Ball, Blake Scott

OUR SYNOPSIS: Blake Scott Ball argues that through his Peanuts comic strip, Charles M. Schulz vacillated between the “left and right within the bounds of the broad middle of American political culture during the Cold War era.” (1) He shows that Schulz “regularly addressed controversial issues” while maintaining his ideological vagueness, building and maintaining broad popularity. (2) Ball draws on archived fan letters sent to Schulz to build understanding of population reactions to Peanuts, placing these in conversation with oral histories, articles, and more. He argues that through the character of Charlie Brown, Schulz “made an appeal to rationality in the face of paralyzing fear in the atomic age.” (36) The youth of the characters “was the key to all of Schulz’s social criticism: using his adorable child characters to disarm readers as he addressed sensitive topics.” (64) By the late 1950s, Christian religion became a key Peanuts theme as well. When Schulz racially integrated Peanuts in the late 1960s, the apparent “color-blindness” that Charlie Brown employed towards Black characters reflected a popular white approach at the time. During the Vietnam War, Schulz utilized Snoopy’s flying ace role to comment on the controversial conflict. He also at times combined social issues, for example often addressing environmental and consumerism simultaneously.