Charlie Browns America – Blake Scott Ball

Schulz related to soldiers through his own experience of being drafted and fighting in World War II. Schulz evaluated the war on the basis of what was best for US troops and not always what was best for the country’s international image or for millions of suffering Vietnamese people. Whether Schulz’s characters condemned the war or dreaded the draft, they did so because of Schulz’s empathy for the soldiers’ plight.6 In the late 1960s, Charles Schulz used his skills in metaphor and purposeful ambiguity to broach the most controversial issue of the day.

His strips addressing the war, the draft, and even war protests had little to no blowback. For Peanuts readers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Vietnam War was their context for understanding the militaristic images of Snoopy’s war. A deeper look at Peanuts during the Vietnam War reveals more clearly the potential for doubt about the Vietnam War in the mainstream culture of the 1960s. It also suggests that the culture of ambivalence, reflected in the nation’s most widely read comic strip of the day, played a role in limiting the US government’s ability to execute the war.

Finally, it sheds light on how average Americans, both at home and at war, internalized and coped with the experience of the war. Peanuts readers—100 million strong by the end of the war—connected with these storylines because they communicated their own feelings about the world around them more clearly than almost anything else in their lives. Snoopy’s war was many Americans’ Vietnam War.7 Though Peanuts had been nationally syndicated for fifteen years by the time the United States entered official combat in Vietnam, it had only addressed warfare one time before.

This single reference to the nation’s past conflicts —and the strip’s only reference to the Korean War, which had erupted barely four months before Peanuts debuted—revealed much about Schulz’s opinion on warfare.

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© Oxford University Press 2021 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization.

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Title: Charlie Brown’s America : the popular politics of Peanuts / Blake Scott Ball. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020048676 (print) | LCCN 2020048677 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190090463 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190090487 (epub) | ISBN 9780190090494 Subjects: LCSH: Schulz, Charles M. (Charles Monroe), 1922–2000—Criticism and interpretation. | Schulz, Charles M. (Charles Monroe), 1922-2000. Peanuts. | Peanuts (Comic strip) | Comic books, strips, etc.—United States—Political aspects. Classification: LCC PN6727 .S3 Z624 2021 (print) | LCC PN6727 .S3 (ebook) | DDC 741.5/973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048676 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048677 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190090463.001.0001 1kitap1.com/en To Nana, who taught me to love reading, and to Dr. Nelson, who taught me to love history.

1kitap1.com/en Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. You’re a Good Man, Charles Schulz: The Making of an American Original 2. The Future Frightens Me: The Cold War Origins of Peanuts 3. Bless You for Charlie Brown: Peanuts and the Evangelical Counterculture 4. Crosshatch Is Beautiful: Franklin, Color-Blindness, and the Limits of Racial Integration 5. Snoopy Is the Hero in Vietnam: Ambivalence, Empathy, and Peanuts’ Vietnam War 6. I Believe in Conserving Energy: Peanuts, Nature, and an Environmental Ethos 7.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 0ec9cb23f95306b4
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 21,829,356 bytes (20.818 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9780190090463, 9780190090487, 9780190090494
• Pages: 280
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 508.02 minutes
• Total Words: 101,605
• Total Characters: 633,777
• Average Words per Page: 362.88
• Average Characters per Page: 2263.49

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