Who Are You? Charlie Brown: The Self-Definition of the Unknown

Author: Ye Zi, Doctor of Foreign Philosophy, Fudan University

On June 25, a documentary featuring Peanuts and its creator, cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, "Who Are You?" Charlie Brown was released on Apple TV. Peanuts Comics is a comic that has been created since 1950 and has been serialized for fifty years, telling a warm and inspirational story that happens to ordinary people, which is also a portrayal of the real life of the cartoonist. Speaking about his creative career, Schultz dissects himself this way: "I don't think I'm a real artist. I also want to be Wise or Picasso... But being able to draw great cartoons and write wonderful words is my talent. What more can be expected? ”

The Nameless Man I Am

At the beginning of the documentary, the protagonist of the comic, Charlie Brown, is confronted with a question that has puzzled philosophers throughout the ages: Who am I? And this also bothers us as moviegoers. Who is Charlie Brown? In the comic book character's own eyes, he is the barber's son, the boy who has a crush on the red-haired girl, and A friend of Snoopy. For the cartoonist Schultz, this ordinary, kind, often failed but constantly trying to live a life, is a projection of his own life. In the eyes of others, Charlie Brown is one of the many "unlucky but lovely losers" he often encounters in life.

When we follow the comic book characters to think about the question of "who am I?", we see the faces of many ordinary people in life. They don't have fantastic adventures and thrilling encounters; they try not to cause trouble for others, and in the end they are the bearers of trouble, but even then they can always comfort themselves and remain optimistic about life. Sometimes, too, people find themselves in Charlie Brown: occasionally falling into mundane fantasies and then jumping back into a life that is still ordinary.

Who am I? While this question is constantly being deconstructed and interpreted, it may still be close to the answer. The role of the definition is to distinguish the defined person from the other, and how can the definition of a person who belongs to him be distinguished from others, although he has countless life experiences, but does not have brilliant deeds. Or to put it another way, what is a failed life? Is it the person who asks himself" "Who am I" but can't find an adjective to stand out from the crowd? If this self-defining failure is a failure, then in turn, some nameless person like Charlie Brown who suffers from the troubles of others and from life itself is actually the hero of life. Whether it is the workers who perform their duties in their posts in the fight against the epidemic, or the people who have been watching out for each other in the recent heavy rainstorm disaster in Henan, everyone is solving one problem after another in ordinary days, and only by walking through such a road can people know who they are and understand what kind of world they live in.

This ordinary world always has the power to make people feel the smallness of the self and give birth to eternal fear. Schultz once said: "Only a mature mind can face this problem." Once we give up the mentality of excessive self-esteem, we can face the tragedies of life with openness. ”

Self-definition is extraordinary

For 70 years, Peanuts has become a part of the life of a lover, not pursuing obedience or irony, but people can continue to see the reproduction of their lives. For Schultz, the comic strip is based on memory, not observation, and he poured a lifetime of effort, inspiration and memories into Peanuts Comics.

Some of the characters come from a variety of people in Schultz's life, such as the protagonist, Charlie Brown, named after a colleague he met at the Academy of Fine Arts; Szroder, who played Beethoven on a toy piano, named after a caddie on a golf course; and the famous Snoopy, who was the puppy Schultz had raised when he was young.

The scenes in the comics also seem to be reproduced from Schultz's real life. None of the neighborhoods, the streets, the rooftops, the grass, the baseball fields, were not visible on a daily basis, and resembled the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, where he lived. Some commentators argue that Schultz's world seems bland, but it "represents almost everywhere the children of the postwar American generation gathered." The imagination of Schultz's works is rooted in this universality and therefore has a lasting charm. Remembering, thinking, recording, not pursuing the idea of novelty and extraordinary genius, letting time flow naturally, the ordinary can still create greatness. Cartoonist Schultz once said that he didn't like to travel around, and he didn't want to try anything in his life, the only thing he liked was comics. And creating cartoons is his way of life, just as philosophers think of thinking as a way of life.

Like other great writers, Schultz cherished memory, knew how to understand the past, deconstructed memories, and this understanding and structure condensed day after day into the present. When it comes to comic book creation, Schultz believes that it is unlikely to become a top cartoonist at a very young age, because the so-called comic genius is only to know more about understanding life in the accumulation of experience.

Schultz, like his characters, admits to being the mundane majority. But it is such a self-proclaimed ordinary cartoonist who has published 17,897 comics in 2,600 newspapers around the world in 50 years, with 350 million readers in 75 countries. There is a kind of persistence that contains courage, a talent that transcends talent. After 50 years of drawing comics, in Schultz's words, "it is not comparable to Beethoven writing a concerto". The self-definition of the nameless is so extraordinary.

(The author is a doctor of foreign philosophy from Fudan University and a deputy editor of Guangxi Normal University Press)

Source: Guangming Network - Literary And Art Review Channel