Why Celebrate Mother’s Day?
Today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse is an odd strip for Mother’s Day, as Elly convinces Annie that she should insist on being honored for Mother’s Day by her husband. The nature of the Mother’s Day holiday is that it does fall on the father to provide the celebration. When the children are little, as Christopher Nichols is portrayed in the strip, they can do little. When they are older, the father can bankroll their efforts. Once the children are old enough to be money earners they could provide the Mother’s Day celebration themselves, but that is a very brief period of time. After that, the children will be out of the house and Mother’s Day falls back on the shoulders of the father, with the hope that the children will have the decency to call from wherever it is they are living. Since Lynn Johnston is now cut off from the fathers of both her children, for her, Mother’s Day celebrations depend entirely upon her children. She appears to have a good relationship with her daughter, with whom she went to Thailand, and so I expect Mother’s Day will fall on the shoulder of Kate for awhile. Lynn’s aloneness on Mother’s Day was reflected very well in the Mother’s Day strip from 2008, which showed Elly essentially celebrating Mother’s Day by herself. Obviously that’s Lynn and not Elly, who ended the strip with all her children living within walking distance of her home.
Today’s Mother’s Day strips shows Lynn’s first original Mother's Day strip work since then. If Lynn had written this strip back in 1981, you probably would have seen a strip featuring Elly being celebrating by John, Mike and Lizzie. Instead we have an odd strip where Elly tries to convince Annie Nichols to insist that her husband Steve honor her for Mother’s Day by canceling his bowling night and taking her to dinner. The logic Elly uses is that mothers’ efforts affect the future and that Annie is doing such a good job. Taken for what it is, the strip appears to be a message strip for all those husbands out there, that they should celebrate their wives as mothers. However, the last panel shows Annie calling Steve up on the phone to tell him this. Why wouldn’t Steve be home on a Sunday for her to tell him directly? I suspect this is a connection between Annie and real-life Lynn Johnston who has to call up whomever it is she wants to celebrate Mother’s Day with her.
There is also a self-congratulatory aspect to the strip which has an odd ring to it. Unlike this latter day self-congratulatory strip where Elly and Connie talk about what wonderful moms they were, here we have Elly complimenting Annie Nichols, without also a laying a compliment on herself. This is very odd for Elly. I don’t think she has complimented another mother on anything for the entire set of new-runs, and certainly does not fit in well with the most recent set of reprints from last week where Elly and Annie were at each other’s throats over child-rearing.
I think a little of this has to do with the character of Steve Nichols, who ended up being known as the husband who cheats, even though in the bulk of his few appearances in the strip, Steve was mainly the husband whose wife keeps having children. Steve’s one-and-only appearance in the new-runs was in this daily from March 31, 2010, where he gave Christopher a cookie in defiance of Anne. Immediately afterwards, Elly and Annie commiserated on how awful he was, with Annie comparing marriage to Steve to raising another child. Ouch!
Interestingly enough, these ended up being two of the last few new-runs Lynn Johnston did in the dailies before she went to straight reprints. Likewise I expect today’s strip will also fall into that category for Sundays. This sudden and unexpected charging into Steve Nichols may be a part of Lynn Johnston realizing she has not really done much with him. However, I suspect that Lynn may have realized that she doesn’t have to do all her man-bashing in revenge of Rod Johnston with just John Patterson.
The ironic part of the strip is that just this past Christmas and Hallowe’en we had strips that were distinctly anti-holiday. Here we have the exact opposite message. It’s OK to celebrate mothers, because they affect the future of the world; not like Jesus. However, I notice that this anti-Christmas strip was also a pro-mother strip. That actually fits well with this pro-mother, anti-holiday theme.
The most interesting part of today’s strip for me is oddly enough, the art. Modern day Lynn Johnston loves to draw full figure characters and rarely ever shows facial expressions reacting to things. Every time Elly reacts to something Anne says in the strip, Lynn just draws 2 dots for the eyes and a straight line for Elly’s mouth. There’s nothing there. Anne might as well be talking to a robot. And yet, in the last 2 panels of the strip, we have 2 full-on pictures of Annie Nichols showing her facial expression very clearly. What a difference it makes. Believe it or not, the first thought that came through my mind when I saw those last panels was, “Someone else must have drawn those panels.” That is how low my expectation is of the quality of Lynn Johnston’s art used to tell a story is these days.
Finally, happy Mother’s Day to all those moms out there, especially all those moms who have to call their husbands away from Sunday night bowling to celebrate Mother’s Day. I expect they are a very rare breed.
Today’s Mother’s Day strips shows Lynn’s first original Mother's Day strip work since then. If Lynn had written this strip back in 1981, you probably would have seen a strip featuring Elly being celebrating by John, Mike and Lizzie. Instead we have an odd strip where Elly tries to convince Annie Nichols to insist that her husband Steve honor her for Mother’s Day by canceling his bowling night and taking her to dinner. The logic Elly uses is that mothers’ efforts affect the future and that Annie is doing such a good job. Taken for what it is, the strip appears to be a message strip for all those husbands out there, that they should celebrate their wives as mothers. However, the last panel shows Annie calling Steve up on the phone to tell him this. Why wouldn’t Steve be home on a Sunday for her to tell him directly? I suspect this is a connection between Annie and real-life Lynn Johnston who has to call up whomever it is she wants to celebrate Mother’s Day with her.
There is also a self-congratulatory aspect to the strip which has an odd ring to it. Unlike this latter day self-congratulatory strip where Elly and Connie talk about what wonderful moms they were, here we have Elly complimenting Annie Nichols, without also a laying a compliment on herself. This is very odd for Elly. I don’t think she has complimented another mother on anything for the entire set of new-runs, and certainly does not fit in well with the most recent set of reprints from last week where Elly and Annie were at each other’s throats over child-rearing.
I think a little of this has to do with the character of Steve Nichols, who ended up being known as the husband who cheats, even though in the bulk of his few appearances in the strip, Steve was mainly the husband whose wife keeps having children. Steve’s one-and-only appearance in the new-runs was in this daily from March 31, 2010, where he gave Christopher a cookie in defiance of Anne. Immediately afterwards, Elly and Annie commiserated on how awful he was, with Annie comparing marriage to Steve to raising another child. Ouch!
Interestingly enough, these ended up being two of the last few new-runs Lynn Johnston did in the dailies before she went to straight reprints. Likewise I expect today’s strip will also fall into that category for Sundays. This sudden and unexpected charging into Steve Nichols may be a part of Lynn Johnston realizing she has not really done much with him. However, I suspect that Lynn may have realized that she doesn’t have to do all her man-bashing in revenge of Rod Johnston with just John Patterson.
The ironic part of the strip is that just this past Christmas and Hallowe’en we had strips that were distinctly anti-holiday. Here we have the exact opposite message. It’s OK to celebrate mothers, because they affect the future of the world; not like Jesus. However, I notice that this anti-Christmas strip was also a pro-mother strip. That actually fits well with this pro-mother, anti-holiday theme.
The most interesting part of today’s strip for me is oddly enough, the art. Modern day Lynn Johnston loves to draw full figure characters and rarely ever shows facial expressions reacting to things. Every time Elly reacts to something Anne says in the strip, Lynn just draws 2 dots for the eyes and a straight line for Elly’s mouth. There’s nothing there. Anne might as well be talking to a robot. And yet, in the last 2 panels of the strip, we have 2 full-on pictures of Annie Nichols showing her facial expression very clearly. What a difference it makes. Believe it or not, the first thought that came through my mind when I saw those last panels was, “Someone else must have drawn those panels.” That is how low my expectation is of the quality of Lynn Johnston’s art used to tell a story is these days.
Finally, happy Mother’s Day to all those moms out there, especially all those moms who have to call their husbands away from Sunday night bowling to celebrate Mother’s Day. I expect they are a very rare breed.
posted by howard at 6:06 AM
13 Comments:
Mostly, this strip seems to serve no purpose other than trying to build Elly up as someone who -isn't- a self-centered, self-obsessed, generally selfish hag, but someone who genuinely cares about the enjoyment and well-being of others.
Most recent example I can think of is that odd, horrible sequence a couple of years ago where Elly inexplicably stayed with her father for a week, and did so by talking down to him, feeding him unhealthy junk, and making snippy remarks about how she DOES CARE ABOUT HIM, dammit! Despite only rarely calling, visiting, or acknowledging his existence.
Like a lot of other strips that try to build up Elly as a pinnacle of helpfulness and compassion in her community, it backfires, mostly due to the oddness you mention.
Here's a funny thing; I find that this year's Mother Day's entry for the strip "Sally Forth" comes closest to how Lynn sees the world. Ted Forth is a better husband than John because he obeys his wife's brutal commands without debating the issue.
Anonymous,
Mostly, this strip seems to serve no purpose other than trying to build Elly up as someone who -isn't- a self-centered, self-obsessed, generally selfish hag, but someone who genuinely cares about the enjoyment and well-being of others.
Weird, isn’t it? It’s almost like the anti-Elly.
Most recent example I can think of is that odd, horrible sequence a couple of years ago where Elly inexplicably stayed with her father for a week, and did so by talking down to him, feeding him unhealthy junk, and making snippy remarks about how she DOES CARE ABOUT HIM, dammit!
I remember that sequence well in July, 2008, just before Lynn Johnston launched into the wedding strips. It was her last bid to try to show that Elly cared about her dad, with lots of final panel puns by Grandpa Jim done in thought balloons.
DreadedCandiru2,
Well, Sally Forth might like that Mother’s Day gift, but Elly Patterson would hate it. There’s no self-sacrifice and she would not be able to let others clean for her without supervising.
Not sure this does the job of making Elly the "caring" neighbor. ISTM that her work here is to kneecap her friend's husband and make him look like an uncaring dick to his wife. He may well BE an uncaring dick, but how does she know and what business is it of hers, anyway?
I agree that this plays well within the "Because my belly is slack with stretchmarks you OWE ME, World!" theme that runs through the later years of the strip. Elly's brand of parenting is fairly regrettable, but it'd be LESS loathsome if she stop trawling for kudos for it.
FDChief,
Not sure this does the job of making Elly the "caring" neighbor.
It does seem strange. It’s almost like she is the neighbor wandering about trying to convert people to her Mother’s Day beliefs. Why is Elly out in her yard without her kids on Mother’s Day? What does her wandering lead her into Annie’s yard where she pursues the fleeing Annie to her house?
Elly's brand of parenting is fairly regrettable, but it'd be LESS loathsome if she stop trawling for kudos for it.
I liked Elly’s style of parenting in the first year of the strip, where she would occasionally feel remorse for a poor parenting decisions. So many strips in the final years were pro-Elly strips, it made me wonder if Lynn really felt such tactics would send a message to her ungrateful kids. We know she is not above using her strip for that purpose considering all the strips over the last few years painting John Patterson in the worst possible light, in order to revenge herself on her ex-husband.
I always wondered if Lynn used the later strip to try and work her family as you suggest or whether it had become a pure exercise in MarySueism.
And worse, she made her Mary Sue such a noisily special snowflake that I can't picture myself as an adult child reading my mother's self-congratulatory glurge (with a side of ex-bludgeoning and serpent's-toothery whining) and not wishing strongly for a stout stick and a license to violate the Fifth Commandment with impunity.
It would take a pretty dense block of wood to imagine that her relentless self-promotion would do anything but make her kids more resentful, but her tone-deafness to the reader's comments, her own poor choices in the strip and her apparent gift for irritating people around her seem to point to a woman who IS a bit thick.
FDChief,
I always wondered if Lynn used the later strip to try and work her family as you suggest or whether it had become a pure exercise in MarySueism.
The biggest clue I ever got about this came from Lynn Johnston in an October, 2007 interview with the Chicago Tribune (to which I can no longer link). Nevertheless, I found the quote in my blog archives. This is what Lynn said in reference to this strip:
And readers who see her strip in Sunday's paper, which refers to a recurring dream of Elly's, might think Johnston's recent separation is reflected there. (To avoid spoiling the strip for readers, we have decided not to give a complete description of it.)'I decided to let it run'In a poignantly ironic way, the strip is autobiographical, but the events depicted there happened a long time ago. "I drew that strip years ago ... the first year that the strip came out," Johnston said, adding that it is one of the older strips that are running as part of the hybrid plan."I really had that dream. ... I put it in a strip, never thinking that it would ever be something that I would experience."I've been going over the very first strips that I did, and I decided to let it run. ... I like it; it was good. It's really kind of unique, considering the situation. The girls at [my] studio thought it was appropriate, and we all kind of smiled and said, yes, let's run it."
With this admission, Lynn Johnston removed all doubts from my mind as to whether or not she picked strips to send a message to her family (or ex-family, as it may be).
It would take a pretty dense block of wood to imagine that her relentless self-promotion would do anything but make her kids more resentful, but her tone-deafness to the reader's comments, her own poor choices in the strip and her apparent gift for irritating people around her seem to point to a woman who IS a bit thick.
It’s difficult to judge the reaction of her kids, because no one ever seems to interview them. The closest I have seen in a response was from another Chicago Tribune article in 2007 (for which this is the link), where the author quoted Rod Johnston from an interview in 2004, when he and Lynn were “happily married”. That was the only time I had seen a reaction to Lynn in the print from one of her family, and it was probably taken waaay out of context. It said:
Later that year I interviewed Johnston when she came to Chicago again to promote her book commemorating the strip's 25th anniversary. I also spent two uninterrupted hours conversing with her husband, who turned out to be a candid interview subject.
I was not surprised when he praised his wife's talent.
"You know, we all hear funny stories every day, and we go home and forget them," he said. "But Lynn records them. ... And then when I see that she's done it in the paper, she has all the nuances, all of the inflections, all of the aspects to that story that made it an outstanding story. So she's an amazing recording device, and of course a great storyteller."
But he also didn't hesitate to make less flattering comments.
"She's had a huge success," he said. "And as she said [earlier in the day], it really went to her head at first. She's very self-centered, actually, and very consumed with herself. And so we've had this constant struggle where, does she want to be the star, or does she want to be an ordinary person? And she herself struggles with that. ...
"I've often thought that in life we're given many temptations or challenges, and who would think that success and fame are a challenge? But they are, very much."
OH, no question that Lynn has been using the strip as a club for exes, although she does have a perverse gift for making the objects of her hatred seem more sympathetic rather than less. In that respect I didn't mean to imply anything else. That's a feature, not a bug.
But I've never been sure what effect her self-congratulations has had on Aaron and Kate, or whether she meant it to or was just making herself feel better about all the early times in her marriage when she effed up and had to feel rotten about it (and, as you pointed out, 'fessed up in print).
Aaron seems to keep himself at something of a distance, which seems to argue that her "I gave you life, you need to worship at the altar of Me" plan didn't work with him.
Kate seems to be more of a friend now, but, as you say, they don't speak publicly so it's hard to say how she feels about Mom's self-back-patting.
I have to say that, returning to this strip, it really IS an odd one.
There's just so MUCH wrong with it beyond the usual Johnston stuff like awkward postures and indefinate character sizes; the inexplicable absence of the Patterspawn, Elly's bizarre pursuit of Anne, and her arguments for Mother's Day, so insistent as to come across as peculiar and almost infuriated, and then the even wierder last panel which manages to compound 1) the mystery of where Steve is on a Sunday if not home, 2) the mystery of the Sunday bowling league meeting on Mother's Day, and 3) the mystery of why no sitter is mentioned in the process of the Mother's Day dinner out (trust me, as a husband and father of young kids that's always mentioned in the first two sentences...)
Seeing Lynn get here is like the end of "The Madness of King George"...
In Suddenly Silver, the 25th anniversary book, Aaron and Katie both write a nice statement about how it was to grow up with the comic strip mimicking their lives. Aaron mentions how Lynn asked him if she could put glasses on Michael, because he wore glasses which he did not like. So, Elizabeth ended up with the glasses. Aaron then talks about how, at a certain point, the Pattersons became an imaginary family for Lynn because she suggested he become a writer and he didn't, so Michael did. He points out that Josef Weeder's photography career and separation from his wealthy family became the imitation of his life. He didn't seem to resent it in the piece. However, the thing which struck me the first time I read his writing for Suddenly Silver, and still stands out to me now, is that Aaron referred to his mother throughout as "Lynn" and not as "mom".
Well, we simply celebrate mother's day because we want to give respect and give special attention to our lovable mom's who really sacrifice for us.
-yumi-
Mother's day will always have room in our hearts as it is the day when we celebrate the love of our moms. It is just right that we have a day to return their love and sacrifices.
This is the best time to thank our dear mother for all the sacrifices she made for us. Well, we should always thank our mom, this is just the day of honoring our mothers.
Post a Comment
<< Home