It was a dark and stormy night...
And then Snoopy would place his old typewriter on the roof of his doghouse and indisputably become the best writer on the planet. His novels always started the same way: It was a dark and stormy night... And often didn't go beyond that.
He copied that purple prose from Edward Bulwer-Lytton and dreamed of being Tolstoy, Eudora Welty, or F. Scott Fitzgerald with the same doses of imagination that made him fail time and time again as an ace of World War I aviation. With his pilot hat and goggles and the trail of his scarf at the controls of a Sopwith Camel doomed to defeat. Sometimes he was a fearless astronaut, a skilled ice hockey player, or a world-famous lawyer with a bow tie unable to win a single case. Snoopy could be the most famous tennis player of all time and also the irresistible college student Joe Cool...
Snoopy was all that and at the same time was nothing more than a white mutt with a black snout with no other aspirations than resting his ears on the ground or lying around. A beagle that looked nothing like a real beagle.
"Snoopy represents the dreams of many people. He has to take refuge in his imaginary world to survive. Otherwise, he is left with a boring and miserable life," admitted his creator, Charles M. Schulz, almost 30 years ago. Schulz was inspired by his dog Spike to design the most iconic character of the 17,897 comic strips he drew almost continuously for half a century under the title Peanuts for over 2,600 newspapers in 75 different countries.
"Possibly the longest story ever told by a human being," said Schulz's obituary published by The New York Times in 2000.
In Spain, the saga was renamed Carlitos y Snoopy. Now Reservoir Books has just released the most complete anthology ever published in our language, 75 years after the first comic strip was published in the American press and 25 years since the last one was released. But this report is not just about anniversaries and nostalgia: the most famous dog in history is back in fashion, now a surprising hero of the Generation Z.
Charles M. Schulz: the misfit child who turned his sad childhood into the most successful comic strips in history
Look around you. Snoopy is no longer just a World War I aviator. He is also a Zara t-shirt, an H&M pajama, a Uniqlo sweatshirt, Vans sneakers, a Lacoste polo, Levi's jeans, a Starbucks mug, a phone case, your office mate's socks, a Swatch watch, an Apple Watch, or a luxury Omega watch valued at over 50,000 euros. His image appears on a doormat from Leroy Merlin as well as on a coveted Marc Jacobs bag. Even brands like Chanel, Fendi, Dolce & Gabbana, or Karl Lagerfeld have dressed the character these days in Paris in an exhibition celebrating the seventy-five years of the stylish hound.
Everything today bears Snoopy's face. I swear...
Snoopy is also an octogenarian influencer. His impact on social media has skyrocketed in recent times. According to data from Peanuts Worldwide, the character's official TikTok account grew by almost 224% in 2023. And from the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in California, they claim that interactions on his Instagram profile have also surged by over 200%. The museum recorded the best attendance figures last season in its over 20-year history.
"Snoopy represents the dreams of many people. He has to take refuge in his imaginary world to survive a boring and miserable life."
Today's young people probably have no idea who Schulz was, maybe they haven't even read his comics, but they viralize his comic strips as if they were memes and reproduce Charlie Brown's laments and his pet's philosophical reflections as the Ten Commandments of their generation. "My anxieties have anxieties," complained Charlie Brown in a 1977 comic strip, a phrase that is repeated daily on pins, magnets, buttons, caps, stories, reels, and Frappuccino cups.
"Snoopy's stories worked very well in the comic strip format because they were brief and forceful bursts of depth. And that's why they adapt so well now to Instagram or TikTok," celebrates Claire Catterall from London, curator of the Somerset House cultural center. "Perhaps they went somewhat unnoticed after Schulz's death, and of course, when newspapers stopped being read in print format. But now, with social media, they have found another perfect platform!"
In 2019, Catterall curated Good Grieve, Charlie Brown, an exhibition celebrating "the enduring power" of his comic strips. That exhibition focused on the influence of Schulz's work on artists and writers, but already anticipated its impact on younger audiences. "Snoopy is rebellious and selfish, innocent and critical, sensitive and astute... He breaks the rules, transcends all limits, infuses an air of anarchy, freedom, and possibility. It's not surprising that so many young people, disillusioned with society and confused about what is expected of them, take Snoopy so seriously," she explained back then.
One of the panels in that exhibition included part of what the Italian philosopher Umberto Eco wrote in his essay Apocalípticos e integrados over 60 years ago. It remains terribly relevant today: "The world of Charlie Brown and Snoopy is a microcosm, a small human comedy valid for both the innocent reader and the sophisticated one. These children touch us closely because in a certain sense they are monsters: they are the monstrous childish reductions of all the neuroses of a modern citizen of industrial civilization."
Half a century after Eco's musings, James C. Kaufman, a professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut, revisited the antics of the Peanuts characters to try to explain the classic five-factor personality model. Thus, the profiles of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Schroeder, and company respond to each of our traumas and emotions. And perhaps that's why they resonate with any reader. In the 1960s and now.
"Charlie Brown, eternally full of worries and doubts, represents an exemplary neurotic. He is prone to depression, anxiety, and paralyzing bouts of overanalysis," diagnoses Kaufman. And he continues: "Schroeder, who never stops practicing the piano, is the conscientious one. Linus, prone to philosophize but also willing to pursue unusual ideas, is the most open to experiences. And Lucy, often grumpy, grouchy, or even a bit violent, is the most unpleasant and unfriendly."
"Lucy's furrowed brow is as iconic to me as the Mona Lisa's mocking smile," said filmmaker John Waters.
-Snoopy, of course, is extroversion - concludes Kaufman's analysis. Always ready to dance, hug, hang out with friends, and meet people. He is a typical extrovert. Extravagant and daring to the point of exaggeration, he tries to participate in all activities and conversations. Snoopy is the life of the party.
The soul of a never-ending party. "Indeed, I don't think Snoopy has ever gone out of style," the professor explains via email. "He is the kind of timeless phenomenon that is rediscovered and suddenly becomes popular every now and then. He is always happy to play, daydream, and indulge in a bit of fantasy. I believe that in these times when everything seems very serious and even catastrophic, having a creative, cheerful, and fun character is appealing. But, at the same time, Snoopy is not superficial: he experiences real emotions; he is friendly, but certainly not perfect. And his quick and brief comic strips translate well to a phone and to the very brief moments of engagement so common nowadays."
Snoopy first appeared in the press in the third Peanuts strip, published on October 4, 1950. Back then, he was just an ordinary beagle, still walking on all fours, and that day he walked with a flower in his mouth until a neighbor accidentally watered it from her window, soaking the poor dog in an essentially Chaplinesque gag. Almost two years later, he had his first thought. Snoopy never spoke a word, but he had deep thought bubbles. On May 27, 1952, Charlie Brown pulls his ears. "It's a bit hot today for earmuffs, don't you think?" he teases. And Snoopy walks away grumbling, "Why do I have to endure these indignities?."
It took another five years until, on June 28, 1957, Snoopy stood up on his hind legs for the first time. And the story changed forever.
"Schulz transfers different traits of his personality to his characters. And his fantasy and desire to be anything one can imagine fall on Snoopy from then on," notes Pedro Paredes, author of the essay A Man Named Charles M. Schulz (Marmotilla Editions). "Snoopy harbors multiple disciplines and with different results, so he achieves more than any other character for the reader or the person who sees his image on social media to identify with him. Depending on how life is going and how we face it, we identify with one alter ego or another. In Snoopy, we can find what we seek or need at any given moment."
Dr. Don Presnell, a professor at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, and responsible for a seminar on "the simple complexity of Peanuts," argues that Snoopy functions as a Rorschach test: "It means something different to each of us."
"I like to think that, like all of Schulz's art, Snoopy consists of very few lines and presents itself as a figure or character with which any reader can identify," explains Presnell from the United States. "Perhaps Snoopy is comforting now for a generation especially anxious... Although I was not aware of how popular he was among my Generation Z students until last year when I saw in the news that a Snoopy plush toy had sold out in all pharmacies in the country."
How a $13.99 Snoopy unleashed Generation Z madness, titled The Wall Street Journal at the end of 2023, when thousands of young Americans went crazy to get one of the dog's toys, with an adorable blue padded coat and striped hat, promoted by the CVS pharmacy chain. The plush toy was resold online for four times its price, and TikTok was filled with videos of kids desperately searching for the beagle. Almost simultaneously, blood donations in the United States increased by 40% after the Red Cross gave a T-shirt with Snoopy's Joe Cool image to all volunteers. Once again, TikTok exploded with hundreds of videos of young people running to blood centers.
Pedro Paredes, author of 'A Man Named Charles M. Schulz'"In his strips, there is feminist struggle, struggle for freedom, issues on abortion, ecology, racism, mental health"
"In this time of social and political uncertainty, a planet deteriorating rapidly, and everything moving towards a pay model, we needed a hero," reflected at that time on her internet channel YouTuber Bobbi Miller, a pop culture expert. "Snoopy is over 70 years old, but if you look at your nearest social media app, you'll see that he has been enshrined in thousands of fan cameras, montages, and profile pictures, specifically by members of Generation Z, as if he were tailor-made for them. Today, a cloud of existentialism can be felt hovering over all of us, so it's no wonder that many seek refuge in places of comfort. If I have to exist in this world and endure it, let's at least have the license to dream and imagine something better."
"Every now and then, I feel that my existence is justified," meditated Snoopy in the late 60s, lounging on the roof of his doghouse.
"His problems and concerns are the same as those of young people today," shares the young Spanish writer Marina Aguirre, the latest SM Youth Literature Award winner with the novel Today We Honor the Living. Marina is 34 years old, but she admits over the phone that the day we contacted her, she was wearing a Snoopy T-shirt and had a blanket with Peanuts characters wrinkled on the couch. "My mother already loved Snoopy in the 80s, I have read his books since I was a child, and I wore T-shirts with the character until I started working as a Math teacher and stopped wearing them in class because my students wore them too."
If one reviews the anthology of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, they will find hundreds of comic strips that connect with the concerns of 21st-century youth, beyond the anxious anxieties of Charlie Brown. We have the nature-conscious Snoopy scout or how his inseparable friend, the bird Woodstock (Emilio in Spain), copes with temperature changes. We have Lucy's psychiatric consultation at five dollars per session, anticipating teenagers' interest in mental health. Or Peppermint Patty, reinterpreted years later as an LGBTQ icon, already reminding in the late 60s that girls could also play (and win) baseball or American football... And we have Franklin, the first African-American character in Peanuts, created just a few days after the assassination of Martin Luther King.
"Schulz never wanted Peanuts to be an editorial or political comic; it was more like a chronicler in the style of Bob Dylan. In his strips, there is feminist struggle, struggle for religious freedom, freedom of thought, issues on abortion, ecology, racism, mental health...," explains Pedro Paredes before bringing that melody to the present. "Much of the news published by EL MUNDO or The Washington Post could be explained in a Peanuts comic strip. Since 2007, young people have experienced economic, environmental, political, energy, terrorist attacks, and military and commercial wars. This makes them aware, but also, faced with that environment of continuous complaint and anger, they choose escapism."
Don Presnell, professor at Appalachian State University"It is a character with which any reader can identify, and perhaps it is comforting now for a generation especially anxious"
Pareces says, "from happiness to depression, from defeat to hope," there is no comic that emphasizes emotion more than Peanuts: "Faced with that need to escape, to choose fantasy - the growth that the Harry Potter saga has had in the last decade is not trivial - and an individualistic and nihilistic view of the world, there is no character that conveys it better than Snoopy."
Furthermore, Snoopy's relevance is not only intellectual. Today, he is also a massive business. "Schulz is one of the highest-earning deceased celebrities in the US, with an average of $30 million per year, despite no longer publishing new strips," recalls the Spanish author. His presence is maintained in comics and television and remains very relevant in American culture.