Yesterday’s death of Joe Garagiola has me thinking about the ways in which Peanuts is designed for longevity, and the ways in which it’s not. The Peanuts strip was made in and for its time, and while the strip did not flow through current events the way that, say, Doonesbury does (I was reading a Doonesbury collection from 2008, and had to pause from time to time to remind myself “oh, this is the ’08 election, the ‘Senator’ being referred to would be then-presidential candidate John McCain”, things like that), there are references to and reactions to individual events, there is invocations of pop culture. Joe Garagiola got a mention, in Sally’s mispronunciation of his name (“Garagiagiola”).
There used to be commentary about how the Peanuts strip was “timeless”, bereft of such datable – but that was a myth generated by people reading the trade paperbacks, which tended to skip the timely references. The Complete Peanuts series seems to have put a lid on this sort of talk. But the truth is that as time passes, we are losing connection to the references. The coming generation will not experience Joe Garagiola, and the current one won’t get the Elton John glasses references.
But then, that’s long been the case. Many of us ran into the Red Baron first through Peanuts before we learned much about World War I. And even I come to Beau Geste solely through Peanuts; the last serious film adaptation of the novel hit theaters when I was only 1 year old (although there was the later, 1977 spoof entitled appropriately The Last Remake of Beau Geste.) The culture shifts will absolutely ding individual strips here and there, just as the move away from wired phones, thick televisions, and girls constantly wearing dresses. But I think the core of the strip will still be understandable for at least a couple generations to come.
