CSotD: A matter of perspective
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The other day, I gave a quick plug for "Gil," Norm Feuti's newly-syndicated strip about a not-very-successful kid with a not-very-perfect life. Here, not quite two weeks into its run, is Gil.
I've mentioned this before, but Norm's other strip, "Retail," came out when I was working at a newspaper and the samples in the sales packet, while they made no apparent impact on the stodgy, Weeble-bottomed 40-something editors, sent the late-20s gang over on the advertising/art side of the newspaper into hysterics. They'd all worked retail jobs and were delighted to see someone explode the absurdities of that world.
Gil may not provoke a lot of outright laughter even from those who recognize his world.
Some chuckles and grins, certainly. It will have fun moments, and already has.
But I think it will get more smiles and nods of recognition than outright guffaws, which is okay. Some of the best strips work on that level, and the person who tries to turn every humorous observation into a laff riot is usually a pretty poor storyteller.
And I could be completely wrong, because I'm not in a position to evaluate the strip: I'm a divorced parent, but the strip is written by, and from the perspective of, a divorced kid.
It's not just a different perspective. It's a different world.
Today's Gil makes me think of 1979, when "Kramer vs. Kramer" came out, and we talked about taking our young son, who was then seven, to it. His best friend's parents were getting divorced and we knew he had some questions and insecurities around the matter.
By the time, five years later, that our own marriage failed, divorce was so common in our circle and among his friends that, while we were concerned about the impact on our kids, we no longer looked on it as an overall topic that they needed explained.
As Gil and Shandra suggest, it was just one of the things that can happen to you, like your family moving to a new town. It's not that you wanted it to happen, and it is incredibly painful and difficult, but there it is and what are you going to do? "Lucky" means not having to adapt to it, having it be an established part of your reality from the get-go.
And you have to be grateful for the luck that comes your way. In this case, like Booker T said, if it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all.
And that's a funny song, but not the kind of funny that makes you laugh.
Let me be clear: The strip is not about divorce. The strip is about Gil, and, like all kid strips, and like all kids, that leaves a lot of plotlines open to explore.
However, Gil is a divorced kid, and that's like saying he's diabetic.
You wouldn't do a whole strip based on a kid being diabetic, and, since the fact that a kid has diabetes isn't obvious to a casual onlooker, strips set, for instance, in the classroom or down at the local library wouldn't be likely to reference it.
But other times, it would come up, because somebody was providing snacks for the group or they'd go to a restaurant or he'd be invited to a birthday party or his Scout troop was taking a particularly long hike, and suddenly there it is, as something that invades those otherwise routine childhood events.
In this case, a youngster's identity as a divorced kid only comes up alternate weekends or whatever the schedule is. Or when he wants to play a sport that requires buying special equipment or when he wants to learn to play a musical instrument or when he needs braces.
Or when someone says "Have your parents sign this" or when the school refuses to send a copy of your report card to a second address or on father's day or mother's day when you don't have the requisite parent for whom everyone in the class is supposed to draw a card.
Y'know, just once in awhile.
As a parent, you have to deal with it, but, like the parent of the diabetic kid, you're still only "dealing with it." The kid is living it. The most obsessive, over-involved helicopter parent in the world cannot get inside the skin of their kid.
When my older son went into the Navy, I became aware of how very few books and movies about Navy life are written from the point of view of the enlisted man, rather than the officer. "The Caine Mutiny," "Mr. Roberts," "The Bounty Trilogy," all are about officers, with the enlisted men as props, often comic relief, or stupid and truculent, perhaps being loyal and true-blue, but never fully realized as characters.
Steve McQueen played a damage controlman — my son's specialty — in "The Sand Pebbles," which, you know, I guess if only one actor is ever going to portray someone you can identify with, Steve McQueen is a pretty good choice.
It's the same thing with divorce.
"Kramer vs. Kramer" had a kid in it, but the movie was about the parents. Ditto with Jerry Bittle's comic strip, "Shirley and Son." And so on and so forth. It's always about the parents.
Well, Gil is about the kid.
And, while I don't think Gil is ever going to be mistaken for Steve McQueen, most kids these days don't know who the hell Steve McQueen was anyway.
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