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Admirables: What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?

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Aired in 1983
Written by Charles Schulz
Produced and Directed by Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez

    What have we learned, indeed…sad charlie brown If you're expecting me to get angry or cry out in despair that Trump has won the election, I'm not here to do that. I'm not one to go into a tirade on these matters (except in certain instances, and I try to save those for very specific instances). Instead, I'm going to try to talk about a prevalent subject matter and provide my own input.

    Peanuts have become a staple in American culture, and a franchise that we associate with the holidays-even the less popular ones like Arbor Day and the subject of this special, D-Day. (I know that I'm late to the game since it's long past D-Day, but since I'm submitting this Deviation only a few days before Veteran's Day, a day which shares similar origins and themes, I felt it be appropriate to talk about it-and in lite of the result of the election. It is a subject that kids deserve to be made fully-aware of, but since something like Saving Private Ryan would probably go over their heads, I'd recommend showing them this.

    This episode is a flashback/follow-up to the 1980 movie Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown, in which Charlie Brown, Linus, Peppermint Patty, and Marcie are selected to go to France as exchange students (with Snoopy and woodstock accompanying them, of course). This episode starts out being told in Charlie Brown's flashbacks while sorting out photos from his journey.
    Here, we get to see the unexplored part of the journey where the gang gets lost during the travel back to the airport to return home, and take unexpected detours to Omaha Beach in Normandy, in the northern regions of France. Here, Linus recalls the invasion on D-Day and explains the horrors of the battle in extraneous detail. The three of them also visit a site of burials, where they recall some famous words from Eisenhower, commemorating the sacrifices made for our modern generation about how mankind has hopefully learned a valuable lesson, and how we hopefully never have to have any events like this again.
    Afterwards, the gang takes another detour until they come across the poppies in Flanders Fields. This brings them back to the events of WWI, Linus recites McCrae's famous, somber poem 'In Flanders Fields', and he finally asks, "What have we learned, Charlie Brown?"

    Charles Schulz always treasured the undisputed control he had of his comic strip above all else that it spawned, but Peanuts was extremely important to animation. Say what you will about the production values of the specials (the style of Peanuts was always purposefully simplistic), the franchise did set an example of how to use their lack of budget to the benefit of most projects (not all of them), and they were respectable enough to bring up subjects that cartoons were generally refrained from depicting in the day and age. So yeah, the fact that the medium was not so completely neutered that it destroyed the medium entirely, is partially owed to Peanuts.

    This was the only Peanuts special besides the Christmas special to recieve a George Peabody award for recognizable prestigiousness. Of course, the reception of accalades only goes so far (and I think it's safe to say that the most major ones like Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys, are largely biased and not centered on something doing anything distinctily admirable, as they claim to be), but regardless, this was a very respectable tribute to all the lives lost in both world events (even with the episode taking some pointless detours from the subject matter, as Peanuts is so recognized for doing).

    Believe it or not, many of the grim themes of Peanuts were some of Schulz's own refelctions and contemplations of being drafted into the war just after his mom died of cancer (the cancer that he ironically died from himself at the dawn of the twenty-first century).

    I'm no expert in politics by any stretch of the imagination, but I do know that the first world war sent half the population of the world into unanticipated debts and poverty, and the second world war brought us out of it. The lesson that Eisenhower said he hoped and prayed we've learned and will hopefully never have to repeat, wasn't the best way to learn it, but it was an effective way-or so we like to think, in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

    Like it or not, this has always been and will always be a continuous battle within the existence of mankind. There are times where it has been worse than others, and I think it's apparent that we are heading into one of our more difficult times. I don't think what we currently have going on will lead to any world wars or mass genocide. But whatever does happen, I truly believe it will lead to a vital re-examination of human interaction and what we value as human beings-and hopefully for the better.

    Now I have taken a fair bit of inspiration from the philosophies Bill Melendez, but as the years have gone on and I've devloped my own sense of self-identity, I've come to disagree with some things he's said. He has been known for not caring for tackling some of the "deeper, more painful topics", which is why he wasn't a big fan of this, and even went on to say that Why, Charlie Brown? Why? was his least favorite special (or among his least favorites). He even dreaded the initial idea of Linus reading from the bible in the Christmas special. But he did always acknowledge that if something possibly-controversial was a part of the story, you had to use it.

    This is part of why I admire Peanuts so much. It might not be the greatest franchise out there, but whichever medium Schulz used Snoopy and Charlie Brown for, he was well-known for not shying away from topics that he believed deserved attention. I'm extremely thankful that I can officially call the 2015 movie Blue Sky's best to date, and if I do manage to get successful at spreading words with my own creation that will made the world better, Peanuts is sure to be a major influence on that.
 
Image size
2031x1384px 543.98 KB
Make
Apple
Model
iPhone 4S
Shutter Speed
1/24 second
Aperture
F/2.4
Focal Length
4 mm
ISO Speed
50
Date Taken
Nov 4, 2016 6:41:56 PM -04:00
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