¶ … anxiety and happiness? Let us consider a joke on this topic, before turning to serious theoretical approaches toward the subject. In a "Peanuts" cartoon strip by Charles M. Schultz, the strip's resident know-it-all and amateur psychiatrist, Lucy van Pelt, is observing Charlie Brown's dog Snoopy hopping around in a giddy dance of happiness. "How can you be happy when you don't know what this year has in store for you?" she shouts. Snoopy looks chastened as Lucy continues, "Don't you worry about all the things that can happen?" Snoopy looks anxious, or sick unto death, as Lucy says: "That's better…live in dread and fear…be sensible." But in the strip's final panel, Snoopy bursts out into joyful laughter ("hehehe") and begins his happy dance again. I'd like to approach this cartoon strip as a little parable, and evaluate it using two approaches to anxiety: the existential approach given by Soren Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling, and the psychoanalytic approach taken by Freud in Civilization and its Discontents. Freud provides a useful starting place, because the Freudian concept of "angst vor etwas" or "fear before something" is precisely what Lucy van Pelt is trying to get Snoopy to feel in this strip. Freud famously claims that all anxiety is "angst vor etwas" -- in other words, it is not only confrontational (I stand before society / I stand before God and feel fear) but also anticipatory (I feel anxious before the event, my anxiety is an expectation) (Bloom 57). In Chapter VII of Civilization and its Discontents, Freud outlines the mechanism of how he thinks anxiety should operate in civilization. The earliest form is "social anxiety" where people feel fear before the opinion...
Freud thinks this is the principle that organizes most of society, but he also believes there is a "higher stage" in which this anxiety and authority is basically internalized -- we respond to an inner sense of fear, the voice of conscience, rather than an external sense of social shame or social punishment for transgression. Part of the joke of the "Peanuts" comic is that, in some sense, it perfectly illustrates the dynamic of Freud's model. Snoopy is happy at the beginning: Lucy doesn't understand why. So Lucy subjects Snoopy to her opinion of his behavior, and Snoopy complies with "social anxiety" to alter his behavior accordingly -- he replaces his happiness with sorrow and worry. By the third panel, Snoopy seems to have internalized the source of anxiety, to reach the level Freud and Lucy Van Pelt recommend -- he walks away from Lucy, no longer needing social presence to awaken the fear that makes him conform. Yet in the final panel Snoopy has seemingly realized that his internalized conscience no longer supports the fear: Snoopy is happy again. From Freud's standpoint, this may just be a lesson about the short memories of dogs.
Political cartoon recently released by Barsdale depicts a news anchor relaying a news story. The anchor is in front of a green screen and is wearing a pinstripe suit. The news anchor has a picture to the right of him of the state of Idaho turned onto its side. The news anchor is reporting that lawmakers banned the state of Idaho because it looks like a gun when placed on
Authors Donald Lively and Russell Weaver describe Hustler Magazine as Falwell's "antagonist (p. 79)," no doubt representing for Falwell abuses of our Constitutional freedoms. "In 1983, Hustler Magazine decided to parody Falwell using a Campari Liqueur advertisement. The actual Campari ads portrayed interviews with various celebrities about their 'first times.' Although the advertisement actually focused on the first time that the celebrities had sampled Campari, the ads portrayed the double
Gender in Poetry / Literature Lesson Lesson Duration mins Rational: This is an introduction to the gender issues which were so prevalent in the Victorian era, and a backdrop to show why they still exist today and the harm they can inflict. Syllabus Outcome: This part of the lesson helps meet outcome 1, or the ability to interpret meanings and themes within texts. By using abstract thinking processes, the students will make connections between
CSI Effect in Criminal Forensics It has long been suspected that the scenes, stories and situations people are exposed to through the medium of television can eventually distort their view of reality. Phenomena such as the desensitization to violence exhibited by children who watch hours of cartoon combat daily, or the shifting sense of body image experienced by women who only see slim, attractive models on screen serve to confirm
Lizard Who Had the Habit of Dining on His Wives" "the Story of the Lizard Who Had the Habit of Dining on His Wives" Eduardo Galeano "The Story of the Lizard Who Had the Habit of Dining on His Wives" seems to be a short, simple, strange story at first. But if a person looks into Eduardo Galeano's biography, the story makes much more sense and seems to say a lot more than
..While older children and adults understand the inherent bias of advertising, younger children do not, and therefore tend to interpret commercial claims and appeals as accurate and truthful information," said psychologist Dale Kunkel, Ph.D., Professor of Communication at the University of California at Santa Barbara and senior author of the task force's scientific report. (Kunkel, et.al, 2004) The Lego ads, when seen by younger children who "do not understand persuasive intent
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