Dutch Donald Duck weekly exists 50 years

H.W.Fluks@kpn.com H.W.Fluks at kpn.com
Thu Oct 24 10:40:49 CEST 2002


Vidar asked:

> > The result is a full-page article where I say various things 
> > about the moral and ethical values of the DD stories...
> 
> and what *did* you say?

Lots of stuff, but all in Dutch. 8-)

(I can send you a copy of the Dutch text, if you want. It's on the web,
somewhere at www.nd.nl)

Some things I talked about:

- DD stories are not just aimed at children, that's why they are so
successful.

- There are few parents in the DD world: parents are usually in the way when
you want to have an adventure.

- There's a lot of violence, but never useless violence, and the good always
wins in the end.

- Scrooge is rich, and wants to become richer, but he's not a real
capitalist. He doesn't want power with his money; he only wants to swim in
it.

- Scrooge always gets more money in a "square" way. And in many cases he
doesn't get what he want, for instance because a treasure found in Turkey
rightfully belongs to the Turkish government.

- The Dutch minister warned against comics in 1948. But his statement was
too general: there *were* harmful comics in those days, but also harmless
ones like DD, Bob & Bobette, Asterix, Tintin, etc.

- I can imagine that some orthodox christians objected to DD (in the 1950s)
because in some stories ghosts or witches are involved. (The interviewer
adds that another objection was that DD and the nephews were gambling and
went to dance halls.)

- In the DD stories there are no references to church or religion. I
remember one story where a big gothic church building was involved, with a
big organ in it. But apart from the organ, the building contained *no*
religious objects.

- The DD weekly manages quite well to stay politically and religiously
neutral. The only thing I remember are some stories from the 70s and 80s
with a strong respect for nature and environment.


Note that I myself generalised a bit (by using words like "always" and
"never"). I did that to keep my arguments simple: to every statement above,
at least one exception can be found.

Also note that I am mainly talking about the Dutch weekly. So I excluded
some really offensive Italian stories from the pocket books. As well as, for
instance, a Vic Lockman story that teaches children that it is good to
demolish half of nature, as long as the goal is that humans can enjoy better
the nature that's left... (that story was never printed in Holland).

--Harry.



More information about the DCML mailing list