There are so many wonderful things about the newest Peanuts film, but there was this one subtle moment I'm finding myself preoccupied with. Near the beginning of the movie, Charlie Brown's classmates are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the new student (the little red-haired girl). They all perk up when the door opens. But then they see Charlie Brown standing there, and are quite unfiltered about their disappointment, even blaming him for existing.
And somewhere in the midst of this mass negativity, Lucy gives him a truly sincere greeting. And it doesn't come across as delivered out of pity or some kind of recovery. Lucy wears her emotions on her sleeves. She's genuinely pleased to see him, and unaffected by her peers.
It was in that moment that I realized just how layered her character is. I'm not suggesting Lucy is Charles Schulz's greatest character, by she may very well be his most complex. I once read a retrospective on the Peanuts comic strip, where a source close to Charles Schulz suggested that he really got out a lot of his own personal shadows through Lucy.
So I'd like to take a little time exploring her character with the hope of supporting my claim that a Peanuts sequel, told from her point of view, could be the The Empire Strikes Back of the series. For this study, I'm treating the whole body of work in the franchise as equally authoritative (and the stage production Dog Sees God as a disrespectful mockery). Charles Schulz only considered the comic strips canon, but the characters were accurately portrayed in the specials and films, and character is what I'm looking at.
Who is Lucy?
We know a lot about her even if we don't know why she's that way. She's loud. Even when she's happy, she's usually loud about it. She might have a certain narcissism about her. She quite confidently refers to herself as 'pretty' and 'beautiful' even if nobody else does. This doesn't come across as a mask for insecurities, I believe she believes that.
We don't know too much about her parents. She's gotten into offscreen/panel fights with her mother on multiple occasions, who has described her own daughter as a fussbudget, to Lucy's offense. Just inducting who Mrs. van Pelt is from Lucy's point of view, you'd think the mom might actually have Lucy's temperament as well. But Linus's interaction with her paint the picture of a caring, nurturing, stable mom. I'm positive their father has been mentioned as being equally supportive of the children.
And just to answer the elephant in the room question of where the hell the adults are in this neighborhood. It's simple. They're around, but the stories and the humor work better by editing them out. This isn't reality. This is metaphor. It's real feelings, not real events.
But back to Lucy. It's worth noting how she looks up to 'grandma' who I've always assumed to be from the mother's side, and bonds with her over her hatred of Linus's blanket. It's really the only element within Lucy's upbringing that seems to affect her overall personality, so I guess we need to look elsewhere to really crack her.
Violet Gray, the Queen 'B'
You ever notice how the female characters in Peanuts tend to have more power than the males? The clearest example was in Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown when the girls voted the boys out of the cabin, never giving the boys a say in the matter (or receiving much of a protest). A better example was in the aforementioned blanket-hating grandma story arc. Linus finally throws down at the end, declaring that their mother is the only person with the authority to tell him to give up his blanket.
I'm sure we're all familiar with the original strip, featuring the (sort of) character Shermy at his most talkative. The inherent hatred of Charlie Brown is there, right out of the gate. But whereas Shermy is content to just detest Charlie Brown behind his back, the girls pick up the concept and run with it. Patty seems to be mean to Charlie Brown because she feels like she's supposed to be. But then Violet blooms.
Violet is a bitch. She goes out of her way to be cruel to Chuck. You can tell she's a classic bully, in that she's deeply insecure and only feels better about herself when Charlie Brown is miserable. I would argue that Violet's antagonistic behavior filtering through Patty and Frieda is a lot of the source of Charlie Brown's mistreatment.
Lucy gets in on it some, but she's no Violet groupie. Lucy is her own person for better or worse. While she's still clearly a bully, it doesn't come from the same place as it does with Violet.
"I'll Hold the Football..."
Lucy's relationship with Charlie Brown is perfectly summed up with this classic metaphor. Lucy will always promise to never pull the ball away, citing some kind of clause or rationale to convince Charlie Brown that this time will be different. He accepts her words and gets the outcome we all know is coming, whereupon Lucy delivers the loophole in her logic that she'd withheld prior.
But let's back it up a bit. Lucy has the alpha female personality. The only reason Violet has her groupies is because Lucy doesn't want them. That's petty shit, and Lucy is somehow above it. Instead of being the popular girl, she voluntarily spends most of her time with the class loser. What's all that about?
Well, her motivations are kind of complicated. On the one hand, Lucy seems unconsciously aware that the Peanuts world has a certain rhythm to it. Charlie Brown is meant to fail. It's not a fair balance, but it's the one they live in. And if she helps that failure along then it restores the status quo.
Take the end of A Boy Named Charlie Brown, where Chuck has experienced his most televised failure at the spelling bee and is REALLY having trouble getting out of bed. He finally drags himself into the world and slowly absorbs the fact that nothing has changed; clouds roll, birds sing, life moves on. And there on cue is Lucy, with the football. He thinks he's hidden, but she knows he's there. And with some sort of psychic power, she pulls the ball away with perfect timing. "Welcome home," she tells in with a sweet/sadistic combination that Maleficent would approve of.
Now step back to that televised moment when Charlie Brown blows the spelling bee on an easy word. Look at Lucy's reaction. She's livid, because she really WANTED him to win. There's the complication. She wants him to both win AND lose; the latter because it's comforting, the former because she really does care about him.
Now does that make Lucy a good friend? No. She's doing more harm than good. In real life, she would be considered abusive. But again, this isn't real life. This is where we go to explore real life issues in a safe, fictional setting. It's not as simple as her just being a bully like Violet. Lucy has a benevolence. I always loved the bit in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown when Lucy wakes up in the middle of the night to check on Linus, collects him from the pumpkin patch and puts him in bed without ever saying a word. I always wondered if Linus ever figured out that Lucy had come to his rescue.
Did Beethoven Know Jingle Bells?
This is the big one.
Why Lucy is attracted to Schroeder isn't important. The fact that she can't have him is. Even Lucy knows what it feels like to be Charlie Brown, and approval from Schroeder is her football. So many questions. Would Lucy lose interest if Schroeder started paying attention to her? Um...okay...one question then.
Lucy is fully aware that she's a pest, but Schroeder clearly doesn't mind her being there until she starts competing with his music. And here is where the potential for a whole sequel centered around Lucy comes into play. What if we shake up this dynamic?
Here's my idea for the premise. Lucy gets tired of getting no reaction out of Schroeder. She goes to Charlie Brown, who she deems as the master of continuing to try even though failure is inevitable. She even sits him in her chair at the psychiatrists booth (but still charges him a nickel for the professional consultation). He tells her what he always does and Lucy ponders it, coming to the logical conclusion that the fact that Charlie Brown keeps trying the same approach is why he continues to fail.
Thus she tries a different tactic with Schroeder, seven words to be precise. "Can you teach me how to play?"
Of course Lucy isn't really interested in learning, she's only interested in Schroeder, but after a bit of banter she convinced him that she really is in it for the music. For a while, things are working well between them. But eventually her lack of skill and passion will cause Schroeder to say something that really hurts her. He only means it as a rejection of her seriousness about learning to play but she feels it as a rejection of her personally. This is the all important protagonist's breaking point.
At that point, who does she turn to for help, and are they able to help? How does she deal with that kind of pain? When Schroeder (himself a bit of a tough nut to crack) finally understands the situation, how does he react?
We're more than familiar with the way Charlie Brown views the world around him. For once I would love to see that world through the eyes of his antithesis. It would also give us a chance to see what some of the blank slate characters like Patty and Shermy really do with their daily lives. The world that Charles Schulz created for us is paradoxically magical in its ordinariness.
As Craig Schulz has demonstrated, there's still some life in the creation. We may be out of holidays to explicate, but Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown was the first in-universe deconstruction of these classic characters. It's was a bold move that really paid off. The new Peanuts film built that concept into a thing of beauty.
By the way, you might enjoy this six minute short student film my wife and I were in several years ago called Mr. Failure. I play a husband trying to kill his wife and failing repeatedly. We were halfway through filming before it occurred to us that we were essentially playing Charlie Brown and Lucy as a married couple.
That'll be five cents please.
No comments:
Post a Comment