Soren, Battle of the sexes

Botto Armando Armando.Botto at elsag.it
Wed Nov 14 12:32:09 CET 2001


Søren wrote (about I TL  906-C, the first Paperinika story):
> > Scrooge starts insulting her (and women in general): "We must discuss
> > *serious* things! Between *men*! Women chatter too much! They've got
> > a chicken's brain! They're inferior beings!"
> > [Don't be surprised... the story came out in 1973, during the worst
> > period for Italian scripts. And Guido Martina - who had never been an
> > example of Politically Correct ;-) - had been declining for a long
> > time already...]
> You know, Armando, I don't agree with you on this. You shouldn't take 
> Scrooge's words too literally and they are definetely not based on 
> Martina's own opinions on these matters IMO. They are just words that 
> fit into the story. 

Of course I don't think Martina's opinions about women were those expressed
by Scrooge (even though, from what I've read about him, I think he had a
very peculiar character, and I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that
he had a rather paternalistic / chauvinistic approach towards the fair
sex... ;-))
Anyway, generally speaking, I don't like the way Martina handled the Scrooge
character from the beginning. Scrooge is usually *hateful* in Martina's
stories: a violent, pitiful miser always ready to swindle anyone to earn one
more dime. During the 50es and (partially) the 60es, Martina's creativity
(and the Italian Master's art) managed to make his scripts really enjoyable
all the same; in the 70es, the well started to run dry, and the average
quality plummeted down.

> In fact that particular story is/was very political 
> correct (or at least very topical) in the early 70s, since we during 
> the story face many sexist situations which are elegantly put into 
> rediculousness by the author, and the story itself ends up with 
> Paperinika being just as intelligent and "heroish" as Paperinik 
> himself--they *do* cooperate in the end, remember?!

Actually, Paperinika *triumphs* over Donald/Paperinik in the end! 
The Paperinika character was an attempt by Martina (or, more likely, by the
Topolino editing staff) at introducing a heroine who could increase the
female readership of Topolino. As Paperinik was very popular at the time,
Martina simply decided to create his female clone, and put her in a
conflictual relationship with the masked duck... 

> This is a great script I think. A bit outdated and exaggerated perhaps, 
> but I hope you'll agree, that it is somewhat unique (which is enough 
> for me to appreciate it anyway :-)

I agree on the "outdated" and "exaggerated" ;-). As for the "unique"... I
don't find the idea very original (it's not far from the plethora of silly
Super Goof stories in which some character eats a goober by mistake, and
becomes Super Scrooge, or Super Beagle, or Super Whatever - but, of course,
those stories didn't have Cavazzano's art to save them ;-)).
But, maybe, it's just that *I* was a 9-year-old Paperinik fan when I first
read the story, and I got very irritated when I saw my hero being
ridiculized by a *girl*... ;-)) 

Ciao,
Armando



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