The band Blondie featuring beautiful blond singer Debbie Harry was one of the premier New Wave bands of the Eighties but although I loved New Wave, I wasn’t a big fan of Blondie. First, they were fronted by a female and although I certainly appreciated Debbie Harry on several levels, a girl fronted band just didn’t represent what I liked about Rock & Roll. But more importantly they were what we called at the time “Techno Disco”, that is to say, dance music. Blondie seemed born from the Disco Era rather than the British Invasion like bands such as The Cars or The Knack. I like music to listen to, I’m not much of a dancer.
Blondie does have a special place in my heart since I used their instrumental song Europa as the theme song to a radio show I hosted on Santa Barbara radio station KDB in the Eighties. The Blondie I’m referring to as having returned is the comic strip.
Blondie was created by cartoonist Chic Young and first started being published in newspapers way back in 1930. Maybe Blondie has been published continuously since then but it’s only been in the past few years that it’s returned to the L.A. Times.
What’s interesting about Blondie is that not only is the character of Blondie WAY too good looking for dorky husband Dagwood Bumstead but she, along with many of the strip’s other female characters, is drawn in a completely different style than the male and animal characters.
The "other" Blondie, not the original.
Blondie was created by cartoonist Chic Young and first started being published in newspapers way back in 1930. Maybe Blondie has been published continuously since then but it’s only been in the past few years that it’s returned to the L.A. Times.
What’s interesting about Blondie is that not only is the character of Blondie WAY too good looking for dorky husband Dagwood Bumstead but she, along with many of the strip’s other female characters, is drawn in a completely different style than the male and animal characters.
Not only do they not make a good couple, they don't even look like they're from the same strip.
The main theme of Blondie was always that she was not only WAY more attractive but also too smart and “together” than her husband and the other men characters who were the true comics. Blondie was the “straight man”.
Blondie’s return to the newspaper comics seems entirely appropriate and the young readers probably don’t even realize how old the strip really is, it seems so contemporary. It is now very much a woman’s world and we men just live in it. Women outnumber men in colleges and with college degrees and while I personally know many men currently out of work due to the economy, out-sourcing of their job or because of computerized automation, their wives are now the bread winners. I know relatively few unemployed women.
The world of the comic strip Blondie, where the wives are beautiful and if not the sole supporter of the family (Blondie works as a caterer) still have a life outside of the home has become a reflection of the real world. The men are no longer authority figures but are the buffoons and really, since the advent of “political correctness”, the only people that are safe to make fun of.
Maybe we’ve come a long way from the comic strip B.C. by Johnny Hart where a caveman could club his mate over the head and make it seem funny but the long way we’ve come seems like it might have been in the wrong direction.
Blondie is HOT. Or was when she was younger . . . LOOK AT HER!
ReplyDeleteI don't listen to her because of her music . . . not that it's bad. But when I listen to her I think of HER! (usually in a nasty/nice way)