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Comment by agumonkey | Hacker News Reader

Only a European, and one who grew up on US stuff, fondly so, charlie brown feels very low on the exposed and perceived American ethos / values. I saw a few strips and refs .. but that's about it.

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It’s practically institutionalized at school. Major holidays are marked by watching Charlie Brown in class at a young age.

I don't recall EVER watching Charlie Brown shows at school (Fairfax Co, VA in the mid 80s).

I only remember watching Flight of the Navigator year after year.

At school??

I watched it at school too but just once. We all sat in the gymnasium. We also had a magician perform, some type of band, and some other activities over the years. Looking back I think there was always some “special” day right around the corner.

Unrelated, in high school we watched History of the World Part I in World History and our teacher had a piece of cardboard that said “censored” or something that he put in front of the screen during various scenes like “Bishop humps Queen” but allowed the audio to play through.

So it's very much present as inner culture but not much an influence big mainstream productions (tv shows, movies) that we see as exports, is that right ?

Honestly, in my experience the original stuff largely disappeared. I vaguely remember watching some of it back in the early 90's, but never in school. The holiday specials would be on TV if you went looking for them, but that's about it.

Snoopy was more ensuring than Charlie Brown, but even that was more "cute cartoon" than anything to do with any message.

Edit: I see some sibling comments that it's making a comeback, though I've no idea if any of it is all that faithful to the original.

Charlie Brown had a lot of Christian messaging reflecting Schultz's devout beliefs, and I doubt any of that will show up in whatever Apple and Target and current schools are putting together.

talking about snoopy, it was quite popular in france in the 80s, i even have a kid thermos (https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1478487195/thermos-snoopy-an...). but yeah it felt acultural to me at least (to be honest i would have said it was english)

> Honestly, in my experience the original stuff largely disappeared. I vaguely remember watching some of it back in the early 90's, but never in school. The holiday specials would be on TV if you went looking for them, but that's about it.

Yeah, my dad (a Baby Boomer) loved these and would make sure to watch them every year. I and my Millennial siblings didn't really care, it just felt old-fashioned. I had no idea it was still popular at all.

I think it depends where you live. Peanuts seems to have fairly large presence in Taiwan and Japan--it's currently owned by Sony. It's one of the tentpoles on Apple TV.

According to Wikipedia, as a franchise it's brings in more revenue than Star Trek or the Avengers.

As iterateoften points out, the TV shows are mainly tied to US holidays, or at least how those holidays are celebrated in the US. This also makes Peanuts merchandise tied to those holidays very popular.

Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas are the major ones. I think New Year and Easter were added at some point but not as well known.

Having said that, it makes sense that those shows wouldn't translate as well to a non-US audience.

Nope. Schoolhouse Rock, multiple Monty Python films, The Last Samurai, The Magic Schoolbus, Romeo and Juliet... but never any Charlie Brown. Oh yeah, and The Sandlot. 2 or 3 times I think.

Huh, we didn't get those either. Except Schoolhouse Rock. The only other TV I remember was we'd watch every Space Shuttle launch, up until the Challenger explosion, then we didn't watch them any more.

And of course, there was the Oregon Trail video game in middle school. But, as far as I can tell, that was a pretty short-lived thing.

Charlie Brown does feel more like a symbol of a bygone era rather than an embodiment of the 21st century American psyche

Yeah. I remember thinking it was old and boring as a kid in the 90's... Have children born after the millennium even ever seen a newspaper, let alone read the comics?

Yes, a time when children entertained themselves outside interacting with other children, and adults were so peripheral to their lives that they could be portrayed always off screen by a mumbling voice.

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