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the-technorats · 4 months

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"good grief, ferb, i know what we're gonna do today,"

or my thoughts on how phineas and ferb is a timely adaptation of peanuts, and what it means that snoopy is trending again

so i had this thought a while ago and never had the time to elaborate upon it in my head, but Phineas and Ferb is modern day/21st century Peanuts, not only in media and character archetype, but in theme and message.

as for visually/technically, both are obviously 2D illustrations with very brief, episodic stories that are usually stand-alone but occasionally follow a broader arc, which is ofc true of many/most comics/cartoons. they both have pretty stylized character designs and super strong shape language (though in peanuts, the shape language is for the characters overall, while in p&f, the shape language is for the individual characters). anyway these are not very specific to the integrity of the media themselves, just common similarities. onto the real meat and potatoes:

both are media made for younger audiences but still funny for older ones, featuring a gang of kids who get up to shenanigans and are rarely/never in school or subject to their parents' or teachers' wills. the characters mostly function as adults though they are depicted as children, which is extremely important to the content overall. both feature a seemingly average kid (charlie brown/phineas) and another kid with whom he has a fraternal relationship (linus/ferb); they face the world together while their aggressive, violent older sister (lucy/candace) antagonizes them. that sister (lucy/candace) has a crush on a blonde dude who doesn't really give much of a fuck (schroeder/jeremy), so she spends her time talking about personal issues with other people (the psychiatrist is IN/talking to stacy on the phone). they have a dopey-looking, unassuming pet whom they think does nothing but lie around and eat all day but who actually gets up to crime-fighting shenanigans in a world the rest of the characters don't know they're living in (fighting the red baron//o.w.c.a./the agency/"agent p.").

there are obviously some p big differences; p&f has an overarching villain and the stakes are much higher for the kids (getting caught by parents, the law, etc) which ofc stems from the fact that the kids are simply doing larger scale things than playing baseball and chatting existentialism on a brick wall, but that has much to do with the time period; charles schultz drawing peanuts in the 50s and onwards reflects the nihilism of the post-war era, and p&f reflects the y2k end-of-the-world-via-technology sentiment as well as the changes in domestic life/security post-9/11. however, i think the similarity lies in the way that the artists chose to react to the time period and its sociopolitics - with abstract/whimsical absurdist themes told through the lens of children who express their childhood and adulthood in different ways but make similar arguments.

there is also, beyond the characters and logistics, the sweet overarching theme of growing up; charlie brown and the gang are very much adult-minded children who think and say a lot and seldom act like children or experience childhood. rerun, linus and lucy van pelt's little brother who makes more of an appearance in the later Peanuts comics, (and putting aside that utterly devastating name - being a product of the silent generation is a cruel joke) spends most of his time on the back of his mom's bicycle contemplating his own existence. him and the the rest of the peanuts characters being children, however, allows them to largely exist outside of societal norms: lucy does not face the drawbacks of being a woman in the 1950's and instead is a little girl who expresses her feminine rage as a big sister who threatens her brother and his friends, and more often than not, follows through. wonderfully, it is possible for her to be feared by peers, funny to audiences, and respected by both, all while maintaining her femininity. (she is expressly not a tomboy and instead to be considered a lady, ever the contrast to peppermint patty, the obvious tomboy, who is depicted as funny and boyish as a girl without any sexism or toxic masculinity.) moreover, and to return to the general point, none of the children face responsibility - from their parents or from school; even the act of taking of care of a dog, which charlie brown does, is offset by snoopy's own clear independence and autonomy - he could ostensibly live on his own, but it is his choice, because of the companionship, because of home, to stay with charlie brown and the kids.

p&f, though similar in theme, has a much more slapstick approach where, though the kids are subject to their parents' generous, unaware limitations as well as city laws and ordinances, they truly exercise - and push - the extent of their free rein by inexplicably building anything as small as a goofy contraption to anything as large-scale as a roller coaster, all while evading candace's attempts to sabotage their fun by getting the parents involved. candace's continued failure proves the importance of the kids' freedom to the message of the show - while phineas and ferb may be 'getting away with it,' they are supposed to, you are supposed to want them to. just like in peanuts, at no point is one of the themes or morals to abide by rules or even to do the right thing - the apparent time they have to spend and how they choose to spend it is always the priority. lucy will never get in trouble for pulling away the football or decking her brother; phineas and ferb will not face actionable consequences from the city or their parents, especially not because of candace. candace, who, in fact, could be having much more valuable experiences with her friends or her crush were she not so hellbent on "busting" her brothers (and who, also, must be suffering big-time from being the tragic eldest daughter, but that's a different essay).

peanuts experiences time in something of a limbo. the children are clearly children, yet are ageless, though some are clearly younger than others. (their vocabularies are far too extensive for being as young as one might assume, and therefore indicate nothing.) school exists in certain strips, but not in others, and the changing of the seasons is apparent though this only serves to change the atmosphere of the kids' given activity and not to depict the passage of time in any meaningful way. time is endless. the characters are jaded, melancholy, existential adults in kid bodies representing the desire for self-awareness within the innocence and freedom of childhood. (and this might be a different essay, but vince guaraldi's jazz being the theme and score of the peanuts animation adaptations of the comics matches the dichotomy of the characters' youth and improvisation with the pensive sophistication of maturity.)

phineas and ferb experiences time in much the opposite manner - unlike the quiet peanuts panels of autumn leaves blowing by, or gracefully gliding over a frozen pond, p&f episodes fly by in a frenzy of creation and destruction - the ambition to do, see, and become everything running rampant over the course of a hundred and four days. however, phineas and ferb may be juxtaposed with charlie brown and linus as they do engage in the world around them; instead of escaping from a cruel world with wars and injustice to a smaller bubble where, with childhood, comes freedom and escape from the adult world, phineas and ferb want to escape the monotony of the smaller bubble where, with childhood, comes the confines of parents and rules and instead bring their childhood to the freedom and autonomy of being an adult.

so what's the point? i'm not exactly sure. (my major is lit analysis and not culture/media analysis, for reasons becoming increasingly unclear.) but with the resurgence of snoopy's popularity and what i think i personally have been witnessing of the youth's disillusionment with the world around them, perhaps the pensive melancholy of a generation being overexposed to death, genocide - violence overall - would be creeping back up over the ambitious enthusiasm and desire that preceded it, since that generation has witnessed and continues to witness the aftermath of an appetite for technology and progression left unchecked and used for personal gain. we've seen people try to phineas-and-ferb a better future, and we've seen that fail so utterly and catastrophically - and fail upward, nonetheless. it makes sense to need to resort back to reminding ourselves of the quiet intimacies. to reconnect with ourselves and think about what it really means to be here, existing, if everything real, in the world around us that we're intentionally shutting out, is miserable and corrupt and lost (and far too fucking expensive to live in).

phineas and ferb gives me hope, though. (one, that disney can write shows that are creative and funny with appropriate and positive messaging for children (and adults!) that actively discourage being a nark.) and for, more importantly, the kids watching, who will hopefully learn that their creative and passion-driven endeavors are important to the world that they are helping to shape, like it or not, and that the empathy and whimsy and desire for goodness (moral goodness, but also creating a quality of life that is good, where creation for the sake of the community is valued over creation for the sake of profit generation, (fucking obviously)) they possess as children need to be a part of their adulthood - and that maybe, the delineation between the two need not exist at all. maybe, that generations prior to ours created adult problems for their own children - that those children as a result did not get to experience their own childhoods, and that in trying to grow up too fast, they couldn't grow up at all - that there should be less of a distinction between childhood and adulthood now than ever before - that we lose the complete honesty and bald-headed truth of being a child when we think we are lost to adulthood - that we need joy and self-awareness and creativity and autonomy and community and best friends and security blankets - and that none of those are exclusive to childhood or adulthood - maybe that is the point.

#phineas and ferb #peanuts #snoopy #analysis #thoughts #writing #in this essay i will #write the essay and then edit the essay and then complete the essay actually #i truly meant for this to be a shower thought tweet style post about the character similarities between the two but #i just kept going #and then i kept getting inspired #essay #adaptation #what i will say is that i did little to no research for this tbh #just as a disclaimer #i do however have my entire childhood in which #i read every volume of the complete peanuts from '50 to '78 #and watched every animation they have released #yes including the 3d animated peanuts movie #which was lovely by the way i did cry #however i have seen quite a minimal amount of phineas and ferb #probably 3 or 4 episodes cumulatively #therefore these are just thoughts and not a well-substantiated essay by any means #just something i was thinking about #to be revisited perhaps

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