Birthdays

[Lars Jensen]

Don Rosa wrote:

> >>>I don't really understand this discussion -- I fail to see why it
> > would be puzzling that fictional characters' birthdays are
> > celebrated on the same day they debuted in print or on screen.
>
> You don't?
> Let's say that the first time you might see and meet me is on a June
> 9. Would you insist that my birthday is June 9th?

Nope. But then, I didn't see my first Donald cartoon (or read my first
Donald comic) on June 9th, either. My personal experiences are usually
uncorrelated to other people's birthdays, fictional or not.
Fact is, though, that the first time anybody saw Donald was June 9th,
1934, just as the first time anybody saw you was when you were born
(presumably).

But obviously, one could argue that Donald could have had a life before
his first appearance on screen. That works if one believes he's a living
person existing in some kind of parallel universe. I don't share that
belief. There are enough people who don't know the difference between
truth and fiction (and believe that, say, Sherlock Holmes was a
real-life person), and I don't want to encourage blurring the lines. I
*know* Donald is a fictional character and I believe it's a mistake to
pretend otherwise.

Alternatively, one could argue that even though Donald is a fictional
character, he is unrestricted in his world by our world's premieres and
publishing dates. As you put it:

> the birthday of the character as an entity [...]

Yes, if we enter the Duck universe and, from there, look at the
surroundings, then this point of view is perfectly logical. Look around:
There's Donald, outside his house, repairing old 313. He lives and
breathes. He must have been born, obviously -- and why would that birth
be correlated to whenever somebody from the Human universe peeked into
this living, breathing Duck universe (as they did on June 9, 1934)?!

It *wouldn't* be correlated, of course. But fact is, we cannot have that
experience. We cannot enter the Duck universe, simply because it is a
theoretical construct, developed by flawed real world creators such as
yourself, I, Carl Barks, Walt Disney and others. I say "flawed" because,
in our Duck stories, we contradict each other with incompatible
information regarding various dates, names and events in the Duck
universe. Even if a given creator tries for total consistency by
sticking to an earlier creator's views, (as I believe you yourself do
with the views of Carl Barks), one will still find inconsistencies and
flaws in that earlier creator's work. That doesn't make the earlier
creator's stories bad, in my opinion, it only means they are the product
of a typically flawed human mind -- a mind that is incapable of creating
a totally coherent flawless universe, as the Duck universe would have to
be were it really to exist.

And if the Duck universe is a theoretical construct made by one or more
people in this Human universe, then, obviously, Donald didn't exist
until somebody decided to construct a fictional character named Donald
Duck. Which brings us back to the fact that the first time anybody in
existence (except Walt and company) saw Donald was when "The Wise Little
Hen" was screened on June 9th, 1934. For all practical purposes, that
makes June 9th Donald's "birthday" in our world. And since Donald's
fictional world can never be entirely consistent, why not bring in our
world's "Donald birthday" as a way of adding whatever easy consistency
we can?

Of course, everybody is free to disregard these arguments and decide to
promote Donald's birthday on another date. But I don't see a date out
there that would be more valid than June 9th, 1934. Could somebody
choose, say, April 20th, 1947? I suppose so. As stated in an earlier
posting, an arbitrarily chosen date such as this would make little sense
since it is utterly irrelevant to our Human universe and would only make
Disney fans scratch their heads in bewilderment. But I suppose it could
be done.

> >>>It's a fictional character. Donald doesn't really have a birthday.
>
> Lost me again. Donald is a fictional character. He doesn't really have
> a birthday. Likewise, he doesn't really have a hat on his head. He
> doesn't really have an Uncle $crooge. Or three Nephews.
> But he has a hat and an uncle and Nephews *and a birthday* if I or
> some other author says he does.

No. Donald, a fictional character, has a hat and an uncle and Nephews
and a birthday in a fictional universe. If I, in a story, have Gladstone
marry Daisy temporarily to avoid being drafted, then they are married in
that particular story. If I, in a story, decide that Scrooge has a
brother named Curmudgeon, then it is so in that particular story -- and
possibly in a number of future stories. But if I, in a story, decide
that the color of Donald's sailor suit is and always has been called
"brown", then everybody who hears of this will agree that I am wrong.
Because in our Human universe, the color of Donald's suit is called
"blue" -- this is something we can all agree on without discussion. This
latter one is a "real-life"/"Human universe" fact; the former ones are
not. The latter one is an actual, hard fact; the former ones are only
"facts" as far as it suits a writer or editor and can (in theory,
anyway) be changed at the drop of a hat.

If somebody says Donald Duck's birthday is April 20th, 1947, he/she is
not necessarily wrong. The same goes for any other date. However, I
personally don't see the point in coming up with a new date, when most
people agree June 9th, 1934 is the "real" one (since that's the date
Donald first appeared on-screen) and there's no reason why it shouldn't
be the "real" one. Assuming, of course, that we even *want* to assign a
birthday date to Donald.

Why go against the stream for no reason? Why come up with new "facts"
that, no matter what, most people will dispute, when there are old
actual, hard, perfectly usable facts that almost nobody will dispute? I
just don't see the point.

Lars