Wizard McMagic’s Reviews > How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic > Status Update

Lots of examples of the implicit reinforcement of a rigid authority hierarchy. I was most compelled by the claims that these hierarchies only get challenged when they go beyond the tacitly agreed bounds of authority, and how the response is to just go back to the same systems. Don't expose the contradictions, please!

"No matter there be a king, as long as he governs while hiding his steel hand in a velvet glove."

Discussion in the first few pages of the chapter highlights the odd world of familial relations in the comics; it's composed damn near entirely of uncles, aunts, and cousins. The observation is that this is to avoid having to brush up against sexual topics and presents an oddly more authoritarian nature to the duck families.

Very strange stuff.

Just cleaning up the last few pages of the introduction. Admittedly the writing is sorta heady for my brain but I got the gist of it as a conclusion to the arguments regarding how adult authors curate a message for juvenile audiences through the prism of their own ideals of the past and future.

Analysis and commentary on the tendencies to view certain works (Especially children's literature) as purely for entertainment, the assertion of an apolitical art, and how adult artists can prescribe their idea of an ideal future to child readers.

"...he admires himself in the mirror, thinking it to be a window. But the child playing down there in the garden is the purified adult looking back at himself."

Further discussion on the creative control, or the attempt to exert it, on the production of Disney's comics. There's a summary of the working culture of the Disney company, and a rundown of Walt Disney's projects, general ideological tendencies, and how the former reflected the latter.

"Disney was using the mouse not to save Hitler, but to damn him."

Discussion about the history of art and culture in Chile during the Popular Unity government and how that changed after the coup. Additional background on the cultural prominence of the Disney comics around the word (In LatAm especially) VS in the US.