Keskustelujen arkisto

Many of the people present on this forum are not Americans, and this is because Carl Barks and Don Rosa??s work is far more popular outside the United States than it is in it. This is something that I admire and am very happy about, but I must admit it does also leave me with many questions.
Carl Barks and Don Rosa??s work is deeply rooted in American culture and ideals, and while those ideals are in no way exclusively American and while characters like Scrooge hopped the whole globe having one adventure after another- it is undeniable that Scrooge McDuck is the great American Immigrant story of the 20th century.
To European, Asian, Latin American, and readers all over the world- Carl Barks and Don Rosa stories are not only well known but are given high stature and praise. I am embarrassed how unknown they are in the Nation which they represent globally, but I am also curious what readers all over the world think about the America that Carl Barks and Don Rosa have written about.
Do you think their portrait of America is realistic or contemporary? Is it something that even comes to mind when reading their stories, or are they so universal you can picture them taking place in your own country?

Interesting question.

Since I grew up with the Swedish edition at around 5-7 years of age in the early 1960's I didn't exactly think of the stories as American primarily but just good or rather very good stories.

I knew of Walt Disney and that the movies and some newer TV programmes originated from USA.
Obviously especially the Barks universe was coherent with my own life then in many ways and maybe formed it too in some ways ! I even took some ideals from certain caracters, at least theoretically :-)

So I think it was not THAT important where the comics were produced but rather that e.g. the Barks stories were reflecting certain values etc that I liked even if I maybe didn't think in those terms then. There was depth in the stories that appealed to me.

It is similar today, even though I switched to an American Disney collection many decades ago and of course is more aware of the country in which they were made.
But I still read them purely as amusement and with great love of the fine art.

Quote from user: RunnerInteresting question.

Since I grew up with the Swedish edition at around 5-7 years of age in the early 1960's I didn't exactly think of the stories as American primarily but just good or rather very good stories.

I knew of Walt Disney and that the movies and some newer TV programmes originated from USA.
Obviously especially the Barks universe was coherent with my own life then in many ways and maybe formed it too in some ways ! I even took some ideals from certain caracters, at least theoretically :-)

So I think it was not THAT important where the comics were produced but rather that e.g. the Barks stories were reflecting certain values etc that I liked even if I maybe didn't think in those terms then. There was depth in the stories that appealed to me.

It is similar today, even though I switched to an American Disney collection many decades ago and of course is more aware of the country in which they were made.
But I still read them purely as amusement and with great love the fine art.
So in your experience the messages were universal enough to not come across as any kind of American propaganda or to even question their cultural origins, at least until far later in life. That being said you touched on another topic I??ve seen often with Barks?? stories.

I think there are a great many people all over the world that obtained many of their ideals from Carl Barks. I find that common experience sets Barks fans apart from other Comicbook fans. Stan Lee??s taught me the virtue of justice, tolerance, and duty- but I cannot say that those stories became roots of my outlook on the world (else I??d be wearing spandex and trying to fight crime). Barks fans often absorbed his fables and literally used them as the building blocks of their personalities, which is ironic as Carl??s only stated intention was to entertain. It is evident that regardless of his intention we (his readers and fans) took more away from his writing than from most other fiction.

It's much nicer to read Barks in his native tongue, as many of his witicisms and much of his droll humour gets lost in the various translations. Having grown up with both the English and Dutch printings in the times of their first publications, I saw, first hand, when the Dutch translators were missing the joke or not getting the correct feeling. And in Germany, Erika Fuchs often changed much of what Barks wrote into German-related cultural references. Not that the latter was bad, in and of itself, as it was very cleverly done. But, often, much of what Barks intended was gone.
I think that Dutch and American values were relatively close enough when I was growing up in the 1950s, to allow Dutch readers to feel "at home" in Duckburg, and really appreciate Barks' stories. Nowadays, I'm not so sure that even most American kids could relate to the culture that spawned Barks (or even the culture that Americans my age experienced (e.g. it may have been easier for a Dutch child of the 1950s to feel comfortable with the Barks stories' settings and activities, than for an American child of today).

Wow Robb_K, what an amazing point. I, quite regrettably, must agree that an American child today would have a difficult time relating to Carl Barks?? stories, not because of differences in the way we live our lives due to modern technology but due to the cultural differences from that era.
If I am reading you correctly you feel like the other cultures (like the Dutch culture as an example) are closer to what American culture was like in Carl era. I would have to say that there must be truth in that statement since Rosa??s stories (which are much more aesthetically fitting for modern readers) also are mostly unknown in the States.
I was at a convention here in my home state of Florida 2 years ago and got to meet Don Rosa and have him sign almost every Comicbook he ever created (which he did graciously, and it quite the stack). I spent most of the day hovering around his table like a stalker and I found that almost no one brought him anything to be signed. Some people saw him and bought some of his prints and some bought a couple comics off of other dealers for him to sign, and there one guy who ??wished he had brought some of his old 10 cent Donald Duck comics for him to sign . I found Don Rosa??s sarcastic answer to that guy to be fantastic; he simple stared at the man and asked ??Why?" What I walked away with was almost a sense of anger that here, in Orlando the home of ??Walt Disney World" , was one of the worlds most well known Disney story tellers who in other parts of the world is subject to his own ??Beatlemania" , was left sitting quietly at a table being passed by people who claim to be Comicbook fans all day long.
I think in this discussion I may be starting to see a bit of a reason why Carl Barks, Don Rosa, and the rest of the Disney Comics writers and artists are lost to modern American readers.

Well, personally I think that culture might be the symptom of the disease, but I don't think that is the main problem. Kids can grasp cultural differences and just accept them. Some might go over their head, but they get the gist of it. For example, I was born after rotary phones, but I recognized as a child that it was just an old version of a phone, not" What is that thing that the person is talking into? Why is he doing that?" Things that were sent in way different time periods have got quite popular before, so I think kids can handle a 60 year difference,even though their might be a strange placement of words that occasionally show up
I do agree with Matilda to a certain point, however it seems that nowadays, there seems to be less of a difference between what one age groups do and what other age groups do. A child if been introduced to a certain thing as a young age may continue to enjoy whatever that is until their teens or beyond. There are plenty of young adults and teenagers watching cartoons when they were 10 on a regular basis. Furthermore, this is kind of getting beside the point, but there is less social stigma than there apparently there was in the past about young adults or teens of either gender liking and watching a show/reading a comic that is meant for a certain gender children (a least Disney comics are kind of uni-sex, so it doesn't have that problem).
However, there is only so much this acceptance extends to, and Disney comics are be considered beyond that line because the characters that are in them are getting used for a whole bunch of baby and tottler stuff, which is still considered beyond the point of no return still. I suspect that IF they even get to read Disney comics in the first place, they don't wish to later because of using Disney characters. Many people probably believe that the comics are shelled out by random people at Disney Headquarters. They aren't very educated in knowing the actual fundamentals of Disney Comics. Disney comics would be probably fine from that symptom if they were just marketed for a a little bit older children then what the rest of Micky Mouse etc. is getting used for (and even then it might take a while), but a magazine for Disney junior? That won't do it any good, that's for sure.
However, it is difficult for me to truly judge this because well, Disney comics are just not read in general in the north american public, children or adult. Judging from tales I've heard from the 50's 60's etc, popularity of American comics in general have gone down quite a bit (though probably rising again because of the movies). I was never into comics myself as a child but while everyone know who batman, spiderman etc. was, I never remember any kid bringing an American comic to school and reading it, or talking about it, or pretending to be them. It didn't seem that that many kids were interested in superhero comics/ disney/archie/tin-tin/whatever else. I still don't see children buying or reading any sort of American comic. Furthermore, except for Archie, they are not the easiest to find all the time. As I mentioned before, I don't think I realized that Disney comics existed until I was an adult. Pretty much, I was only aware of the superhero comics, which assumed was the only thing comic stores carried and te only think that I tend to associate American Comics with, Archie and the Simpson comics, and old comics like Casper which I assumed they stopped making them a long time ago, and I never liked them anyway. The fact that children today aren't even aware that they exist, much less know of their quality is cause enough for concern. What is taking the spotlight for children however is anime and manga. It was not American things that were big, but it was Japanese stuff like Pokemon and Sailor Moon that was really popular in my generation, and seemingly still sort of is, and I have seen kids bring these books to school and talk about them.
Anyway, my point is that I think the major problem is that comics in general are just not as popular anymore, and just not getting seen as much as they used to.
As for answering the question, perhaps it is because Canada's and America's culture is so similar, while they like to remind you that the setting is indeed the US, it seemed to me that it is just a typical place. However, I noticed that if any other country is visited, it is certainly American stereotypes of the place shown quite plainly usually from my experience. Not so much Rosa's, but others tend to do so. Not that I find anything all that bad about it really, but it is still an observation about the setting.