Keskustelujen arkisto

Today, April 15th 2012, exactly 100 years have passed since the RMS Titanic collided with a huge iceberg and sank in the Atlantic. There are several references to this incident in Disney stories, most notably in stories by Don Rosa. In two of his stories Lo$ kapitel 11 - The Empire-Builder from Calisota (1994) and in Dream of a Lifetime (2002) he shows the disaster, and in two other stories The Curse of Nostrildamus (1989) and in The Lost Charts of Columbus (1995) he refers to it. In a resent thread in the Norwegian AOL-forum, a contributor says that other authors have referred to Titanic as well, but indirectly by using other names, like Gigantic, on the ship.

While it wasn't a comic, the Titanic was referenced (kinda) and mixed with another disaster, the crash of the Hindenburg, in the DuckTales episode "The Uncrashable Hindentanic" in which the titular airship both catches on fire and hits an iceberg. In hindsight, it seems like a bit of a lapse in good taste for a children's program to make light of such tragedies (that said, it was still a fun episode).

I loved "The Uncrashable Hindentanic" on Ducktales, and didn't think it was tasteless; the episode seemed to be intended as a spoof of the disaster-film genre in general rather than a "comic" version of the Titantic and Hindenburg tragedies. However, I did think Rosa's depiction of the ACTUAL Titantic catastrophe in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck was tasteless in the extreme--if you think about it, he shows the deaths of several passengers (all those people jumping off the boat into the freezing water in the big splash panel) and makes Scrooge responsible for the whole catastrophe (the iceberg only hit the boat because of Foola Zoola's curse--the iceberg with Bombie on it was drawn towards the Titantic because Scrooge was a passenger). And the whole sequence is played for laughs! That's one moment in the Life and Times I choose to just ignore.

I don't dislike the Krakatoa bit in Cutty Sark as much as the Titanic one, since the explosion happens off-screen, Rosa doesn't actually show or even refer to the loss of life, and Scrooge isn't made responsible for it. However, I still think including it was in pretty poor taste, since anyone with a knowledge of history knows how many lives it cost. Rosa's passion for including real historical incidents and characters leads him into odd and questionable waters sometimes.
BTW, just to avoid sounding like a complete Rosa-basher, I enjoyed his Titanic joke in the Curse of Nostrildamus; there the laugh isn't at the disaster but at Scrooge's cheapness and the extreme age of his recycled ticker tape. Morbid historical jokes can work (Barks' reference to the emerald Scrooge bought from the "Emperor Hung Tu Soon" being an example) if done right.

I think the question of at what point historical tragedies become acceptable for humorous riffing is an open one. The Spanish Inquisition was a truly horrible thing, for instance, but I've never met anyone who was deeply offended by the Monty Python sketch. Granted, things that are closer in historical memory may seem more dicey...but I dunno. It's definitely a fuzzy line, and it's probable that there are some things (eg, the Holocaust) that will NEVER become acceptable to joke about in this way. For me, though, the Titanic disaster is far enough removed, and is sufficiently abstracted as a sort of parable on hubris, that Rosa's depiction doesn't really bother me. I can understand why some would disagree, though.

I know that this is kind of bringing up an old topic, but the level of taste aside (which personally I didn't have any problem with those jokes; I thought nothing of them, but that's just me) is how did Scrooge even end up on the Titanic in the first place? I am not all that knowledgeable about the Titanic myself, but first and Second Class was crazy expensive, and there was liners I believe that offered cheaper fares than even the third class of the Titanic. Also, there was some sections cut off depending on what class you were in, and I'm not sure whether or not if the deck was one of those places. Usually Scrooge managed to get a cheaper ride somehow, but no offering was given here. Even how he managed to survive was kind of weird, especially if he was indeed third class.
The only explanation I could possibly figure out is that during that time apparently there was a lack of coal for other ships, so some people got transferred to the Titanic. Scrooge might have been one of these people. Or he just owned enough of White Star Lines to get a ride for free or something. What do you guys think?

You would certainly think so. After all, even where he started from, central Asia, it would be less of a distance for him.
I think Rosa had a case of must put a main character on the Titanic syndrome. In this case, at least Scrooge didn't time travel to be there like character's from other stories do sometimes.