Andy Capp is a comic strip about a man called Andy Capp, his wife Flo and to a lesser extent, the people they know. It first appeared in 1957 and is still being published, but something strange has happened to it.
Most comic strips that survive the death of their creator and get new writers and artists simply become bland and repetitive, and Andy Capp is certainly no exception there, but there's another change that's occurred, and I can't understand why.
Having read a collection of old strips before ever seeing the modern ones, I knew Andy Capp as a strip about two terrible people who were dicks to each other all the time. Andy and Flo were lazy, greedy, spent money on themselves with no thought for each other and often beat the shit out of each other. The modern version is a little different.
As might be expected, the violence is gone. But somewhere along the way, Flo has become a much better person. Andy still drinks too much, spends too much, and is as lazy as ever, but Flo's flaws seem to have evaporated. She doesn't gamble any more, she doesn't drink too much, she basically doesn't really have any character to speak of any more.
They may have been terrible people before, but at least it was fairly even-handed. I don't know when this change happened, and I don't know why, and it confuses me.
Female characters can't be portrayed as horrible people anymore. Its odd but even Lucile Ball type annoying silliness isn't allowed.
ReplyDelete