How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic

by Armand Mattelart and Ariel Dorfman

Book Overview

"The book has a rambunctious humor that complements its polemical spirit . . . As Disney has evolved from an animation studio into a corporate behemoth--with theme parks, a cruise line, and content streaming around the world--How to Read Donald Duck and its charge of cultural imperialism rings all the truer"--The New Yorker

First published in 1971, How to Read Donald Duck shocked readers by revealing how capitalist...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0745339786
• ISBN13: 9780745339788
• Release Date: January 2020
• Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A historian's must

Ariel Dorfman is perhaps one of the most prolific authors of our time. How to Read Donald Duck is a must read for any historian, sociologist, or any person wanting to find social enlightenment.

A necessary starting-stone.

Of course, in a vastly changed historical context, bourgeois ideology cannot produce anything approaching the seemingly reactionary facility of the Disney comic (just compare Disney with Buffy, Xena, or other postmodern heroes!). However, anyone trying to understand changes in the ideological outlook of Mass Culture must, of necessity, regard this book as one's unavoidablke starting-stone. That's that.

Down with Disney!

It just goes to show that even with the economy on a downturn the CEO of Disney walks away with 75 million dollars and gives the employees the dregs of the disney economy. This book is worth buying for it details the enormity of Diney's propaganda campaign to portray the third world as a place to be exploited. I've never saw such outright villainy as is portrayed in this classic by Dorfman. Disney portrays revolutionaries (in their comic strips) as essentially traitors and the reactionaries, and oligarchs as heroes with Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck and company as aiding their crimes.

Valuable Political Insight

Ariel Dorfman offers the reader valuable insight into the way in which Latin America has been regarded and utilized by modern nations, governments, and corportions. "How to Read Donald Duck" is interspersed with unbelievable (although real) Disney cartoons possessing ridiculous political implications: vultures representing Hegel and Marx, dogs dressed up like Che and Castro... you name it, and Disney has apparently given it to Latin America.