Peanuts’ Charlie Brown Is Now a Beacon of Toxic Positivity

Is Charlie Brown, of all people, a purveyor of toxic positivity?

That certainly wasn’t the case for decades of comic strips and (to a lesser extent) TV specials and feature films, where Charles M. Schulz’s iconic everykid lost every baseball game, missed every chance to talk to his red-haired crush, and was continually upstaged by his ill-behaved beagle, Snoopy. (Fittingly, it’s Snoopy whose name “presents” the newest generation of Peanuts animated specials.)

Some of the longer-form Peanuts narratives in animation or on Broadway pointed out the long-term perseverance this endless losing necessitated, and indeed, there’s a sweetly daft optimism inherent in his every “I’m gonna kick that football clear to the moon!” But Schulz and his past collaborators understood not to ladle the syrup