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A review by eely225
How to Read Donald Duck by Ariel Dorfman
4.0
A fine, academic deconstruction of Disney comics as a tool of imperial ideology. What's interesting is that the comics function only secondarily as a means of colonizing the world, primarily they serve as bourgeois reassurance that it is truly meet and right to colonize, that economic dominance by "advanced" nations over "primitive" nations is just and to the benefit of all parties.
What's really compelling here is how deeply we've internalized Disney's values, whether we've read a comic or not. Looking at the selected samples, they're so brazen as to seem absurd, impossible. But they draw on the same impulse we still see now: nostalgia. In reaching for a natural state of upper-class leisure without having to see the existence of a working class, Disney highlighted and continues to highlight our collective desire to rid ourselves of the guilt of economic inequality. We need to attribute imbalance to something-- anything!-- else, the most common examples being luck or nature.
Because the world of Disney is a staid and changeless dreamscape of bourgeois righteousness, revolution or desire for change is always unjust, selfish, and impermissible. Donald and Mickey serve not as a representatives of the working class but as apologists for economic determinism. Scrooge is rich because he has ideas, Donald is poor because he's lazy. All sides admit that this is the reasoning and that it makes sense. And we all get to pretend that they're just harmless cartoons.
One note: it might be best, after reading the introduction, to also read the final appendix (located at the end) before reading the book itself. It provides some more context that could have helped me process this deceptively dense volume.
What's really compelling here is how deeply we've internalized Disney's values, whether we've read a comic or not. Looking at the selected samples, they're so brazen as to seem absurd, impossible. But they draw on the same impulse we still see now: nostalgia. In reaching for a natural state of upper-class leisure without having to see the existence of a working class, Disney highlighted and continues to highlight our collective desire to rid ourselves of the guilt of economic inequality. We need to attribute imbalance to something-- anything!-- else, the most common examples being luck or nature.
Because the world of Disney is a staid and changeless dreamscape of bourgeois righteousness, revolution or desire for change is always unjust, selfish, and impermissible. Donald and Mickey serve not as a representatives of the working class but as apologists for economic determinism. Scrooge is rich because he has ideas, Donald is poor because he's lazy. All sides admit that this is the reasoning and that it makes sense. And we all get to pretend that they're just harmless cartoons.
One note: it might be best, after reading the introduction, to also read the final appendix (located at the end) before reading the book itself. It provides some more context that could have helped me process this deceptively dense volume.