|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||||
|
Lynn Johnston interview
Thinking myself rather well-informed, I had known her to be a fantastically talented woman masterminding one of the most successful strips - critically and popularly - in recent comics history. I also knew she loosely modeled For Better Or For Worse on her own family. And I was also aware that Universal Press Syndicate had sought her out, intent on convincing her to wield her unique talents in fashioning a new type of family strip - one done by a woman. (This was during a time when Cathy Guisewite's Cathy had shown the comics-reading public to be hungry for a female perspective.) To prepare for this interview, I read the autobiographical introduction to her strip's tenth-anniversary collection, where I learned about her childhood, which overall seemed healthy and normal. What I did not and could not know, however, was even more striking and served to heighten my already considerable admiration for the woman behind the drawing board. In achieving the pinnacle of success she currently enjoys as the creator of a strip appearing in more than 1,600 papers, Lynn Johnston had to rise above obstacles that would have shackled most people. If For Better Or For Worse seems so honestly and genuinely realized, its characters so in touch with themselves and their world, it is because they are extensions of their creator's complex and perceptive personality. Lynn, 46, was born Lynn Ridgway in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada, and she grew up in British Columbia. She is married to Rod Johnston (whose middle name is John). She has two children, Aaron Michael, 20, and Katy Elizabeth, 16. (Do those middle names sound familiar?) They live in Corbeil, Ontario. Tom Heintjes: As a child, you were something that a lot of cartoonists weren't - you were outgoing and extroverted, the class clown, the prankster. Lynn Johnston: I was outgoing and extroverted in the wrong way. I was a fighter. I was angry. I wanted to fight, and I wanted to hurt people. Heintjes: What was the source of that anger? Johnston: I was very unhappy at home. You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but in my family it was my mother. My mother, I would say, was a ...very brutal disciplinarian. She was brought up with a "spare the rod and spoil the child" philosophy, and she was raised by a father who brutalized her. He didn't want daughters. He wanted sons. He had no time for daughters. He refused to educate his daughters. It was a waste of his money. And they all left home as soon as they possibly could. Some of them ran away from home, some left to join the armed forces. That's what my mother did. And my father was the first person she'd met who treated her kindly. She was terrified of men, and she married a very meek, kind, dear man. And she had the upper hand. She ruled the roost. My father was beaten as a child. His philosophy became, "I refuse to lay a hand on my children." Heintjes: That's the opposite approach of most abused children. Johnston: Right. But my mother's philosophy was, the harder you beat them, the more they'll realize that what they've done is wrong. She would hit me until she was exhausted. She would use brushes, broomsticks, anything she could wield. I could look at the different bruises and tell what she had hit me with. If it was a black bruise with a red stripe down the middle, it was a piece of kindling. If it was a brown bruise with a certain shape to it, it was a hairbrush. If it was perfectly round, it was a wooden spoon. I used to go to school with bruises from the middle of my back to my heels. Heintjes: And your father never interceded? Johnston: Never. And my mother was so full of anger and hate. She was a brilliant woman. She could have done anything. She was a writer, she was an artist, she was a calligrapher, just a brilliant, talented lady with potential beyond belief. Right after the war, she married a man and had a family. But she wanted a career. She wanted to be a doctor. God help you if you got sick, because her home remedies would kill you. Poultices, enemas, and God knows what else. But at that time it was not appropriate for a woman to go to work. Her work was in the home. Everybody saw these magazine ads with the lady in the dress who stayed at home all day. But even though all this was going on at home, if someone had tried to take me away and put me in a children's home, I couldn't have handled it. Even though my mother was very brutal, it was my home. Heintjes: Did your mother feel a need to always be in control of any given situation? Johnston: Oh, yes. You talk about women in the military ...she would have gone over the hill first. She would have held the machine gun until the last bullet was fired. She was a fighter. Heintjes: What were your parents like when there wasn't strife? Johnston: My mother was a very literate person who had educated herself. She had an exceptional vocabulary. And my father was a comic. He could play any musical instrument. He loved to perform. He was a wonderfully comedic character. He had the ability to dance and sing and charm and analyze poetry. He was an exciting person to have in your home. When he got a few drinks in him, he was on. And he wasn't an alcoholic. But he was a performer, and all he needed was a beer in his hand and he was gone. So the two of them together were very witty, very funny. And we never dealt with anything straight out in our home. If something happened, it was over and done. But there was an undercurrent of anger and hate and unresolved problems, all the time. For example, my mother would look at you and you would ask, "What's wrong?" and she would say, "Well, you should know." And it might be about something you said two weeks ago. But she would never tell you why she was angry with you. She might be angry with my father or my brother or someone else, and then something like a spilled bowl of cereal or a bad word would make her strike out, and she would beat and beat and beat and beat and beat you. You could see this look on her face that was pure rage. When I got too big for her to beat, she would scream things at me like, "You fat cow! You ugly duck!" She just didn't know any better, because that was the sort of thing she grew up with. Back then, there were no parenting groups. There were no books. All she knew was, "I have to get this ugly thing into line. I have to force this thing to toe the line." I haven't told many people this because my parents were still alive and I didn't want to reveal it, but I want you to print this, because it happens in so many families! She really cared, though. It's hard to describe. On the one hand, she beat the living crap out of me. On the other hand, though, she was bright and witty and well read. Neither of my parents ever stopped encouraging my brother and me from pursuing our creativity. They let us take all kinds of art classes. My dad made $47 a week at the jeweler's shop in Vancouver. If there was any money left over, we would go to see a movie or something like that. My mother used to shop for clothes at the Salvation Army. She would buy trenchcoats there and remake them to fit us. She made us the most wonderful clothes. We never realized how poor we were! She was a survivor. We grew our own food, and we were never hungry. My mother saved every scrap of food either for the compost heap or for the birds. People never knew we were poor, but out of that poverty came the most incredible inventions - board games, recipes...we never stopped inventing.
COMMENTARY FEATURES INTERVIEWS SKETCHBOOKS CLASSICS LINKS Copyright@1997-99
Hogan's Alley Magazine. All rights reserved. |
||||
It's
easy to form a mistaken impression about Lynn Johnston. I should know.