Barks, Mao, and the Cold War

[Daniel van Eijmeren]

L. SCHULTE, 08-09-2003:

> Certainly Barks was writing and drawing during the Cold War against 
> Communism, and occasionally with things like Brutopia (= brutal utopia, 
> an ironic comment on Stalin's and Mao's brutal 'workers' paradises') 
> his love of freedom and his/Scrooge's support of basic hard-working 
> capitalism are obvious.  Certainly most of the stories are apolitical, 
> but now and then his anti-Communism comes through.

I don't know Barks's political preference, so I can't judge this.
However, comparing capitalism with dictatorships sounds unfair to me.

Barks has drawn a watercolor with a duck-caricature of J. Edgar Hoover 
(1895-1972), the director of the FBI for nearly 50 years, whose methods 
were controversial. I believe he was the person who witch-hunted 
Communists in the 1950s. I don't know if Barks had any message with this 
particular choice of subject, though. The watercolor is part of the 
series "Famous Figures of History as They Might Have Looked Had Their 
Genes Gotten Mixed with Waterfowl", and is titled "J. Edgar Honker" 
(78-19), and can be found here:
http://www.barksbase.de/english/h/7819.htm

If this discussion continues about Barks/Disney, then it belongs here.
But if the discussion will be about politics only, then it belongs 
at DCML-TALK (http://www.dcml-talk.org).

--- Daniël, not interested in a pure political discussion