Bil Keane dies

Bil Keane, creator of the daily comic "The Family Circus," died Nov. 8 at age 89. I was not a fan of his work, but his passing has a nostalgic significance for me, because he provided the occasion for my first appearance in print. In the 1960s, when "The Family Circus" was still new, the Sunday panel included a feature called "Sideshow." The idea was that readers (mostly kids)would send in ideas for puns, and Keane would draw a small picture to illustrate them. Three of them appeared each week. Dreaming of immortality, I sent in a suggestion, and the drawing Keane based on it (it was nothing like the one I sent) appeared in the Philadelphia Bulletin on July 23, 1967.

I still have the letter Keane sent me, which included his autograph and a printer's proof of the comic:




Well, come on. I was only nine.

I haven't followed the strip in many years. I came to dislike "The Family Circus" for all same the reasons most urban sophisticates do: it was insipid, obvious and not very funny. But there was more to it than that. As a former child, I also believe it failed as a depiction of childhood, or at least of any sort of childhood I was familiar with. For me, the best comics about kids — "Calvin and Hobbes," "Peanuts" in its early years, Gahan Wilson's "Nuts," and a handful of episodes of "The Simpsons" and "South Park" — depict their experience from the inside, with all the fear, cruelty, mishchief, disappointment and humiliation intact. Keane's view was resolutely external. He saw children as a particularly dense parent or grandparent would — as adorable ignoramuses whose feelings can't be taken seriously. For anyone who remembers what it was like to be a child, "The Family Circus" rang consistently false.

It was also ripe for parody, and to his credit, Keane was tolerant of the attempts to make his ridiculous little comic look even more ridiculous. I confess I was one of the culprits, for a brief period. In another life, some of the people in my office would cut out the daily comic and change the captions, usually to something involving sex, drugs, or child abuse. I saved a complete file of the desecrations. Here are a few the less offensive. As you can see, my sense of humor has darkened over the years:

For a more inspired use of Keane's art, visit The Nietzsche Family Circus, which pairs random cartoons with random quotations from the philosopher. The weird thing is, it works. I mean, let's face it. Nietzsche was a lot funnier than Bil Keane ever was.

Mr. Wagner sees the light

Most people don’t want atonal, vocal, or challenging music on the radio. . . . Why should a commercial or public radio programmer ignore extensive research and devote sizable air time to something that most listeners don’t want to hear?

***

Today’s owners and programmers get more sophisticated feedback about listeners: Arbitron ratings report how many are listening; Scarborough, MRI and Simmons studies offer profiles on audience income, education, occupation and behavior. And many stations have local listener panels to test new programming concepts. All this feedback gives programmers a much better idea of what works and what doesn’t.

—Two letters to the Times

The following excerpts from the diary of Cosima Wagner, wife of the composer Richard Wagner, have been made public by the couple’s descendants after more than 130 years of suppression. The entries shed new light on Wagner’s decision to abandon work on an ambitious four-opera cycle, whose working title was "The Ring of the Nibelung."

Tribschen, Feb. 27, 1872—Luncheon today with R[ichard]. and Herr Prof. [Friedrich] Nietzsche, our gloomy young philologist. R. in a rancid mood over progress of "Götterdämmerung." Prelim. surveys show Brünnhilde character a washout with women aged 18–27. Killing of Siegfried got positive feedback, but self-immolation was a definite negative. 68% of respondents said Brünnhilde is not sufficiently empowered. R. says he will need to revise the ending, having Brünnhilde live and, possibly, raise Siegfried’s child alone while pursuing a career as a lawyer.

Prof. Nietzsche skeptical. He sat thoughtfully a long while, warming his hands around his teacup, then said, “Even the most personal conscience is vanquished by the leveling of great numbers.” That boy is developing a disturbing independence of mind. R. says he will need to be watched.

March 14, 1872 — R. spoke feelingly today of the personal tragedies of Beethoven — his rage, his deafness, his incomprehension of niche marketing. “What is the message of the Ode to Joy?” he asked. “All men are brothers. Fine. But only a small percentage of them will ever earn between 75 and 100 thousand a year. The goal of art — all art — is to help us see the good without requiring we actually do anything about it. The upper classes understand this better than anyone.”

I implore him to publish his ideas, but he brushes the suggestion aside, preferring to work on his mail-order catalog.

April 2, 1872 — More trouble with Prof. Nietzsche. R. had research data naming Bayreuth as the perfect place to build our festival theater, given its large population of white German males, our key demographic. Prof. Nietzsche argued the numbers were meaningless, since Germany is, as he says, “chock-full” of white German males. The only excuse for having a Germany in the first place, he said, is to give white German males a watering hole.

While conceding the point, R. defended the study, which was prepared by the biggest anti-Semitic think-tank in Vienna. Even if the conclusions were doctored, so to speak, it was done in an effort to be helpful.

“An anti-Semite is not admirable simply because he lies as a matter of principle,” Prof. Nietzsche said.

Whereupon R. ordered him out of the house.

Oct. 31, 1872 — Tragically, the names Wagner and Wagnerism evoke no feelings of brand loyalty. This according to focus groups in Bonn and Stuttgart. On average, consumers were “only somewhat” inclined to sit through a four-part, twenty-hour music-drama on incest and deicide. Most identified “leitmotif” as a kind of low-tar cigarette.

Meanwhile, Verdi’s Q-rating is through the roof, though R. attributes this less to his music than to the fact that he’s licensed his photograph for use on packages of frozen tapioca.

“Oh, sure,” he said, “we could get those kind of numbers, too, if we wanted to sell out.”

I cringed when Prof. Nietzsche cleared his throat. Our quarrel last spring took a month to smooth over, and lately he’s been going on about something he calls “eternal recurrence,” which, as near as I can make out, has nothing to do with consumption patterns. I braced for yet another moralistic aphorism, but to my surprise, the prof. spoke quietly, in an offhand, almost distracted manner.

“Your problem,” he said, “is a simple residual-to-cost ratio. If you switched the festival to an all-polka format, you’d cut your rehearsal costs in half and gross three times as much. Add a few Irish step-dancers, and you’ll have a program you can drag out anytime for fundraisers.”

R. smiled — for the first time in weeks. He rose from his chair, lifted the score of "The Valkyrie" from the mantelpiece, and dropped it into the fire.

“All right,” he said as he reached for the poker, “let’s give them what they want.”

The diaries end here. Within a month, Cosima returned home to live with her father, the composer Franz Liszt. Friedrich Nietzsche followed his own path into philosophy. He suffered a mental collapse in 1889. Wagner himself spent the rest of his life touring North America, where he enjoyed popular acclaim as The Accordion King.

© 2000 by Joseph Richard Barron