Peanuts Exhibition at Somerset House Explores Cultural Impact Beyond Comics

Somerset House in London hosted 'Good Grief, Charlie Brown!' from 25 October 2018 to 3 March 2019, examining Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts as a significant cultural phenomenon. The exhibition featured original comic strips alongside licensed merchandise like toys and clothing, highlighting Snoopy's prominence. Unofficial appropriations, such as Vietnam War patches mixing Peanuts imagery with drug and sex references, demonstrated the characters' pervasive influence. Letters to Schulz from figures including Timothy Leary and Ronald Reagan were displayed. The show addressed social themes through characters like Lucy, linking her to feminist debates and Schulz's skepticism of psychiatry. Umberto Eco described the characters as 'monstrous, infantile reductions' of modern neuroses. While effective at presenting content and context, the exhibition received criticism for insufficient analysis of Schulz's evolving drawing style and Peanuts' impact on later comics like Calvin and Hobbes and Love and Rockets. Contemporary art pieces by Mel Brimfield and David Musgrave engaged formally with Peanuts, but others, like Marcus Coates's interactive psychiatric booth, were deemed superficial. The reliance on non-comics art to bolster Peanuts' intellectual credentials was seen as undermining the exhibition's argument for comics as art.