Where Scrooge lives

The NightRaven The_NightRaven at hotmail.com
Tue Jan 15 18:59:52 CET 2002


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tommi Perkola" <matope at uta.fi>
To: "Ari Seppi" <ariseppi at koti.soon.fi>
Cc: <dcml at stp.ling.uu.se>
Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2002 8:32 AM
Subject: Re: Where Scrooge lives


> Ari Seppi wrote:
> > To summarize my post: Rosa ducks in the US, others where ever.
>
> That was the point, about which I criticized Rosa about a year ago in
> sfnet.harrastus.kulttuuri.sarjakuvat. In European tradition Duckburg is
> located "somewhere near", or in its own universum.
>
> This is something a US citizen might not think about, but while you're
> reading daily comics like Peanuts or Dilbert, you don't specifically
> locate them anywhere. These comics are entertaining, because they
> resemble readers' daily life in humorous way, and adding too many strict
> indications of stories' milieu or geographical situation would spoil
> their universality.
>
> For someone who lives in the same country this isn't a problem, but in
> another country or continent it is. Now disney comics are all originally
> situated in USA, but majority of them both read and drawn abroad. It is
> said, that italian Duckburg is an amalgamation of an American big city
> and italian smalltown. For example Chierchini's Duckburg looks more like
> Paris than any American city.
>
> If you're grown reading italian disney, an American who both locates
> Duckburg in American west coast, sets their time to fifties and admits,
> he doesn't know anything about euroducs seems bit, eh, arrogant, like
> "To hell with thousands of pages euroducs produced in last 50 years!"
>
> --

What I think is arrogant is the attitude of European writers that they can
simply take and change completely the background and location of other
peoples characters. Just because they're allowed to, and that it appeals
to readers doesn't make it right.
As a Scandinavian, (I don't realy consider Scandinavia as a part of Europe)
I constantly get shocked at the lengts Europeans sometimes go to make
something 'belong' to their country. Go to any movietheater in say, Germany
or Italy, or just turn on the telly there, and you see Sean Connery, Meg
Ryan,
Bruce Willis, et.al, speak in fluently German/Italian. Television series
like
the Simpsons seem to take place in a small German town.
What is this? To me it is horrible, to just mangle a set story to fit your
own
National Pride.
In Norway, everyone grew up knowing well that Donald was an American,
living in a typical American suburb. That didn't stop us from enjoying the
stories
or identifying with the characters/story. Also the same with comics like
Dilbert/Peanuts,
because the humor is universal, it doesn't  m a t t e r  if they live in the
states,
people are all the same anywhere.
And if European duckwriters feel the need to place Duckburg close to Paris,
Rome
or Fantasyland, they could just as well spit on the graves of Al Taliaferro
& Carl Barks.
They might not have invented all the characters, but they sure were the
first to define
and locate them.
Writing stories like that, with no disregard for the original artists, is
like writing
about Robin Hood living in the Wild West, or drawing Supermancomics where he
lives in Bavaria fights the Evil Gargamel on the side.
You just don't do that with any other comicartists or authors, why should
the
Ducks be an exception? Just because they've got Disney(tm) stamped all over
it,
instead of the people that should be credited doesn't justify this in any
way.

Of course, people can go around believing that Duckburg is in their native
country,
that Scrooge never ages, and that Cinderella lives nearby, but they just as
well
believe that Napoleon conquered Japan with his minisub, or that the Odyssey
was
about a band of escaped convicts trying to find their loot, but it doesn't
make it true.

I'm sorry about this rant, it might seem more harsh than I intended it to
be, but
it realy upsets me when people write about the ducks as if noone invented
them.

- Martin S. Thoresen.



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