- Sun Dec 17, 2023 12:59 am
#153014
Reason for the Season: War on Christmas edition: Vince Guaraldi Trio "A Charlie Brown Christmas" LP
Sartre considered this the final entry in Schulz's trilogy around "Un imbécile et ses nausées de vacances" (A blockhead and his holiday nausea). Charlie Brown once again finds himself at odds with his friends (in a microcosm) and his culture (in a macrocosm).
An interesting note: In 1978, Helmut Weirgarten, chief director of animation at the East Berlin Propaganda Ministry, obtained a 16-mm copy of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" through a local smuggling ring (i.e., an Eastern syndicate). Entranced with what he saw as Charlie Brown's struggle against "Western decadence" but chilled with the film's overall pro-Christian message, he requisitioned a newly dubbed voice track that reflected "proper" political learnings and reanimated the ending. Instead of Charlie and his friends singing a hymn around a restored Christmas tree, everyone except for Charlie and Linus is rounded up by uniformed Woodstocks with kalashnikovs for questioning; they are never seen in the film again.
In 1980, the Ministry released the revamped film to East German audiences under the name "Wie schlafen Sie in der längsten Nacht, Herr Brown?" ("How Do You Sleep During the Longest Night, Mr. Brown?"). It was such a success with schoolchildren and adults alike that historians later theorized that the film helped push off the fall of the Berlin Wall by three years.
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Lately I have been frequenting bad record stores/Places no respectable man would be seen