interesting book. definitely one of my favourite works off cultural studies I 've seen. written in an anti imperialist context it looks at how Disney comics uphold bourgeois ideas about where wealth comes from, for example,that support capitalist ideas in children. notably,Disney's treatment of indigenous populations is shown to be horrifying and completely support white saviour myths and romantic ideas of colonialism. also talked about is how Disney restricts childhood imagination to consumption and money,and the peculiar lack of women and mothers. it sometimes overeggs it a bit and could have done with more detail about the comic form particularly but it's definitely a fascinating work of cultural analysis that may not be essential or completely empirical but is a truly revolutionary look at media that's useful for anyone trying to make sense of media themselves ( )

The authors do an excellent job of revealing the ideology baked into Disney comics and arguing why it's objectionable. The perspective of a South American reader is very interesting; it must have been incredibly galling to be lectured by these ducks embodying the limited and cruel worldview of the very people meddling with your country at that moment.

They keep a lively sense of fun throughout what would otherwise have been a bit of a slog. Ridicule is an entirely appropriate response to being bombarded by the kind of messaging represented by the Donald Duck comics. ( )

Publicado en 1972, durante el gobierno de Allende en Chile, supone una obra clave en la literatura política de esa década. Descrito por sus autores como un “manual de desconolización”, Para leer al pato Donald es un análisis sobre la literatura de masas publicada por Walt Disney en Latinoamérica. El libro muestra de qué manera las historietas del pato Donald inducen en los niños una clara ideología de clase dominante en la que se enseña que no se puede luchar contra el orden establecido. En las aventuras protagonizadas por el Tío Rico, Donald y sus sobrinitos todo intercambio humano toma la forma mercantil y la solidaridad entre iguales desaparece, solo existe la competencia. En la incesante y codiciosa búsqueda de oro, a menudo se encuentran con pueblos salvajes y primitivos, los cuales son manipulados por los patos para hacerse con su tesoro, y todos tan felices. El saqueo imperialista y la sumisión colonial no aparecen en su carácter como tales. El consumismo o el menosprecio machista son algunos de los valores que pululan por el mundo Disney, y la violencia simbólica que encontramos en sus viñetas conducen a interpretaciones ideológicas muy concretas. ( )

"Disney expulsa lo productivo y lo histórico de su mundo, tal como el imperialismo ha prohibido lo productivo y lo histórico en el mundo del subdesarrollo. Disney construye su fantasía imitando subconscientemente el modo en que el sistema capitalista mundial construyó la realidad y tal como desea seguir armándola". ( )

In his introduction to the Fourth Edition of How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic, Ariel Dorfman explains the continued importance of he and Armand Mattelart’s original analysis from 1971, “Only an America that bathes over and over in this false innocence, this myth of exceptionalism and natural God-given goodness destined to rule the earth, could have produced a Trump victory and only a recognition of how that innocence is malevolent and blinding can address the causes of that triumph as well as Trump’s amazing hold upon those who adhere to his policies, personality and philosophy (if I dare use the latter term in proximity of such an unlettered and unthoughtful member of our species)” (pg. x). Summarizing the work, translator David Kunzle writes, “The value of their work lies in the light it throws not so much upon a particular group of comics, or even a particular cultural entrepreneur, but on the way in which capitalist and imperialist values are supported by its culture. And the very simplicity of the comic has enabled the authors to make simply visible a very complicated process” (pg. 2). Kunzle further explains, “The system of domination which the U.S. culture imposes so disastrously abroad, also has deleterious effects at home, not least among those who work for Disney, that is, those who produce his ideology. The circumstances in which Disney products are made ensure that his employees reproduce in their lives and work relations the same system of exploitation to which they, as well as the consumer, are subject” (pg. 5).

Dorfman and Mattelart address the possible opposition to their analysis, writing, “There is the implication that politics cannot enter into areas of ‘pure entertainment,’ especially those designed for children of tender years” (pg. 28). They outline the nature of the children’s culture industry, writing, “Adults create for themselves a childhood embodying their own angelical aspirations, which offer consolation, hope, and a guarantee of a ‘better,’ but unchanging, future. This ‘new reality,’ this autonomous realm of magic, is artfully isolated from the reality of the everyday. Adult values are projected onto the child, as if childhood was a special domain where these values could be protected uncritically” (pg. 31). Further, “Mass culture has opened up a whole range of new issues. While it certainly has had a leveling effect and has exposed a wider audience to a broader range of themes, it has simultaneously generated a cultural elite which has cut itself off more and more from the masses” (pg. 32).

Discussing how childhood becomes the site for imperialism, Dorfman and Mattelart write, “The comics, elaborated by and for the narcissistic parent, adopt a view of the child-reader which is the same as their view of the inferior Third World adult. If this be so, our noble savages differs from the other children in that he is not a carbon copy aggregate of paternal, adult values” (pg. 55). Dordman and Mattelart continue, “When something is said about the child/noble savage, it is really the Third World one is thinking about. The hegemony which we have detected between the child-adults who arrive with their civilization and technology, and the child-noble savages who accept this alien authority and surrender their riches, stands revealed as an exact replica of the relations between metropolis and satellite, between empire and colony, between master and slave” (pg. 60). They argue that Disney reinforces these ideas through the oversimplification of cartoon and caricature art, writing, “Disney does not invent these caricatures, he only exploits them to the utmost. By forcing all peoples of the world into a vision of the dominant (national and international) classes, he gives this vision coherency and justifies the social system on which it is based. These clichés are also used by the mass culture media to dilute the realities common to these people” (pgs. 70-71).

Invoking Marxist theory, Dorfman and Mattelart write, “Disney, throughout his comics, implies that capitalist wealth originated under the same circumstances as he makes it appear in his comics. It was always the ideas of the bourgeoisie which gave them the advantage in the race for success, and nothing else” (pg. 96). Within this system, the ideas of the bourgeoisie underpin everything in mass media. As Dorfman and Mattelart write, “Entertainment, as it is understood by the capitalist mass culture, tries to reconcile everything – work with leisure, the commonplace with the imaginary, the social with the extrasocial, body with soul, production with consumption, city with countryside – while veiling the contradictions arising from their interrelationships. All the conflicts of the real world, the nerve centers of bourgeois society, are purified in the imagination in order to be absorbed and co-opted into the world of entertainment” (pg. 108). They argue that Disney’s work flattens history and culture, serving imperialism by obliterating subaltern cultures by replacing the indigenous cultural touchstones they might normally draw upon as sites of resistance to imperialism.

Dorfman and Mattelart conclude, “All the relationships in the Disney world are compulsively consumerist; commodities in the marketplace of objects and ideas. The magazine is part of this situation. The Disney industrial empire itself arose to service a society demanding entertainment; it is part of an entertainment network whose business it is to feed leisure with more leisure disguised as fantasy” (pg. 143). Finally, Dorfman and Mattelart write, “Just why is Disney such a threat? The primary reason is that his products, necessitated and facilitated by a huge industrial capitalist empire are imported together with so many other consumer objects into the dependent country, which is dependent precisely because it depends on commodities arising economically and intellectually in the power center’s totally alien (foreign) conditions” (pg. 145). Their analysis was particularly cutting on the eve of U.S. intervention in Chile and remains all the more so in the twenty-first century as the Disney empire has grown and further dominates media throughout the world. Further, the role How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic played in defining the place of fair use in educational and scholarly should not be forgotten as Disney continues to work to extend copyright provisions to prevent characters and work from entering the public domain. ( )