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| Happy New Year Charlie Brown! |
Summary:
In the opening scene, Charlie Brown is sitting at his desk in Ms. Mwaa Mwaa Mwaa's class, and for once we see him happy. There are only a few minutes left until Christmas Vacation, and Ms. Mwaa Mwaa Mwaa has yet to assign any homework. His hopes are dashed when Ms. Mwaa Mwaa Mwaa assigns the impossible, impossible assignment of reading Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace over the Christmas break."C'mon Nick," you might say, "nothing is impossible with a little God and Gumption, even reading War and Peace over Christmas Break." Bollocks. When I read War and Peace I started around the time I graduated high school and I didn't finish the book until Thanksgiving Break in my freshman year of college nearly 8 months later. The unabridged CD version as available on Amazon is a staggering 55 CDs amounting to 70 hours of wholesome Russian fictionaly goodness.
Just in case your maths are not up to snuff: 70 hours is about 3 straight days of reading.
Look at this way. If you read War and Peace for 8 hours a day solid it would still take you 9 days to finish it. Most adults have a hard time working 8 hours a day without talking football with buddies, surfing for cupcake fetish porn, or taking time out to organize a doughnut raid against the accounting department (today, their crullers shall be ours!!). Only the most dedicated of persons could read Tolstoy for 8 hours straight even for one day let alone 9, and Charlie Brown is just a kid.
"Maybe," you say. "But technically its still possible. You could do it." Well you know what, if that's how you feel, than you try to read War and Peace over nine days in the middle of the Holiday Season. Come back from that and see if you still say it's not impossible (speed readers and hobos need not apply).
I digress. In the second scene we see Charlie Brown sitting with the massive book upon his lap, stuck on page 5 out of 1,372. It must be late in the Christmas vacation because Charlie Brown is interrupted when Peppermint Patty calls to invite Charlie to a New Year's Eve Party.
Charlie Brown protests that he just has too much work to do, but oh how the flesh is weak! For the rest of the film we see Charlie Brown drag around Tolstoy's book to dance lessons and to the party itself like an Albatross around his neck. In desperation he tries to find a comic book or tape on War and Peace, but its the day before Amazon and he actually has to go to this thing called a....its'a called a.....Ah! it's like this place with stuff and you can give people these green pieces of paper for the stuff on the shelf and take it home? A st-or? Store? Store. Ah, yes. STORE.
Meanwhile, Charles Schultz and company load Chekov's gun with a love triangle when Charlie Brown invites the Little Red Haired Girl (who's name is Heather, but we shall call her the LRHG) to the dance -- as Charlie Brown does so he gets his hand stuck in the mail slot of the LRHG's house. Classic? Yes. Significant? Perhaps. More on this later.
So on New Year's Eve itself: after having some good times at the party, Charlie Brown slips away from the festivities after losing at musical chairs and has a seat on the porch to try and keep reading his book. In a pathetic twist that would make any Russian novelist proud, Charlie Brown then falls asleep as the book falls open upon his chest. His heavy eyelids close as a light New Year's Eve snow begins to fall, just as the LRHG shows up.
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| In Soviet Russia, Book Reads You. |
And the LRHG? One second she was there, the next --- POOF--- she was gone. Kind of like Kaiser Soze.
Charlie Brown staggers to the open door, still carrying his copy of War and Peace, and stares out into the snowy night. Betrayed by his friend, alarmed at the "Basic Instinct" intensity of Peppermint Patty's affections, and dismayed that his best chance at happiness just disappeared into the black of night, Charlie Brown stares into the face of another long year. Not even a kiss from Marcy can shake the shattered look that has settled on his countenance.
In the final scene of the film Charlie Brown is back in school. He tells Linus he finished the book at 3 AM that morning, and the teacher gave him a generous D-. He faints as Linus tells him that their next assignment is to read Crime and Punishment, by Dostoevsky.
Discussion:
When I watched this a child, I took this to be a morality tale on the dangers of procrastination. Charlie Brown gets his assignment, he has all Christmas Break to get it done, and what does he do? He goofs off, he learns the foxtrot, he plays musical chairs at the party. When midnight comes and it's time to get Happy Happy Happy he is sleeping on the porch, the victim of a futile attempt to read the world's greatest novel at the last minute. And boy, is he punished. Charlie Brown ends up not being able to attain the object he desires (and with it some much needed self-actualization and esteem), and for his effort only gets a D-.
It's obviously not a lesson I took to heart, as I am a fairly good procrastinator. Not professional grade, not like those boys in the Congress who have so perfected the art of kicking the can down the way; but good enough to keep people at arm's bay at work, doling out a little bit of info at a time, stringing them along, delaying and dithering, until an issue goes away or it reaches critical mass and pushes out all other considerations. Even this blog itself, which encapsulates the vast corpus of my meaningless thoughts, represents endless hours of procrastination. Even as I write now I am procrastinating, as I could be doing something vastly more important with my time.
Watching the movie as an adult, however, I now feel that this movie can be approached in a different way. I believe that it is a meditation upon human nature, and that War and Peace, like Coleridge's Albatross or Tolkein's Ring of Power, or even the Cross of Christ, is a representation of the weightiness, the heaviness, the sinfulness of the human condition.
I am basing this conclusion on a salient point, and that is that I believe that Charlie Brown, and Charlie Brown alone, has been given this most odious assignment.
Note that in the film, Linus (whom I always thought for some reason was younger than Charlie Brown) is in Charlie Brown's class, but throughout the special he never seems to be struggling with the book, he's not lugging it from place to place, he's not stuck on page 5. Linus never proclaims that he finished the report last week and (this is the big one) he never helps Charlie Brown out.
"Hold on," says the detractor. "Linus is that kid who in the Peanuts Christmas movie is able to recite the entire Christmas story, right out of the Bible, by heart. He's a good man who would never help Charlie Brown cheat." On the contrary! In the middle of Happy New Year Charlie Brown we see Linus go with Charlie Brown into the bookstore where Charlie Brown seeks the ever elusive shortcut! Linus never tries to talk him out of it, even suggests that Charlie Brown ask about filmstrips! His presence makes him complicit in Charlie Brown's desire to cheat, and I believe that if he had read the book he would elevate helping his friend above other moral considerations and would at least give Charlie Brown a plot summary.
But Linus doesn't, because he hasn't read it. No other kid seems to be complaining about the assignment either. Charlie Brown alone bears the punishment.
What did he do to deserve this punishment? It would be easy to suggest that Charlie Brown himself is guilty of some sin, and the mail slot scene suggests that. Is it any coincidence that Charlie Brown gets his hand stuck in there? Is it also a coincidence that Samuel Peyps was compromised when his wife caught him with his hand literally in Deb Willet's cookie jar?* Drawing on the rather broad assumption that Schultz was familiar with The Diary of Samuel Peyps, clearly the mail slot represents Charlie Brown's sexual desire for the LRHG, and may even symbolize a vagina in and of itself. Now listen: Charlie Brown and his cohorts are all pretty young, and I am not in any suggesting that they are sexually active, but it's clear that those feelings and urgings Mrs. Mwaa Mwaa Mwaa has been trying to suppress are starting to blossom in this group of kids. The desire may be latent, but I would argue that it is starting to stir and it is there and real.
So back to mail slot/vagina analogy. The fact that Charlie Brown gets his hand stuck in that mail slot and is utterly embarrassed is consistent with the Augustinian belief that the initial sin of mankind is sexual intercourse and in that act we have all fallen away from God. It is this original sin that must be atoned for; until Charlie Brown accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord, Savior, and Salvation, he is doomed to be weighed down by his sin, his eternal punishment evidently a Russian Literature class that simply won't let up.
But I don't like to think of it in this way. While I still buy the mail slot as vagina analogy, I think rather it simply making a mockery of Charlie Brown's belief that finally getting that date with the LRHG will make all his problems go away. I think it is a rather amusing aside to the main point: Charlie Brown's only punishment is his humanity. His assignment to read War and Peace is symbolic of the the weight we all must bear.
Some people bear the weight better than others. These are the folks who are at the party without a care in the world, wrapped up in their own quest for love or who just want to get through evening without having a dog drink their root beer. But Charlie Brown is clearly depressed, and who could blame him? He loses the spelling bee, has a tough time understanding what Christmas is all about, he never can kick that dang blasted football, and he's already bald at the age of 12. His dogged persistence is admirable, but I can't imagine brushing up against that much failure and not coming away with at least a healthy dose of melancholy if not outright severe depression.
Charlie Brown's copy of War and Peace represents this depression. It keeps him from enjoying the holiday season, and it even keeps him from realizing his own happiness; if we do take the LRHG to symbolize Charlie Brown's elusive happiness, then one must be encouraged by the fact that she does actually turn up at the party at Charlie Brown's request. But Charlie Brown, unable to deal with his mental illness, is asleep on the front porch. His depression keeps him from being self-actualized, and his happiness slips away into the darkness.
As I already said, I think Schultz is sort of mocking Charlie Brown's fixation on the LRHG as the sole repository of all that may make him happy. But what if he was able to dance with the LRHG that night and even kiss her on the cheek? Wouldn't that boost his self-esteem? Even if the relationship ended, wouldn't Charlie Brown be better off for having known what it is to love and (more importantly) be loved?
Undoubtedly, the answer is yes.
What is Charlie Brown to do? Clearly, first, he needs to stop going to that psychiatrist he's been seeing. It's clear that Lucy has no interest in actually helping Charlie Brown cope with his illness, but is rather more interested in perpetuating it for the sake making a few more nickles.
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| I hear she's still using DSM III. That alone should throw up a red flag! |
Second (and let me put on my Dr. Phil hat here), he needs to face up to his troubles and stop running from them. Charlie Brown is continually hoping that something will happen to him. He needs rather to make something happen for himself (God that sounds dumb). We see his failure to do so as he keeps putting off reading the text. His inability to read War and Peace is indicative of his inability to come to terms with himself and deal with his problems.
Where will Charlie Brown find his solace? Will he find the deep faith of a Linus? Will he pour himself into music like Schroder or sports like Peppermint Patty (and will he get a restraining order against her)? Will he join the commune with Pigpen, or read Ayn Rand with Lucy and become a budding market capitalist?
Maybe it will be none of these for Charlie Brown. Maybe he is one of those who will never quite jettison the heaviness that sits so uneasily about the soul . But if Charlie Brown were to actually dive into his psyche instead of running away from it all the time he might actually be able to put down his book and enjoy the party, at least for a little while.
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