Keskustelujen arkisto

On Jul 12, 11:49am, Marco Barlotti wrote:
> Subject: Granma Duck

> ...I suppose everyone accepted as typical of the American
> (=USA) mind a sort of calvinistic sexuophoby by which no
> straight-line relationship could appear in children's comics
> because having a father and a mother means
> having two people that go to bed together, auuughhhh!

This sounds like something only a European intellectual who
doesn't live in this country would come up with. For one thing,
Calvin isn't that well-known here -- usually American sexual
"repression" is blamed on the Puritans. (For that matter, a
lot of American attitudes have been traced back to the British
colonists, notably in a book called _Albion's Seed_, and adopted
by successive waves of immigrants from other countries. Like
the title of the play, "No sex, please, we're British.") More
to the point, the use of uncles and nephews instead of fathers
and sons isn't so much "sexuophoby" but due to the requirements
of a continuing series about a male character who has to be
free to go on adventures. If Donald were married to Daisy and
HD&L were their children, you'd end up with a housebound
domestic comedy. With Daisy as merely his girlfriend, she can
be in a story or not, and HD&L as his nephews rather than sons
opens up more possibilities (for one thing, they can be more
disrespectful to him and play nastier pranks on him). There's
a history to this, but it's mainly the consequence of animators
in the 1930s trying to keep a popular character as footloose
and un-tied down as possible for the maximum possible story
situations. If you want to get sociological about it, you could
argue it reflects a common cliche that marriage and family are
a trap, often seen in '30s American popular culture. (Or just
that courtship is dramatically more interesting than depicting
the daily strains and joys of an established relationship.)

For a non-Disney example, Popeye had _four_ nephews plus the
adopted Swee'pea, as well as his girlfriend Olive Oyl.

> Post Scriptum.
> By the way, you US people, do you admit that by and large you
> are very sexuophobic?

I recall being at the Angouleme comics convention a few years
ago and noticing displays of the ghastliest bondage-fetish
fantasy comics right next to the sweetest and most adorable
kiddie comics. Also adult comics with a fixation on excrement-
based humor. Meanwhile, the Power Rangers have been banned in
some European countries for being too violent for kids. My
guess was that each country has its own set of hangups. The
weird thing was hearing that French TV is now showing Ranma 1/2
TV episodes, but any scene with nudity is simply cut out no
matter how much damage it does to the coherence of the story
(and Ranma has a fair amount of nudity). _French_ TV is
so "Puritan"?!

> I remember when Gary Hart had to abandon running for president
> because someone discovered a love affair of his.

At the time, the feeling seemed to be that someone who cheats
on his wife would be dishonest in other matters, and not someone
you'd want leading the country. The example of the current
President seems to prove that we've gotten over that. Other
Presidents are now commonly known to have had affairs, as well.
Maybe the thing that sunk Hart was that he was so darned stupid
about it, carrying on his affair during a campaign and practically
daring reporters to catch him in the act. The photo of him with
the girl in question sitting on his lap on the deck of a pleasure
boat called "Monkey Business" (American slang for deceitful or
mischievous behavior) was widely reproduced in the press and
destroyed his dignity. He ended up looking just plain stupid.

> We Italians were shocked!

Well, you weren't here at the time, so you didn't know the whole
story.

> Well, Italians wouldn't abandon running for political power
> even when in jail, so that's not the whole story. But you
> even have (in some states) laws that FORBID certain sexual
> acts BETWEEN CONSENTING ADULTS and in private!

Well, so? There are 50 relatively autonomous states in the
US with legislatures passing laws all the time, reflecting
local interests and power blocs. So there are a lot of bad
laws on the books, usually old, forgotten, and largely
unenforced (every once in a while somebody writes an article
about nutty laws, like the one passed in 1905 that requires
the operator of a motorcar to pull over, stop, and _take the
car apart_ until an approaching horsedrawn vehicle passes, so
as not to frighten the horse -- and the law may still be
technically valid as it was never repealed). So?

> This could never be thought of in Italy.

Italy, the country that invented Fascism? Italy, the ally of
Hitler? Italy, the country with the largest Communist Party in
the West even after Stalin-era genocide became well known?
Italy, the country whose last stable government was Mussolini's?
Italy, the country whose postwar political parties have all been
recently exposed in ongoing trials as thoroughly corrupt?
Like _you're_ going to lecture _us_ about politics?

> Off topic, all right, so I stop here.
>
Me too. But you started it.

--Dwight Decker

Henri:
> What is the story behind the Little hiewatha stories?
> They have been low quality for 40 years.

Apparently, Hiawatha is popular in Europe with little children. In Holland,
his stories were published from the late 50s on. In 1965, when no more
Hiawatha stories were coming from the USA, the Dutch editors decided
to make their own stories, because the readers wanted the character.
The Hiawatha stories published in Holland have been mostly Dutch (with
an occasional Egmont story) since then.
Arthur once asked how many Hiawatha stories were made in Holland.
The number (from 1965 up to last week, but I may be missing a few)
is 246.

The LH stories from 1965-1969 were mostly written by Patty Klein.
She put a lot of word jokes in the text. I have fond (nostalgic) memories
of those (I was 6 years old in 1968). But the stories always have been
kind of childish.
I have only seen two Little Hiawatha stories that are above average.
No wonder: they are from the time Daan Jippes was art director (1977),
and almost _every_ Dutch production was good to very good.

--Harry.

Per notes on the character pages that although Paperetta Ye-Ye has been
given the English name Dickie Duck, there have not, as far as we know, been
any stories with her printed in English. I recently thought, maybe she has
appeared in Great Britain?

Hi!

That meeting in San Diego sounds great. How many people of this
mailing list were there?
While you all met in San Diego, two-third of ALL Dutch members
of this mailing list came together in Leidschendam last week!
(That's only Harry and me! ;-)

HARRY:
You said: "You can speak for Italy only. In Holland and Germany
it certainly is RIGHT."
I NEVER thought Grandma Duck was Donald's mother! What Marco said
is exactly what I always thought: Grandma isn't Donald's grandma, but
he calls her that way, because she is HDL's grandma, and like Marco said,
it happens in families that all names are cut on the youngest's
situation!
Are you sure that that's not right in Holland?

By the way: Shouldn't the scripts be sent to Frans Hasselaar of
GP in particular? That would be:

Redactie Disney-uitgaven
t.a.v. Frans Hasselaar
Postbus 2900
1000 CX Amsterdam

Bye!

Arthur de Wolf -- Roosendaal, the Netherlands
email: (Email removed)
homepage: www.pi.net/~wolfman/disney
"The dog ate my car keys. We're going to
hitchhike to the vet."

AUGIE:
>* DONALD DUCK ADVENTURES #41
>"Bruce McDuck" - no credits mentioned - DD, HDL go to Australia
Advance Comics ran more complete credits for this, which is
apparently a Danish Egmont story drawn by Daniel Branca.
>"The Duck Who Cried Wolf" - no credits mentioned
I know about this one since I dialogued it. It's also an Egmont
story, drawn by Vicar. Some of Vicar's better art and a rather complex
case of mistaken identity in the plot.

Back with more (of course)
David Gerstein
<(Email removed)>

(Email removed)

ERIC:
Perhaps you misunderstood? Pat Block was selling old comic-strip
art by Chester Gould, Hal Foster, etc., but not his own art. Those huge
page-blowups you saw were from Pat's next-to-be-published Donald story
"Duck of the Deep." Disney doesn't return original art, so when these
pages are sent to Gladstone, that's the last Pat and Shelly will see of
them. They only had them at the convention to display what they were
working on (as they did with "Three Little Cupids" last year and "Secret of
the Dragon's Den" the year before).

David Gerstein
<(Email removed)>

(Email removed)

Henri:
> Is the character from an animation like the Three Little Pigs?

Yes, he starred in 1 (that is, *one*) silly symphony short.
--Harry.

ARTHUR:
> From: Arthur de Wolf <(Email removed)>
> That meeting in San Diego sounds great. How many people of this mailing
> list were there?

I counted 14 people at the mailing list breakfast. Don't know how many
of them are actually on the mailing list, however.

Some of the people there were: Torsten Adair, Michael Naiman, David Ger-
stein, Dwight Decker, Rich Morressey(?), Wilmer Rivers, Pat Block, Shelly
Block, John Lustig, Dana Gabbard(?), me, and 3 more people whose first
and/or last name escapes me at this moment. Maybe someone else can fill
in the blanks. Sorry if I misspelled anyone's name.

DAVID:
> From: (Email removed) (Gerstein)
> Perhaps you misunderstood? Pat Block was selling old comic-strip art
> by Chester Gould, Hal Foster, etc., but not his own art. Those huge
> page-blowups you saw were from Pat's next-to-be-published Donald story
> "Duck of the Deep." Disney doesn't return original art, so when these
> pages are sent to Gladstone, that's the last Pat and Shelly will see
> of them.

Thanks. The "Duck of the Deep" original art was mixed in with other ori-
ginal art, and I didn't ask Pat about it.

I thought Gladstone pays less per page and returns original art, but Eg-
mont pays more per page and doesn't return original art (to the artist).
There were original art Mickey Mouse covers by Dan Jippes (from Glad-
stones first line) and Junior Woodchuck pages by Dan Jippes (art) and
Carl Barks (script) (from Gladstones new line) for sale at the Carl
Barks Studio booth. If Gladstone doesn't return the original art to the
artist, do they sell it? (I don't think the Carl Barks Studio is dir-
ectly connected with Gladstone. How did they obtain these pieces?)

Have a great day, everyone!

Eric =)