![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
on For Better For Worse
prompted by a discussion from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jocelyncs . this is slightly extended from what was originally left in the comments there.
the converstation led to the idea that Johnston's characters' "lives" were becoming her own. I disagree with that simplification, thinking there's more to it than that.
actually, i think the "life" thing is the problem as a whole.
for most of the strip, the characters were a reflection of her family and her personal life, abstracted with the humor emphasized because, well, its a comic.
the problems started after her own kids finally grew up and moved out. she no longer had prime source material to draw from. she had already invented April, seeing as she didn't have a third kid of her own, merely to give space for other memories of her own kids combined with the stories from friends of hers who still had young kids that she could relate to. For at least 10 years now (given that her kids are as old as I am), she's had no kids in the house, no drama, nothing new to write about as she sees these other people coming up with crazy stuff for her to capture and exaggerate for all to remember.
the result?
she's had to make it up, a lot more than she would have before.
Some of what she makes up, perhaps, may come from her sensing a need for new drama in her life, since as a successful businesswoman, artist, and mother, she's pretty much had the ideal life most can just dream about. While you have kids, there's always *something*, but if you don't have that drama continue after your kids move out, the complacency can be maddening.
when an artist paints reality, its always relevant and we can always relate to it.
when an artist has to *invent* a reality to paint, we notice. we see patterns drawn not from the absolute human experience we all share, but from the specific example of things that we know happen but not always to us. things look exaggerated rather than believable; coincidences become contrivances.
this is the point where something becomes a "soap"; the situations are contrived to give the characters something to react to, rather than the characters themselves being the driving force behind the direction lives take.
that in the end leads to the discomfort. characters we can relate to are those that take control of their lives; the characters in FBFW *used* to do that, but as she's grown older and her family has moved out and she no longer has the examples around her of how people do that, things happen to her rather than by her. By extension, things happen to her characters, rather than her characters doing things to others.
doonesbury, by contrast, has these things happen to his characters in order to give a personal touch to the impact of the actions of those in power. its a completely different attitude. to give an example, the most striking of any comic strip incident (more so than any of the 4 deaths he's had), BD wasn't hit because Trudeau wanted to have more drama in his strip. he was hit because Trudeau had been collecting in his head a thousand war stories from friends and fans, some of which he knew from the first gulf war. Those stories needed to be told to a wider audience, an audience that needed to be shaken up to the reality of the world, the war, and what's its doing to people. there's the difference. Trudeau creates coincidences in his characters' lives order to show reality to the audience, particularly those aspects of reality that are the personal choices of men in power who know nothing of the consequences of their decisions, or worse still, intentionally ignore those consequences.
jocelyncs . this is slightly extended from what was originally left in the comments there.the converstation led to the idea that Johnston's characters' "lives" were becoming her own. I disagree with that simplification, thinking there's more to it than that.
actually, i think the "life" thing is the problem as a whole.
for most of the strip, the characters were a reflection of her family and her personal life, abstracted with the humor emphasized because, well, its a comic.
the problems started after her own kids finally grew up and moved out. she no longer had prime source material to draw from. she had already invented April, seeing as she didn't have a third kid of her own, merely to give space for other memories of her own kids combined with the stories from friends of hers who still had young kids that she could relate to. For at least 10 years now (given that her kids are as old as I am), she's had no kids in the house, no drama, nothing new to write about as she sees these other people coming up with crazy stuff for her to capture and exaggerate for all to remember.
the result?
she's had to make it up, a lot more than she would have before.
Some of what she makes up, perhaps, may come from her sensing a need for new drama in her life, since as a successful businesswoman, artist, and mother, she's pretty much had the ideal life most can just dream about. While you have kids, there's always *something*, but if you don't have that drama continue after your kids move out, the complacency can be maddening.
when an artist paints reality, its always relevant and we can always relate to it.
when an artist has to *invent* a reality to paint, we notice. we see patterns drawn not from the absolute human experience we all share, but from the specific example of things that we know happen but not always to us. things look exaggerated rather than believable; coincidences become contrivances.
this is the point where something becomes a "soap"; the situations are contrived to give the characters something to react to, rather than the characters themselves being the driving force behind the direction lives take.
that in the end leads to the discomfort. characters we can relate to are those that take control of their lives; the characters in FBFW *used* to do that, but as she's grown older and her family has moved out and she no longer has the examples around her of how people do that, things happen to her rather than by her. By extension, things happen to her characters, rather than her characters doing things to others.
doonesbury, by contrast, has these things happen to his characters in order to give a personal touch to the impact of the actions of those in power. its a completely different attitude. to give an example, the most striking of any comic strip incident (more so than any of the 4 deaths he's had), BD wasn't hit because Trudeau wanted to have more drama in his strip. he was hit because Trudeau had been collecting in his head a thousand war stories from friends and fans, some of which he knew from the first gulf war. Those stories needed to be told to a wider audience, an audience that needed to be shaken up to the reality of the world, the war, and what's its doing to people. there's the difference. Trudeau creates coincidences in his characters' lives order to show reality to the audience, particularly those aspects of reality that are the personal choices of men in power who know nothing of the consequences of their decisions, or worse still, intentionally ignore those consequences.