Grandma's Car and other anachronisms

Dwight Decker deckerd at agcs.com
Wed Dec 7 18:03:32 CET 1994


I was just reading Gladstone's recent album reprint of the 
Christmas stories "Letter to Santa" and "You Can't Guess,"
and made the mistake of reading the accompanying text piece.
You know: those tendentious essays by Blum and Ault that try
to "explain" the story you just read by reading things into
it that Barks probably never intended, and tell you how "ironic"
or "disturbing" various elements were. This time, Blum referred
to Grandma's car as a "Model T." Looks like the professor has
spent his life looking for irony and disturbing literary motifs
instead of researching automotive history. The Model T was not
a generic term for all old flivvers: it was a specific model
manufactured by the Ford Motor Company with numerous specific
identifying features. Grandma's car is not a Model T, and looks
nothing like one. For one thing, Grandma's car is sometimes shown
to have a tiller instead of a steering wheel. It may even be
electric. As I understand it, such cars were manufactured around
the turn of the century and were considered a "women's" car. They
probably weren't practical for much behind short hops around town,
since even now, 90 years later, electric cars still aren't in
general use because of battery limitations. That Grandma still
had such a car in 1950 was Barks's joke about Grandma's old-fashioned
ways. She apparently came of age about 1900 and froze there (and
other Barks stories, such as the one where her idea of entertaining
HD&L is to look at stereoscope slides, make the same point).
	The only thing is...Grandma reflects the stereotype of old-
fashioned old ladies set in their ways as of 1950. If I want to
write a Grandma Duck story in 1995, she would have been born about
1920 or later and matured just before World War II. If she drives an
electromobile from 1900, it would be a family heirloom handed down to
her, not something she bought new.
	Unless we assume that all Duck stories take place in the '50s,
as Mr. Rosa has been known to do? But what if I wanted to do a story
where something contemporary has an effect on Grandma's farm (say,
the Space Shuttle makes a forced landing in her back forty?)? Or do
we just assume Grandma's now improbable old-fashionedness (unless
she's 110 years old) is just one more comic parameter of the Duck
universe, to be accepted rather than thought about too seriously?
This could be ironic...or even disturbing!

--Dwight Decker




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