I was going to make some juvenile post about Charlie Brown and Linus being gay. Maybe just posting that second-to-last panel with the title: "Your Out-Of-Context Peanuts Panel Of The Day" or something. But then I noticed something really disturbing.
Look at that last panel. Snoopy with a machine gun. Now, this does somewhat play into his whole WWI flying ace sequences a bit and, by 1963 when this strip first ran, Snoopy had been reasonably well-established as having quite a few human attributes. No, here's the part that find disturbing...
Snoopy is pointing the gun at Charlie Brown's house, not away from it as if to guard against possible intruders.
Charlie Brown is always, always shown entering and exiting from the left side of the panel when he's walking back and forth from his house to Snoopy's. Charlie Brown's house is on the left, Snoopy's doghouse is on the right. That's how it was done in the comics, that's how it was done in the cartoons...
Now I'm not one to question Charles Schulz's motivation for doing something like this, or what might've been going through his subconscious at the time, I'm just saying that Snoopy's house is always shown to the right of Charlie Brown's. Which means that Snoopy's machine gun is pointed right at Charlie Brown's house. Maybe he's got it trained on Linus, as he is something of an intruder. Maybe this is why we've never actually seen any parents in the Brown household. Maybe this is the reason why Sally isn't in the strip. Maybe Snoopy is holding Charlie Brown's baseball gear hostage.
All I'm saying here is that something really sinister is going on in what most people generally dismiss as a kids' comic.
3 comments:
It isn't just you. Snoopy is definitely pointing a big machine gun at Charlie Brown's house.
Maybe "Sparky" didn't want the last panel pointing "out" of the strip. I can see that. Perhaps it would have worked better if the gun were swiveled off to the right, but Snoopy's head was still facing left to keep "the eye" from being swept out. (Though, then you start questioning why Snoopy and the gun are facing different directions.)
Perhaps it would have worked better if some other prop were used instead of the machine gun. :-)
You know, Snoopy could've been legitimately turned back towards the house saluting Charlie Brown as the gun was still pointed to the right. Plenty of other options along those lines, too, if you wanted to look for them.
So I'm going to stick to my guns (if you'll excuse the pun) and say that stupid beagle has it in for Chuck.
:)
This is a rare panel of the other side of snoopy's house.
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