Peanuts History Textbook

What is there to be learned from reading the Peanuts comics? Is it just another comic strip that hearkened from the 50s, and those baby boomers loved it, so therefore, like everything else, they decided they needed to bring it back? Or is it like the styles of the past - everything has to come back because we as a society are always looking back to the nostalgia that we can't seem to let go of? These are the thoughts that have been pondered, questioned and debated for years concerning the fame and popularity of this enigma of comic strips. What is our draw to this great comic strip? These ponderings have been pondered many times in the forwards of the Fantagraphic Books reprinting the Peanuts comic strip by many of the great writers of today, and people who were closest to the creator of Peanuts Charles Schultz. But the question truly is, can we learn anything from it? My answer is a resounding yes.

The peanuts comic strip is a historic document pointing out the ideas and the views of the time it was created. It was the creation of a man living in the world of which he was writing about, and thinking about the times he was living in. His characters dealt with issues that were larger than themselves, just as we as people do today. We, the people of the future looking back at the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's, we tend to past judgment on their ideas and thoughts. We also tend to past judgment as to when things happened and when they didn't. Upon reading Peanuts, we find that beliefs that we previously had may be quite inaccurate.

We have grown up with ball point pens, the thought of any other type of pen doesn't arrive till much later,and that is only when we find that people use to use quills. When we come across the idea that a fountain pen every existed, or was the normal way of writing in ink, we think of the early 1900's or even the late 1800's. It never crosses are mine to think that as late as 1952 this was a normal mode of writing with ink. However, reading through the 1953 year of Peanuts, we see Charlie Brown lamenting on the use of ink and the way ink washes and stains the page. We also are privy to his frustration as he pour ink into Z and barely gets out a crooked K. This idea that our beloved ball points make life so much easier, is barely noticed except now we see that we are not that far from when it was a lot harder to write with a pen.

Another case in point is the anti-cigarette movement. In our modern day thinking, the pre-60s was a smoking haven. Everyone smoked and everyone loved the fact that people were smoking. then came the 80s and the era of the split restaurants. However, this was not the case. In the mid 1950s there was a large epidemic of people smoking in bed and killing themselves in this manner. This is not a news item I was ever told in history class, nor is it a story that was ever shared with my by my parents or grandparents. But in 1958, Snoopy's dog house burns down and the only comment is that he "must have been smoking in bed", and this is generally accepted at the cause of the fire. There are many innuendos as to the problems of smoking, and the adverse health affects that it can cause in the following strips. Could it be that the public awareness of Phillip Morris was a live and well way back then, and they were just too powerful or the public was just too weak to be able to do anything? Well in fact, that is the case. The lobby to outlaw the ads of cigarettes and the view of cigarettes in the movies began in the early 50's, but again, this is never told or seen to the modern day public.

Lastly, the woman suffrage movement. How long have women been truly and forcefully fighting for their equal rights? We learn in out history classes that women truly began fighting for their equality in the 60's and finally won in the late 70's, however this is vastly inaccurate. In fact, upon opening a 1951 peanuts book or looking at a few of the strips of the early 1950's, Lucy and Violet are protesting equal rights for women. There are in fact, large debates on the pros and cons of women and men in these early strips. This fight began a long time before the 60's and upon further research , we see that Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, asked for their to be more right for women in the constitution. A point that is actually brought up in the Peanuts strip.

Rediscover the Peanuts strip. Rediscover the nuances and knowledge that is passed on in the strip. Charles Schultz wasn't just writing a comic strip, he was in the process of writing a social commentary of the society and world he lived in. Embroiled in this vast collection of strips, is a comment on the American public, the American thinking, and the way we as a country developed in those 50 years.