IMPERIALIST· IDEOLOGY . COMIC

12It is no accident that the first thoroughgoinganalysis of the Disney Ideology should come fromone of the m ost e conomi cally and culturallydependent colonies of the U.S. empire. How ToRead Donald Duck was born In the heat of thestruggle to free Chile from that dependency; and Ithas since become. with Its many Latin Americanedit ions. a most potent I nst rument for theinterpretation of bourgeois media In the Third World.Until 1970. Chile was cof11)letely In pawn to U.S.corporate Interests; its foreign debt was the secondhighest per capita In the world. And even under thePopular Unity government (1970-1973), whichinitiated the peaceful road to socialism, it provedeasier to nationalize copper than to free the massmedia from U.S. Influence. The most popular TVchannel in Chile imported about haH its materialfrom the U.S. (including FBI, Mission Impossible,'Disneyland, etc.), and until June 1972, eightypercent of the films shown in the cinemas (Chilehad virtually no native film Industry) came from theU.S. The m ajor chain of newspape rs andmagazines, including EI Mercurio, was owned byAgustin Edwards, a Vice-President of Pepsi Cola,who also controlled many of the largest Industrialcorporations in Chile, while he was a resident inMiami. With so much of the mass media servingc onservative interests. the government of thePopular Unity tried to reach the people throughcertain alternative media, such as the poster, themural and a new kind of comic book. 11 Cf. Herbert Schiller and Dallas Smythe "Chile: An Endto Cuhural Colonialism" Society, March 1972, pp. 35-39,61. And David Kunzle "Art of the New Chile: Mural,Poster and Comic Book in a 'Revolutionary Process' II inAft and ArchittJCIurs in the Service of Politics, edited byHenry Millon and Linda Nochlin, Cambridge, M A: MITPress, 1978.2 EI Mercurio (Santiago de Chile).13 August 1971. Thepassage below is slightly abridged from that published onpages 80-81 in the Chilean edition of How To ReadDonald Duck.IIAmong the objectives pursued by the Popular Unitygovernment appears to be the creation of a new mentalityin the younger gene ration. In order to achieve thispurpose, typical ot all Marxist societies, the authoritiesare intervening In education and the advertising mediaand resorting to various expedients.·Persons responsible to the Government maintain thateducation shall b e one of the means calculated toachieve this purpose. A severe critique is thus beinginstituted at this level a g ai nst te aching me thods,textbooks, and the attitude of broad s ectors of thenation's teachers who refuse to become an instrument ofpropaganda.aWe register no surprise at the emphasis placed uponchanging the mentality of school children, who in theirim m aturity canno t d e t e ct the subtle ideologi calcontraband to which they are being subject."There are however other lines of access being forgedto the juv e nile mind, not a bly the m a g azines andpublications which the State publishing house has justlaunched unde r literary mentors both Chilean andforeignin either case of proven Marxist militancy."It s ould be stressed that not even the vehicles othtxrtThe ubiquitous magazine and newspaper kiosks ofChile were emblazoned with the garish covers ofU.S. and U.S.-style comics (including some nolonger known in the metropolitan count ry):Superman, The Lone Ranger, Red Ryder, FlashGordon, etc.-and, of course. the various Disneymagazines. In few countries of the wortd did Disneyso completely dominate the so called " children'scomic" market, a term which in Chile (as In much ofthe Third World) Includes magazines also read byadults. But under the aegis of the Popular Unitygovernment publishing house Ouimantu, theredeveloped a f orceful resistance to the Disneyhegemony.As part of this cultural offenSive, How To ReadDonald Duck became a bestseller on publication inlate 1971, and subsequently in other Latin Americaneditions; and, as a practical alternative there wascreated, in Cabro Chico (Little Kid, upon whichDorfman and Ma tte lart also collabor at ed), adelightful children's comic designed to drive awedge of new values into the U.S.-disnified culturalclimate of old. Both ventures had to compete in amarket where the bourgeois media were longentrenched and had established their own strictlycommercial criteria for the struggle, and both weretoo successful not to have aroused the hostility ofthe bourgeois press. EI Mercurio, the leadingreactionary mass daily in Chile, under the headline"Warning to Parents"2 denounced them as part of agovernment "plot" to seize control of education andjuvenile recreation and amusement are exempt from thisproce s s, which aims to diminish the popularity ofconsecrated characters of world literature, and at thesame time replace them with new models cooked up bythe Popular Unity propaganda experts.aFor sometime now the pseudo-sociologists have beenclamoring, in their tortuous jargon, against certain comicbooks with an international circulation, judged to bedisastrous in that they represent vehicles of intellectualcolonization for those who are exposed to them . Sinceclumsy forms of propaganda would not be acceptable toparents and guardians, children are systematically givencarefully distilled doses of propaganda from an early age,in order to channel them in l ater years in Marxistdirections.II Juvenile literature has also been exploited so that theparents themselves should be exposed to ideologicalindoctrination, f or which purpose spe cial adultsupplements are included. It is illustrative of Marxistprocedures that a S tate enterprise should sponsorinitiatives of this kind, with the collaboration of foreignpersonnel."The program of the Popular Unity demands that thecommunications media should be educational in spirit.Now we are discovering that this "education" is no morethan the instrument for doctrinaire proselytizationimposed from the tenderest years in so insidious anddeceitful a form, that many people have no idea of thereal purposes being pursued by these publications."It is now widely known, even in the U.S., that EIMercurio was CIA fund : -Approximately haH the CIAfunds (o ne million dollars) were f unnelled to theopposition press, notably the nation's leading daily, EIMercurio. " (Time, 30 September 1974. p.29).

13the media, "brainwash" the young, inject them withsilence the voice of their opponents. And seeingthat, despite their machinations, popular support forthe govemment grew louder every day, they calledupon the military to intervene by force of arms.On September 11, 1973 the Chilean armed forces"subtle ideological contraband," and "poison" theirminds ag ainst Disney chara cters. The a r ticlereferred repeatedly to "mentors both Chilean andforeign" (i.e. the authors of the present work, whosenames are of German-Jewish and Belgian origin) inexecuted, withU.S.a i d , t h e bloodiestcounterrevolution in the history of the continent.Tens of thousands of workers and governments upporters were kill ed. All art and litera turefavorable to the Popular Unity was immediatelysuppressed. Murals were destroyed. There werean appeal to the crudest kind of xenophobia.The Chilean bourgeois press resorted to thegrossest lies, distortions and scare campaigns Inorder to undermine confidence in the Popular Unitygovernment, accusing the government of doingwhat they aspired to do themselves: censor andpubli c bonf ires of books. posters and comics.3Intellectuals of the Left were hunted down, jailed.tortured and killed. Among those persecuted. theauthors of this book.3 In autumn 1973, UNESCO voted by 32 to 2 to condemnthe book-burning in Chile. The U.S. (with Taiwan) votedwith the Junta."Hey, Hegel!Look what a fatIICongratulations,Marx! I'va g ot anice morael tooltlittle worm I'vecaugh t IIiiE. FELlC.''"TC" MARXl ')Q TAM.1!5\1!N T'e.NtiO UNA BUENAPRI!. .i l-I . HEGEL!iM1RA E.L '"SANO CdOR01; TO (SUe. c:.ool""How dreadful! 'iliekittens are n't.prepared for' this!""Go away l Don'tyou reali ze wearen't scarecrows.1IIG;LUF'! OC c:,\ONALN N'"TE. Mf!. "TOPO c.c:Jo-J -npa;"a\UE \NMUNa, ALA vc:rz. DE LA C.ON C.\ENC.\A."Gulp! Occasionally"Get him,comrade!I run up againstIIiSE ACE.RC EL eRAN.ilERO CON UNA' . E. \guys who areimmune to thevoice ofconscien ce" .liThe farmer iscoming with ashot -gun! It"Ha!Firearms areth e only thingthese bloodybirds are afraid-----of".

14All these years How To Read Donald Duck hasbeen banned in C h ile; even with the recentdemocratic opening since Plnochet was voted out itis still not available In its homeland. All these yearsDisney comics have flourished with the blessing ofthe fascistoid govemment, and free of competitionfrom the truly Chilean, Popular Unity style comics,whose authors were driven into exile, and silenced.The "state of war" declared in 1973 by the Junta toexist in Chile, was openly declared by the Disneycomic too. In an Issue of late 1973, the Allendegovernment, symbolized by murderous vulturescalled Marx and Hegel (meaning perhaps, Engels),is being driven off by naked force: IIHal Firearms arethe only things these lousy birds are afraid of."How To Read Donald Duck, has, of course, beenbanned in Chile. To be found in possession of acopy was to risk one's life. By Mcleansing" Chile ofevery trace of Marxist or popular art and literature,the Junta protected the cultural envoys of theirimperial masters. They knew what kind of cuHurebest served their interests, that Mickey and Donaldhelped keep them in power, held socialism at bay,restored "virtue and innocence" to a "corrupted"Chile.How To Read Donald Duck is an enraged, satiricaland politically impassioned book. The authors'passion also derives from a sense of personalvictimization, for they themselves, brought up onDisney comics and films, were injected with the4 If we continue to refer to Disney Production after thedeath of Walt as "Disney" and "he", we do so in responseto the fact that his spirit, that of U.S. corporate capitalism.continues to dominate the organization.5 Neither comic book nor syndicated newspaper strip ismentioned in the company's Annual Report for 1973.They presumably fall within the category Publications,which constitutes 17% of the group Ancillary Activities."This group, of which Character Merchandizing, and Musicand Records (270/0 each) are the major constituents,showed an extraordinary increase in activity (up 280/0over the previous year, up 2280/0 over the last four years,the contribution of Publications being proportionate), soas to bring its share of the total corporate revenue of 385 million up to 100k.Written solicitation with Disney Productions regardingincome f rom comic boo ks proved unavailing. Thefollowing data has been culled from the press:The total mont h ly c irculation of Disney comicsthroughout the world was given in 1962 at 50 million,co vering 50 c o un tries and 15 different l anguages(NeWSWHk,31 December 1962, pp. 48-51). These havenow risen to 18: Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English,Finnish, Flemish, French, German,· Hebrew, Italian,Japanese, Norwegian, Portu guese, Serbo . Croatlan,Spanish, Swedish, and Thai. The number of countriesserved must have risen sharply in the later fifties, to judgeby the figures published in 1954 (71me, 27 December, p. 42): 30 million copies of a "single tltle" (Walt Disney'sComics and Slories) were being bought in 28 countriesevery month.In the United States, discounting special "one-shotperiodicals keyed to current films, the following 14 comicbook titles were being published In 1973 under Disney'sDisney ideology which they now reject. But thisbook is much more than that: it is not just LatinAmerican water off a duck's back. The system ofdomination which the U.S. culture imposes sodisastrously abroad, also has deleterious effects athome, not least among those who work for Disney,that is, those who produce his ideology. Thecircumstances in which Disney products are madeensure that his employees reproduce in their livesand work relations the same system of exploitationto which they, as well as the consumer, are subject.To locate Disney correctly in the capitalist systemwould require a detailed analysis of the workingconditions at Disney Productions and Walt DisneyWorld. Such a study (which would, necessarily,break through the wall of secrecy behind whichDisney 4 operates), does not yet exist, but we maybegin to piece together such information as may begleaned about the circumstan ces in which thecomics were created, and the people who createdthem; their relationship to their work, and to Disney.Over the last generation, Disney has not taken thecomics seriously. He hardly even admitted publiclyof their existence.5 He was far too concerned withthe promotion of films and the amusement parks,his two most profitable enterprises. The comics tagalong as an "ancillary activity" of interest onlyinsofar as a new comic title (in 1973 Robin Hood)can be used to help keep the name of a new film inname: Arislokittens, 8eagle Boys, Chip and Dale, Daisyand Donald, Donald Duck, HuB}' Dewey and Louie JuniorWoodchucks. Mickey Mous e , Moby D uck, Scamp,Supsrgoof, Uncle Scrooge , Walt Disney Showcase, WaltDisney's Comics and Storie s, W alt Disney's ComicsDigest. It should be stressed that while the number ofDisney titles has recently increased, their Individual sizehas diminished considerably, as did, presumably. theircirculation.The Disney comics publishing franchi se, WesternPublishing, stopped producing Disney comics about1980, as did the B urbank headquarters. No Disneycomics were being published at all for several years, untilin 1984 the license was picked up by Gladstone (AnotherRainbow Press, i n Phoenix, Arizon a). Gl adstonepublished eight different titles, with circulation averaging50,000-65,000 per title, seven of the titles containing CarlBarks reprints, and with about haH the material obtainedfrom abroad, notab ly the G utenbe r g h u s group inCopenhagen. Smelling money, and f e aring loss ofcontrol, Disney refused to renew Gladstone's license, andsince 1989 are producing their own comics again, withtie-ins to TV serials. The most important of these TVproductions, from our point of view, is that featuring CarlBarks' creation Uncle Scrooge, who is presented now in asanitized version, as the -miser with the heart of gold".The number of different foreign language comics (whichcontinued to flourish in the absence of a U.S. edition) nowstands at about 25, including very recently, a pilot editionto test .the potentially huge Russian market. An importantinnovation, introduced by Gladstone and retained byDisney for the U.S. edition, is that personal credits ofauthors and artists are printed on the inside covers ofeach issue.

15the limelight. Royalties from comics constitute asmall declining fraction of the r evenue f r omPublications, which constitute a small fradion of therevenue from Ancillary Activities, which constitute asmall fraction of the total corporate revenue. WhileDisney's share of the market in "educational" andchildren's book s In other formats has increaseddramatically, his cut of the total U.S. comics cakehas surely shrunk.But in foreign lands the Disney comics trade is stilla mouse that roars. Many parts of the world, withoutaccess to Disney's films or television shows, knowthe Disney characters from the comics alone. Thosetoo poor to buy a ticket to the Cinema, can alwaysget hold of a comic, if not by purchase, then byborrowing it from a friend. In the U.S. moreover,comic book circulation figures are an inadequateinde x of t he cultural influence of comi c bookcharacters. Since no new comedy cartoon shortshave been made of Mickey Mouse since 1948, andof Donald Duck since 1955 (the TV shows carryreruns), it is only in the comic that one finds originalstories with the classic characters devised over thelast two decades. It is thus the comic books andstrips which sustain old favorites in the publicconsciousness (in the U.S. and abroad) and keep itreceptive to the massive merchandizing operationswhich exploit the popularity of those characters.Disney, like the missionary Peace Corpsman or·"good-will ambassador" of his Public Relations men,has learned the native lingoes-he is fluent ineighteen of them at the moment. In Latin Americahe speaks Spanish and Portuguese; and he speaksit from magazines which are Slightly different, inother ways, from those produced elsewhere and athome. There are, indeed, at least four differentSpanish language editions of the Disney comic. Thedifferences between them do not affect the basiccontent, and to determine the precise significance otsuch differences would require an excessive amountof research; but the fact of their existence points upsome structural peculiarities in this little corner of6 Some statistics will reveal the charader and extent offoreign participation in the Disney comic, as well as thedepth of Disney's penetration into the Latin Americancontinent. T h e C hilean edition, which also servesneighboring Peru, Paraguay and Argentina, used, around1972, for its four comics titles (one weekly, three bi weeklies) totalling 800,000 copies sold per month: 4,400pages of Disney material, of which well over a third camedirect from Disney studios, just over a third from Disney'sU.S. franchise, Western Publishing Company, less than aquarter from "aly. and a small fraction from Brazil andDenmark. The Mexican edition (which uses only half asmany pages as the Chile group) takes almost exclusivelyfrom the U.S. On the other hand, Brazil. with five titlestotalling over two million copies sold per month, is fairlydependent upon Italy (1,000 out of 5,000 pages) andgenerates 1,100 pages of its own material. Another LatinAmerican edition Is that of Colombia Italy is perhaps themost self-sufficient country of all, producing itself overhalf of its 5,600 annual pages. France's Journal deMickey, which sells around 340,000 copies weekly,consists of about half Dis n e y and h al f non-D isneyDisney's empire. For the Disney comic, more tharhis other media, systematically relies on foreigrlabor in all stages of the production process. ThEnative contributes directly to his own colonization.6Like other multinational corporations, Disney's ha found it profitable to decentralize opera tionsallowing considerable organizational and productionleeway to its foreign subsidiaries or "franchises,"which are usually locked into the giant popularpress conglomerates of their respective countries.l ik e M on dadori in Italy or In ternationa l PressCorporation in Britain. The Chilean edition, likeother foreign editions, draws its material fromseveral outside sources apart from the U.S. Clearly,it is in the interests of the metropolis that the variousforeign subsidiarie s s hould render m u t ua lassistance t o each other, exchanging stories theyhave imported or produced themselves. Even whenforeign editors do n o t find it c o n v e ni e nt tocommission stories locally, they can select the typeof story, and combination of stories ("story mix")which they consider suited to particular public tasteand particular marketing conditions, in the countryor countries they are serving. They also edit (forinstance, delete scenes considered offensive orinappropriate to the national sensibility), 7 havedialogues more or less accurately translated, moreor less freely adapted, and add local color (in theliteral sense: the pages arrive at the foreign pressready photographed onto black and whitetransparencies ("mats"), requiring the addition ofcolor as well as dialogue in the local idiom). Somechara cters l i k e Rockerduck, a freespendingmillionaire rival of Scrooge; Fethry Duck, a "beatnik"type; and 0.0. Duck, a silly spy; are known only, orchiefly from the foreign editions, and never caughton at home. The Italians in particular have provenadept in the creation of indigenous characters.Expressed preferences of foreign editors revealcertain broad differences in taste. Brazil and Italytend towards more physical violence, more bloodand guts; Chile, evidently tended (like Scandinavia,material.There is

breach into the Disney part of this dream was made by Richard Schickel's The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney (1968). But even this analYSiS, penetrating and caustic as it is, in many respects remains prey to the illusion that Disney productions. eve