Christmas Carol etc.

Per Starback starback at Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE
Tue Dec 21 21:54:05 CET 1993


Darin> IMHO, [Disney] can't stop making movies and shows
Darin> because of our sense of "classic duckness".  If companies did this then
Darin> the entire comic industry would collapse.  

Harry> The point is, that $crooge was _created_ in the world of
Harry> "classic duckness".  He was never meant to be a movie or TV
Harry> character.

And Donald was "never" meant to be a comic book character either.  The
point is that... hmm... what's the point?  Why knock it just because
it's not what it is not?  It's possible to appreciate Tale Spin comics
even though they aren't the same as the more original Tale Spin TV
series.  And it's possible to appreciate that TV series even though it
uses characters from the movie _The Jungle Book_ in a different way.
And it's possible to appreciate that movie even though it's a massacre
of Kipling's books ...

I don't mean that you necessarily have to appreciate everything, but
that it is different from something else is not enough reason to deem
it bad, even if that something else is really good.

Darin> What I'm trying to say is.  Hey, we like the classic Barks
Darin> ducks, and especially $crooge, but you just can't realistically
Darin> expect Disney to use him in that one way.

Harry> We could expect they would use him in a consistent way... The
Harry> DuckTales $crooge is a totally different character, only
Harry> resembling the comic $crooge a little bit.

The comic book Scrooge is not a consistent character either, not even
in Carl Barks's own stories.  And why would he have to be?  Sometimes
he's an eccentric old man, unknown to the world at large, who collects
coins and bills because of their nostalgic importance to him and whose
enjoyment of the money comes out of bathing in the money.  And sometimes
he's a full-blown capitalist making Big Business all over the world.

It doesn't have to be very consistent to be good reading.  In fact
consistency would have gotten in the way of telling many good stories.
And craving consistency can get in the way of appreciating many good
stories.
 
That doesn't mean that it can't be a fun intellectual endeavour to try
to piece it all together, and that has been done in Donaldism for many
years now (just like I think it's done among e.g., Sherlock Holmes
fans).  But I think it unwise to let those cleverly thought-out
descriptions of how past stories were constitute limits for what can
or should be done in new stories.  Let a thousand flowers bloom!

Well, Merry and Happy Whatever to all of you!
--       "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden.  email: starback at minsk.docs.uu.se
 "Life is but a gamble!  Let flipism chart your ramble!"



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