Post by Monkey_Feyerabend on Sept 9, 2017 17:24:46 GMT
The story was written to promote the selling of a school agenda, called Ideario (contraction of the words "idea" and "diario", the latter meaning "agenda"). It was an agenda with a very soft cover and the face of Donald on it. I think it was a composable agenda, probably with the different parts coming as gadgets on different issues of Topolino. I remember the bombing of publicity on Disney's magazines and on tv commercials, but honestly I don't remember if I owned this agenda (I was 9). You can read something about it here:
teloricordimica.blogspot.fr/2014/05/
(I cannot find the commercial spot on youtube, but I am quite sure there was one. The oldest Topolino spot that I can find is this one from 1998 with one of the most famous soccer players of those days: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hg6J9do6UY )
While I enjoy the all-female story, I can't help but be surprised by the gender politics of the Ideario publicity: globe-trotting adventure, technology and sports are represented by male characters, while the female character introduces the "feminine universe"! Yikes! I don't think a product for children would have been cast that way in the USA in the late 1990's...maybe 15 or 20 years earlier. Ah well, progress on the gender front is incremental everywhere. In Disney comics, I'm just glad for writers like Casty, Stabile and Lars Jensen (and editors like David Gerstein) who give us female characters we'd like to be.
Ah sorry, 'agenda' is not an English word? In any case, I mean a diary where students write down the homework to do day by day. (In Italy you go to school only in the morning, then most of the study is done as homework.)
It was not the late 90's, it was 1995. In those days such a "gender split" following stereotypes in tv spots and merchandising was common in Italy. Now much less.
More generally, the gap between Italy and the US in terms of representation of women (or any other kind of gender or sexual minority) is less than 15 or 20 years. Not more than 10 years in any case in my view, at least now. Just a personal estimation of course, based on no serious readings. I can make it because now we live in a highly connected world, and we Europeans are starting to discover the many aspects of the US society through modern well-rounded tv-series, late night shows and any other kind stuff on youtube. (For instance, I still don't understand why so many young Americans feel the need to express their opinion on a damn youtube channel...or is it just a new generation and I am getting old? )
By the way, I had the issue of Topolino where that story was published: it still is nowadays one of my favorite covers of all times: