. He owns his own practice, so there's no boss to worry about, and he could always put off any non-essential dental work until Elly gets better, or pass clients off to other dentists. (Or so I imagine.)
However, this doesn't make much sense in John's case.
It looks like it made sense in the original, when Elly just had a bad cold or something. Now that her fever's supposed to be 104, it makes John look like a horrible person, and Elly that much more of a martyr. Of course, it also makes it look like she's had a bad fever for so long that she now has brain damage. That explains a lot in the coming years, though not her pre-illness personality.
Mana G,
However, this doesn't make much sense in John's case. He owns his own practice, so there's no boss to worry about, and he could always put off any non-essential dental work until Elly gets better, or pass clients off to other dentists.
It is certainly a common practice. I have had a number of doctor’s appointments cancelled at the last minute due to medical emergencies.
Post a Comment
<< Home