Is the United States like Duckburg?

[pollux]

Disney comicbooks were once regarded as a typically American cultural item and seen as such in the rest of the world, especially in the 1950s when they were most popular in the US and just came to Europe. Sadly, today they've become very obscure in the USA.

Since like 20 years, Japanese cartoons and comics are very popular in the Western world and many fans believe Japan is like 'tis portrayed in those stories, so they obsess over that country and want to emigrate to Japan.

I live in Europe, to imagine my country from a popcultural perspective, think about the Brothers Grimm's fairytales and WWII videogames (e.g. Tangled, Snow White, Wolfenstein, Call of Duty).

So, is or was the US anything like the Duckverse, or superhero comicbooks?

[RobbK1]

Jul 1, 2019 12:21:14 GMT pollux said:

Disney comicbooks were once regarded as a typically American cultural item and seen as such in the rest of the world, especially in the 1950s when they were most popular in the US and just came to Europe. Sadly, today they've become very obscure in the USA.

Since like 20 years, Japanese cartoons and comics are very popular in the Western world and many fans believe Japan is like 'tis portrayed in those stories, so they obsess over that country and want to emigrate to Japan.

I live in Europe, to imagine my country from a popcultural perspective, think about the Brothers Grimm's fairytales and WWII videogames (e.g. Tangled, Snow White, Wolfenstein, Call of Duty).

So, is or was the US anything like the Duckverse, or superhero comicbooks?

Dutch-produced Disney Comics seem like a blending of The Netherlands and USA, when Dutch writers and artists write and draw them, but seem to add some flavour from Spain, when Spanish artists from ComicUp Studio draw their stories.  Dutch writers and artists started basing their stories quite a bit on Barks' stories, and THAT'S what our editors TOLD us to do in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s.  Since the 1980s, there's been an addition of elements from Dutch architecture, scenery, and customs added in, not only in holiday and festival stories, but also in various ways the characters behave in daily life.  The Danish stories have more style variations, and their Spanish Studio-drawn stories sometimes have a Spanish architecture and scenery element blended in.  They also have some stories that reflect Danish customs and, of course, scripts written in Danish and Dutch reflect the way of speaking and thinking, just as your German Disney comics reflect the way people speak and think in Deutschland (but, of course, their artwork comes from Spain, and their stories are written by foreigners).  So, no German influence there, except what the German translators can put in.

As to US printings, and their relationship to USA, I don't really know.  I'd guess they'd have a similar situation to Germanys, with their translators having most influence, and in addition, there are a few US storywriters who write for Danish Disney, and a couple of US artists draw for them.  They would make dialogues similar to how people speak and think in USA, and the few artists (William and Noel Van Horn, and Rosa (before he retired), also probably added scenery similar to that in USA.

[Matilda]

The Fourth of July...an appropriate day to respond to this question! In some ways, it would be easier for a non-American to answer this, because it's the taken-for-granted things, the things I usually don't take note of, which make Duckburg American. I'd say, yes, the original Duckburg is indeed representative in many ways of mid-twentieth century USA. (Superhero comics are representative of American fantasy life more than American reality: superpower can be used for good, an individual acts on his/her own, etc. Many books written about this.)

Let me just list a few aspects of life represented in their American form in 20th-century Duck comics written here.

--holidays: as Rob notes, in books for kids cultural differences can show up most clearly in the ways holidays are celebrated. When Duck comics are written by Americans (or sometimes Canadians!), the holidays reflect American practices and mythology. The most prominent holidays are Halloween, Thanksgiving and especially Christmas. I often notice differences in holiday stories written by non-Americans: the fish in April Fools' Day, Carnival, Sinterklaas and oliebollen, Befana. Religion is almost entirely avoided in Disney comics, but holiday celebrations are where some of the folk mythology shows up. There are a few other ways that folk beliefs can show up, for instance, in the idea of a little person who's the guardian spirit of a house, as in The Bin Pixies by Per Hedman. (Technically that should be "brownies," not pixies--it's brownies who were the household guys.) That's part of the common folktale heritage in northern Europe which is not familiar in the USA (except in the form of Rowling's house-elves).

--sports: soccer/football is gaining in popularity here, but it's still not in the top tier of sports. Nowadays maybe American football and basketball; in the mid-20th century, baseball was #1, I think, followed by American football. Bowling was also then widely popular here, often the way men gathered, in bowling leagues. Men with lots of money played golf; men with not much money bowled. Also, fishing was a common pastime. And camping in canvas tents. Soccer/football is getting plenty of attention here this week (!), but generally I believe it's still second-tier here, not much above hockey.

--transportation: the serious dearth of public transportation in American cities. We talked on another thread about public transportation in Duckburg; there aren't many stories where people use subways or above-ground metro trains, buses, etc.

--school: the divisions of kindergarten, grade school, high school ("middle school" is more recent, not mid-20th century). The shape of the school year, featuring a very long summer vacation; in the mid-20th century this went from early or mid-June to early September. Also, few American teens attend boarding school. The boarding school setting of the new Young Donald series would feel alien to me.

--housing: Did any continuing character live in an apartment house before Jensen wrote the story that showed us Miss Quackfaster's apartment house and her neighbors in it? Mostly, families and single adults live independently in freestanding houses with yards, and the families consist of parent-equivalents and children, with no grandparents or other relatives in the household.

Occasionally I run across something in a non-holiday-related story written by a non-American that takes me aback, because it wouldn't happen in a Duckburg/Mouseton in the USA. For instance, in Minni luce del... faro, there is initially huge sexist resistance to Minnie's new job as a lighthouse keeper. That wouldn't have been true in the USA, even in the 19th century! There were famous female lighthouse keepers--most were widows or daughters of male keepers, but not all. Women keepers were rare, but they were not unheard-of, and most people were aware of stories of heroic female keepers. Or another example, from an unpublished story by the excellent Sarah Jolley: IIRC, Gladstone at one point tells Magica that he has the advantage of using the Duckburg library for free because he's related to its greatest benefactor. Possibly an Egmont editor would have caught this: NO ONE WOULD HAVE TO PAY TO USE THE DUCKBURG PUBLIC LIBRARY! One of the American institutions of which I am most proud, even in the current sad state of things.

Those are examples of how it's easier for me to pick up the not-in-the-USA elements of foreign stories than it is for me to identify what's characteristically American in American-written stories.

 

Some of the worst aspects of American culture in the mid-20th century are represented in the comics only in glancing ways, in unquestioned stereotypes of female characters, for instance, or in racist imagery of blacks and Asians in other lands. I think the comics mostly avoided any indication of the institutionalized racism here in the USA, which in the 1950's was of course still quite extreme and upheld by law in some areas.

The colonialism (and the implicit white-is-best worldview that goes along with that) is implicit in the treasure hunts where other cultures' historical artifacts are appropriated by Scrooge without apology. Interestingly, an early story which recognized this as problematic, long before the 2011 Rightful Owners or even the 1989 Treasure Temple of Khaos, was Fallberg's 1976 Treasure above the Clouds! The colonialism was characteristic of the USA, but also of colonialist Europe. It shows up also in depictions of "natives" as gullible, simple, superstitious, etc.

Then there's the whole issue of the cultural role of MONEY, as represented in the fantasy of the money bin! Barks' Scrooge does represent the American mythology of the self-made man, and the fantasy of such a man becoming a gazillionaire. Barks did, of course, acknowledge some of the downsides of a life that centers on money-making and -hoarding, so it's not a simple endorsement of this very American fantasy as an unalloyed good.

EDIT: on apartment living...I forgot that Daisy's sister and AM&J live in an apartment, though it's a duplex, not an apartment building in the usual sense.