This is what I have to work with (reboot doesn't count, nor do online bios, introductions to collections, etc):- Connie told Elly that Pete (her "inferiority complex") left her with the house, cats, etc .... and a five-year-old kid, as if Pete were Lawrence's dad.
- Connie said Pete was her only 'real relationship' (which was why, a year after the divorce, she was having a hard time letting go, was still dyeing her hair red, etc)
- Liz was told Lawrence's daddy went back to Brazil after the divorce
- Much later, Lawrence meets Dr Pablo daSilva, who
- looks very much like him
- claims he never knew he had a son with Connie
- Connie backs this up with a story of going home with her secret love-child after a charity trip
This still leaves open why Pablo would deny having known about Lawrence (least complicated explanation: Connie and he both don't want to deal with this past complication - Pablo's new family may not take it well and I doubt he's proud of ignoring his first child)
I leave that letter to Dr. Walby to your imagination ... so that's how it happened! Really, I mean it this time, and yes, I finally explained it all to my son - sort of - I agreed with Pablo that it was better if - well, anyhow I'm not looking for a referral, I've already dealt with this... :-)
12 comments:
It's little wonder that Elly is confused as to what went on; Connie's failure to get her story straight would stymie a healthy mind so feeding someone with as shaky a grasp on reality as Flapandhonk contradictory stories isn't a good thing to do.
What's especially strange about this whole Pete/Pablo thing is that although Pete is very much presented as Lawrence's dad in the early days of the strip, there's one you reference with Lizzie--when she is maybe four or five--and she asks Elly where Lawrence's dad is, and Elly says that he moved back to Brazil It's a throw-away line, and Elly never addresses it again, and no one ever mentions it again, but it's THERE; she didn't need to say Brazil in order to explain the situation to Liz. Did LJ really plan this ridic Brazilian father Lawrence never met garbage that far in advance? And if she did, why not plan it to make a little more sense? Was Pete supposed to be Brazilian? Was the Connie story maybe based on a friend of hers who asked that her story not be told, so LJ had to change the details after alraedy revealing them?
To answer Cedar's question:
Lawrence was only retconned into a dusky Mestizo so that Lynn could pat herself on the back for her dedication to diversity. She really made the effort to include just about every race, ethnicity, sexual preference, or Designated Victim Group that she could think of, somewhere in her strip. Sometimes, believe it or not, she would manage to do so in a non-patronizing, non-stereotypical way--but seldom. And when developing their backstories, she would consistently add details that just plain didn't make sense, like the idea that the Sonofabinskis were immigrants from Poland. (Far more likely that the family had been in Canada for pretty near as long as the Pattersons.) Or didn't we also find out that Lovey Salzman was not Jewish at all, but just was married to a Jewish guy? In that case, why was she so Molly Goldberg?
Anyway, Lawrence in the early days was white, but then Lynn decided he would have to be not just gay, but EXOTIC MINORITY gay! So she darkened his skin (Lawrence is part black; Lawrence has ALWAYS been part black) and gave him a different father, and the story keeps changing.
Takeaway lesson? It's always better to tell the truth and stick to it. It's so much easier to remember.
josephusrex,Takeaway lesson? It's always better to tell the truth and stick to it. It's so much easier to remember.That's for sure; if Lynn done the responsible thing and created a little dossier on each character as she created them and stuck to it, we wouldn't have to deal with crap like this.
Actually, the Brazilian telenovela-level (yeah, yeah, wrong language, it's an hommage :) drama was retconned, but I recall Lawrence was more tan than other characters in the early Sunday collections. The original throwaway could have been planned to explain Lawrence's ethnicity, but with Pete as the Brazilian father.
As for the Sobinskis, IN-STRIP Mira's parents were the immigrants, so she was born in Canada as far as Foob's Paradise is concerned :-D
Lawrence did have brown skin in the early collections. I keep saying this but then keep seeing "Lawrence was originally white" come up again and again! Example.
IMH, I think you subbed "Ted" for "Pete" in your post? I like your explanation of Connie having obscured what happened.
Whoops! Fixed it, thanks. Fortunately, I remembered in the drawn dialogue
But, April, that strip you cite is apparently a new-run. Copyright 2008. I think Winston Smith drew that one.
Um, what?
Look, Lawrence was brown in the old Sunday comics collection my mom had, full colour and that dated either late eighties, or early nineties, so he was at least brown then.
And also?
That strip is in that book.
Miss Kathleen, I think that you, April and I must all have seen the "Our Sunday Best" and/or "More Than a Month of Sundays" and are recalling Lawrence's tan tone there.
It's true that the New Foob Order could have retinted him, but it's not the case - he was definitely tan in the OLD collections, long before the "Pablo" stuff, and also apparently before the throwaway "Brazilian dad" strip. (Liz had at least started growing her hair out for that ponytail and was speaking articulately when told about Lawrence's dad; the collections included baby / toddler Lizzie strips.)
Could the original strips in newspapers have been different, and a retint have happened when the strips were collected? I suppose, but can't imagine some reference wouldn't have been made in the collection intros or interviews with LJ. And that would still be WELL before the convoluted Pablo nonsense.
When you see the brown tint and the father's name of Peter Landry, you don't usually think "Brazilian dad". The way Lynn Johnston normally links names to ethnicity, I doubt she thought "Brazilian dad" originally. For some reason, Lynn doesn’t seem to be able to show a plain, old, garden variety African-Canadian, whose family has been in Canada for awhile. April’s friend Eva Abuya was supposed to be recently from Haiti and Duncan Anderson was supposed to be from Barbados so recently had a Bajan accent. Even with Liz’s friend Shawna-Marie Verano, Lynn seemed to go back and forth on her country of origin.
Regardless, the idea that Connie was very white and Lawrence was not, was Lynn's way of showing Connie's rebellion and women's liberation status. It’s hard to imagine now, but back in 1980, interracial marriages were extremely uncommon. Lawrence’s skin colour would have definitely made a statement, and is possibly the reason why Lynn did not address the issue directly until she had the strip with the off-hand comment about Brazil.
Pablo da Silva came into being, in my opinion, for no other reason than Lynn wanted Lawrence to tell a story about his mother’s travels on a medical mission that would scare Michael Patterson, while Deanna was on a similar trip. This was back in the day when Michael had to threaten to physically injure himself just to get Deanna to admit she loved him. Mike was convinced Deanna was going to mess around with the doctor on the trip until he found out the doctor was married. Although Pablo da Silva is about Lawrence’s origins, it was really a piece of the puzzle on how Mike was dealing with Deanna’s absence.
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