Today’s Wall Street Journal has a lengthy feature article on the popularity of Donald Duck in Germany. One indication that the character has become a cultural phenomenon: an 8000 page German collector’s edition, priced at $1900, came close to selling out upon publication.
The article ascribes the character’s popularity to the strip’s longtime translator, Erika Fuchs, an art history Ph.D. who rewrote Carl Barks’ dialogue to include references to German literature, myth and politics. This is no doubt part of the reason why the strip has inspired an eponymous nonprofit organization, D.O.N.A.L.D., to hold annual scholarly gatherings for the past thirty-two years, but as at least one commenter notes, Barks himself seeded his work with historical and literary references. Surely Barks made a difference as well?
He did, of course–the mythic quality of his Duck work is what made it such a suitable foundation for Fuchs’ elaboration. But the difference in tone is worth noting. Post-war Germany was in the process of restoring its identity after Nazi ideology raised serious questions as to the legitimacy of the country’s cultural heritage. A funny book provided a means for Fuchs to highlight the value of German traditions free from worrisome evocations of the Nazi’s use of German culture to establish ethnic supremacy.
Barks wrote in a radically different context. America’s literary heritage was not morally suspect; to have used Donald Duck to legitimize Melville or Dickinson would have seemed pretentious, if not bizarre. Barks’ visual and verbal rhetoric is instead far more pragmatic–Donald and his retinue are on a perpetual quest to succeed in a world full of baffling new tools and old ways.
What both the German and American versions of Barks’ work illustrate is the strategic value of junk media in remaking society. That so many people continue to view comics as little more than trash is not necessarily a bad thing–it frees the medium for creative expression outside the normative constraints of so-called high art, thereby retaining comics’ power as a cultural trojan horse.
May 23rd, 2009 at 9:06 pm
That last image is amazing. Where is it from?
May 24th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Four Color 29, Donald Duck & The Mummy’s Ring. It’s an incredible story, one of my favorites, about the tension between old and new culture.
Hard to believe I used to score Barks Four Colors at flea markets for a quarter a pop in the 1970s! Good thing the reprints keep them accessible . . .
May 24th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
I’ll have to find a reprint. Do you know any great Uncle Scrooge collections I should track down? Or any recent issues of Uncle Scrooge with particularly good reprints? I’ve bought The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck and Companion and loved them. Anything you can recommend?
January 17th, 2011 at 9:07 pm
Dobre gry flash, w które zaczniecie młócić zupełnie za darmo, a posiadamy ich już ponad sto. Dwudniowe aktualizacje o nowe i niespotykane gry online, w które musicie zagrać, dlatego powinniście nas często odwiedzać.