Letter from My Garden 13
Philosophy in Two Strokes of the Pen
From Charlie Brown to Rantanplan, when comics illuminate the human condition.
“Since childhood, I have remained a devoted fan of comics."
Comics are capable, in three words and two strokes of the pen, of expressing why there is something rather than nothing, whether one must die or live, and whether life truly has meaning. A good, inspired graphic novel allows the life of its hero to contract and expand like an accordion, finding its own paths to questions one might think are reserved for philosophy. A world of dreams and fantasies, of the absurd and the nonsensical, these are all images that allow drawing to offer genuine existential anxieties.
Charles Schulz declared his love for the “Peanuts” and his gratitude towards these “poets of childhood, these children like “Charlie Brown” who resonate with us deeply because they are, in a certain sense, monsters.” The word is out: we are in the presence of a monstrous, childlike presentation of all the neuroses of a modern citizen of our civilization. Everything is there: the frustrated struggle for success, the quest for sympathy, loneliness, arrogance, passive consent, and neurotic protest.
All these elements do not come from the mouths of innocents but are indeed thoughts rendered after passing through the filter of, precisely, innocence. The world of the “Peanuts” is a microcosm, a human comedy; in two strokes of the pen, the version of the human condition is laid bare without compromise, in its pure reality. Julien Baggini, a philosopher, summarizes this kind of comic strip: “Charlie’s reality is that of an abstraction that has captured the essence of real life, not that of a particular, real man in whom we see our own reflection.”
I also really like Christophe’s scientist “Cosinus,” ah! That dear Cosinus, determined to travel the world and bring civilization, yet who proves incapable of leaving Paris. This ancestor of Professor Calculus mischievously sows chaos in the triumphant march of scientific determinism. Cosinus establishes the figure of a distracted, slightly mad scientist. A series of failed experiments, designed to reassure the average person.
The world of comics, in my opinion, is essentially philosophical since it must reflect on and present reality better than realistic fiction. It is no coincidence that most of the most insightful cultural productions are comic strips.
To attract your attention and perhaps your interest, I would like to talk about Lucky Luke’s famous dog. Boris Cyrulnik, who developed the concept of the “Resilience” praises Rantanplan: “Poor Rantanplan! Everyone thinks he’s a complete idiot. Everyone except Cyrulnik, who, in the name of a truth that our culture—whose language we have fetishized—tends to lose sight of, is that words should not be dissociated from perception, nor cut off from tangible reality.
Thus, Cyrulnik specifies that, with his way of thinking, our famous dog presents: “humor arises from the misunderstanding between canine and human values. Is Rantanplan right to reason, to think in terms of images rather than words? In truth, I think our culture has overvalued language to the point of even utopianizing it”… and adds: “when a baby points to a bottle, it knows it will manipulate its mother’s mental world to get it.”
He confirms: “I had the opportunity to talk with racists who were coming back from a racist attack. Happy. They had celebrated, they had beaten up a “wog,” it was a good day. They were responding to a representation divorced from lived reality. That is to say, if they had worked with this “wog,” they could have been friends. They weren’t responding to the perception of “wog,” they were responding to the representation of the “wog,” who comes to take our jobs, rape our women, be a criminal, etc…” They were in a completely logical world, created by words. Whatever the target, Black people in the Ku Klux Klan narratives, for example, are always presented in the same narratives, dissociated and divorced from perception.
That’s what Rantanplan is warning us about. Pretty good, right?
Comics, the best way to do philosophy, the nonsense of life in the English style, that is to say, a form of humor that defies definition, borrows from the absurd without being imprisoned by it, and which, in any case, invites us to smile. Enough to give meaning to life.
Comics are capable, in three words and two strokes of the pen, of expressing why there is something rather than nothing, whether one must die or live, and whether life truly has meaning. A good, inspired graphic novel allows the life of its hero to contract and expand like an accordion, finding its own paths to questions one might think are reserved for philosophy. A world of dreams and fantasies, of the absurd and the nonsensical, these are all images that allow drawing to offer genuine existential anxieties.
Charles Schulz declared his love for the “Peanuts” and his gratitude towards these “poets of childhood, these children like “Charlie Brown” who resonate with us deeply because they are, in a certain sense, monsters.” The word is out: we are in the presence of a monstrous, childlike presentation of all the neuroses of a modern citizen of our civilization. Everything is there: the frustrated struggle for success, the quest for sympathy, loneliness, arrogance, passive consent, and neurotic protest.
All these elements do not come from the mouths of innocents but are indeed thoughts rendered after passing through the filter of, precisely, innocence. The world of the “Peanuts” is a microcosm, a human comedy; in two strokes of the pen, the version of the human condition is laid bare without compromise, in its pure reality. Julien Baggini, a philosopher, summarizes this kind of comic strip: “Charlie’s reality is that of an abstraction that has captured the essence of real life, not that of a particular, real man in whom we see our own reflection.”
I also really like Christophe’s scientist “Cosinus,” ah! That dear Cosinus, determined to travel the world and bring civilization, yet who proves incapable of leaving Paris. This ancestor of Professor Calculus mischievously sows chaos in the triumphant march of scientific determinism. Cosinus establishes the figure of a distracted, slightly mad scientist. A series of failed experiments, designed to reassure the average person.
The world of comics, in my opinion, is essentially philosophical since it must reflect on and present reality better than realistic fiction. It is no coincidence that most of the most insightful cultural productions are comic strips.
To attract your attention and perhaps your interest, I would like to talk about Lucky Luke’s famous dog. Boris Cyrulnik, who developed the concept of the “Resilience” praises Rantanplan: “Poor Rantanplan! Everyone thinks he’s a complete idiot. Everyone except Cyrulnik, who, in the name of a truth that our culture—whose language we have fetishized—tends to lose sight of, is that words should not be dissociated from perception, nor cut off from tangible reality.
Thus, Cyrulnik specifies that, with his way of thinking, our famous dog presents: “humor arises from the misunderstanding between canine and human values. Is Rantanplan right to reason, to think in terms of images rather than words? In truth, I think our culture has overvalued language to the point of even utopianizing it”… and adds: “when a baby points to a bottle, it knows it will manipulate its mother’s mental world to get it.”
He confirms: “I had the opportunity to talk with racists who were coming back from a racist attack. Happy. They had celebrated, they had beaten up a “wog,” it was a good day. They were responding to a representation divorced from lived reality. That is to say, if they had worked with this “wog,” they could have been friends. They weren’t responding to the perception of “wog,” they were responding to the representation of the “wog,” who comes to take our jobs, rape our women, be a criminal, etc…” They were in a completely logical world, created by words. Whatever the target, Black people in the Ku Klux Klan narratives, for example, are always presented in the same narratives, dissociated and divorced from perception.
That’s what Rantanplan is warning us about. Pretty good, right?
Comics, the best way to do philosophy, the nonsense of life in the English style, that is to say, a form of humor that defies definition, borrows from the absurd without being imprisoned by it, and which, in any case, invites us to smile. Enough to give meaning to life.
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