Seriously, what is up with this seating arrangement?
ninjapoodles.blogspot.com/2007/11/grinch-who-stole-charli...
Was just griping about these specials tonight, how the message seems
to be, "Boys = GOOD, Girls = BAD," because the female
characters are so universally awful, when this scene happened and
stopped me in my tracks.
What is going on here with Franklin? FOUR people on one side of the table, and Franklin over there by himself in the beach chair? What the--?
Comments and faves
triviaqueen (55 months ago | reply)
He's even less welcome at the table than the dog.... WTF indeed!
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
I know!!
--
Seen on your photo stream. (?)
SolarScot. (55 months ago | reply)
this may be like davincis the last supper which hides subliminal secret messages. well noticed though. i,m of to check the flintstones for animal abuse eg using birds beaks to play records, aint they heard of cd,s ?
tee4tia (55 months ago | reply)
I just recently saw a documentary on Schultz. He was a very self absorbed man, definitely did not have use for his wife, who was brilliant. He pretty much neglected his family. His daughter was particularly displeased with him. He many children, but only two were interviewed. He based Lucy Brown on his wife, or rather his perception of her. He was a misogynist and probably a racist too.
Are there no heroes in this world?
--
Seen on my Flickr home page. (?)
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
I weep for Snoopy. :-(
hinterlens (55 months ago | reply)
It is strange, I have always loved Snoopy/The Peanuts.
I would not be claiming (not you, Belinda) that Schultz was a racist. Such statements are wrong and dangerous.
Schultz was definitely complicated...
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
Lucy only makes an appearance at the very beginning of this special, just to do the famous football gag. Very interesting that he based that character on his wife, since she was the one you hated most of all--Lucy was cruel, materialistic, controlling, and arrogant, while her brother was the exact opposite in every way.
I loved all my paperback Peanuts comic collections as a kid, but I never, ever enjoyed the animated specials, just because all the girl characters were SO very horrible.
She Curmudgeon (55 months ago | reply)
I'm with you on this one. Never been a peanuts fan-- maudlin, simplistic, and misogynist, imho. Except for Marci, who never got enough screen time.
ex.libris (55 months ago | reply)
OMG...
King Tufu (55 months ago | reply)
Astute observation. I think the racism of his generation is almost inherent. They grew up in times when it was the accepted status quo. I'm not saying that justifies it, just that I have observed that people from that generation often held racist beliefs even if they didn't express them. Not expressing them was considered a liberal point of view.
Hopefully things have changed.
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
I know I've heard people talking about how bold a move it was to even have a minority character present at the time these specials were done, but I haven't examined the issue in context of the times. This party needs crashing by Huey P. Freeman.
styro (55 months ago | reply)
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
Huey is so awesome.
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
ex.libris (55 months ago | reply)
I totally watched all the Charlie Brown specials as a kid. I really liked them. I never noticed this sort of thing. I don't think my family did, either. I'm really lucky to have a family that really doesn't care that my husband isn't white, now that I think about it.
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
This was the first time I noticed Franklin off by himself, but the boy-girl thing bugged me from childhood. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed it so much if it had been depicted the other way around, with the boys having the negative personality traits? That's a possibility.
Bella is, so far, color-blind (actually, physical traits-blind would be more accurate), which is so fascinating to me. She NEVER describes people according to what they look like, but rather who they are and what they wear. Heh.
I have a goal to lose some weight before she realizes that Mommy is fat.
Carl_C (55 months ago | reply)
And, this episode is (was) one of my favorite episodes...
total bummer...
ex.libris (55 months ago | reply)
Sounds like Bella has her priorities in the right place! :)
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
Yeah, she might not be able to recall your hair or eye color, but she'll go into details about your shoes.
fryertuck1 (55 months ago | reply)
this explains everything at 3.30 :D hehe
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKh_6GzC2Zo
nEveRcryptIK (55 months ago | reply)
maybe he intented to draw in the other characters to fill the table and got lazy......
Klis added this photo to his favorites. (55 months ago)
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
OK, over 3,000 views in a few hours? Is this thing blogged somewhere?
existentist (55 months ago | reply)
Wow. Thanks for spotting and for posting this.
If I had to guess, this cartoon was probably made sometime before integration. Perhaps the producers put Franklin alone on one side of the table as a compromise. In this way, they can say that they have a black character at the table while covering their ass by preventing him from sitting next to a white kid (or, for god's sake, Snoopy).
Images like this are sort of fossils to a different time. I take a somewhat optimistic view because we've come a long way from what our grandparents were taught to believe.
(found via www.reddit.com)
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
@existentist - thanks for the clue about where the traffic might be coming from.
IMDb says 1973 for this special. Well after desegregation, but Peanuts had been around a LONG time before that special came out, so can't vouch for the author's mindset on these matters.
davidmccabe (55 months ago | reply)
Well, they couldn't have seated more than two people on that side, or you wouldn't be able to see all of their faces from that camera angle. Maybe that's all there was to it.
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
Except...that this is a cartoon, unrestricted by such logistics. And there aren't even TWO people on that side. Just Franklin! Whatever the reason, it's bizarre.
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
Seriously--is everyone coming here from Reddit? Because this is a little freaky. Technorati doesn't show any results for a link to this photo, and Reddit is all that I've found. You all have to be coming from SOMEWHERE. ;-)
knighty04 added this photo to his favorites. (55 months ago)
Kim+5 (55 months ago | reply)
I came from twitter! Your twitter!
triviaqueen (55 months ago | reply)
I actually shared this on my Facebook page... and I forwarded it to a bunch of my friends... who also forwarded it. I'm not saying that's 3000 page-views worth of traffic... but it's some of it. :)
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
Heh. Flickr needs a stat-checker! ;-)
BuzzerFly (55 months ago | reply)
I think you are all wrong. He isn't sitting by himself because he's black. He is being kept away becuse he has hepatitis.
SolarScot. (55 months ago | reply)
for a party piece he may be doing that trick where you pull the tablecloth away and leave all the stuff on the table untouched,just a thought !
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
I'm starting to think that maybe HE is too good for THEM.
j_pidgeon (55 months ago | reply)
What about Peppermint Patty? She's athletic and gutsy, but also thoughtful and supportive. Marcie is pretty nice, too. Sally is a mixed bag, but has her sweet moments.
I don't think the Peanuts guys are all that nice. Schroeder is self-absorbed and only has passion for his music. Linus goes into panic attacks if he doesn't have his blanket. Snoopy frequently looks down on everyone and mocks them openly.
All of the Peanuts gang are pretty deeply flawed, and each have had their mean-spirited moments, like kids (and adults) do. You may not like the humor of the strip or the specials, but I don't think Schulz is as ugly a person as some are insinuating.
There weren't a lot of African-American characters in comic strips when he introduced Franklin into the strip, and I remember him taking no small amount of flack for doing so. Franklin wasn't a caricature, and his ethnicity wasn't played for laughs as it was with other characters at that time.
Maybe the frame grab you've posted betrays an unconscious prejudice, and maybe it's an unfortunate coincidence. It's easy to interpret a drawing or a frame of film in ways that the creators never considered, or intended.
ninjapoodles (55 months ago | reply)
www.komotv.com/news/entertainment/10720536.ht ml
And I'll definitely be reading the David Michaelis biography of Charles Schulz, "Schulz and Peanuts." Here is an excellent review of that bio, by Bill Watterson, the artist who created the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip: online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB1192146 90326956694....
carlphilip (55 months ago | reply)
Racial discrimination probably?
pesbo (55 months ago | reply)
came via www.uniquedaily.com/
mikeg626 added this photo to his favorites. (55 months ago)
SuziJane (55 months ago | reply)
A week later, more than 10,000 views!!!
That must be a personal record, Belinda.
tee4tia (55 months ago | reply)
This has been an interesting stream. Goes to show how much people still are moved by Peanuts, one way or another.
paulmg64, ⁽(⚆‿⚆)⁾, and zombiebite added this photo to their favorites.
Ithnag (54 months ago | reply)
Taking images and completely ignoring the actual context can be as bad as images actually showing discrimination, as both are show of ignorance and even intolerance, Frankiln is being introduced to the gang so he was given "the floor" to do so properly.
grick34 (54 months ago | reply)
Exactly, Ithnag, well said. To everyone else, here's the scene in question on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnohHTLMs3Q&featu re=related
Seriously, you bunch have made a mountain out of a molehill. This image is now all over the internet, websites everywhere linking back to this Flickr entry. Franklin's eating at the same table as the others -- quite an achievement for its time. If we're to read anything out of it, it's promoting racial equality rather than segregation. So hang your heads in shame for your knee-jerk reactions and making a controversy out of nothing.
I can't wait to see what you lot make of Fat Albert...
ninjapoodles (54 months ago | reply)
Uh, guys? I just posted the screen-shot because I thought it was odd. I did NOT post the image anywhere except on my OWN blog. It was just a weird, weird moment in a special that already annoyed me for the awful attitudes of the little girls, that caused me to pause the TV and take another look. You have to admit, it's pretty odd. Lighten up.
I take a lot of lame shots of the television screen. I'd have done the same thing here if it had been anyone in that seat--any way you look at it, IT'S A WEIRD WAY TO HAVE ARRANGED THE SCENE. No matter WHO is the one person alone on one side of the table, while there are four characters on the opposite side.
Siamese Only Child (53 months ago | reply)
It's obvious that the peanuts are completely racist.
:)
mkohm and walterjedyk/thunder1 added this photo to their favorites.
child_of_christ_dw (42 months ago | reply)
I read when Franklin was introduced in 1968 people didn't want him to be in the same school/class but Shultz sat him in the same class with Marcy and Peppermint Patty anyway. I never paid that arrangement above any attention. I'm confused. But we also have to consider the time when these specials were created and America's state of mind. But it does look quite weird lol.
Gori Girl added this photo to her favorites. (40 months ago)
The Watcher of Wonders (26 months ago | reply)
I'm glad I saw this then I read the stream.....that was all weird...Laughing Out Loudly...I remember that from my childhood too,I agree with the writer who said it was an attempt to celebrate integration,especially when you are hearing Linus' prayer.Bringing a Black.. to the table was still a new idea in a lot of places.And Schultz was an Interesting guy too !!!
alenkei1994 added this photo to his favorites. (25 months ago)