How to Read Donald Duck
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| Author |
Ariel Dorfman Armand Mattelart |
|---|---|
| Original title | Para leer al Pato Donald |
| Translator | David Kunzle |
| Country | Chile |
| Language | Spanish |
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Publication date
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1971 |
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Published in English
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1975 |
How to Read Donald Duck (Para leer al Pato Donald in Spanish) is a 1971 book-length essay by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart that critiques Disney comics from a Marxist point of view as being vehicles for American cultural imperialism. It was first published in Chile in 1971, became a bestseller throughout Latin America and is still considered a seminal work in cultural studies.
The book's thesis is that Disney comics are not only a reflection of the prevailing ideology at the time (capitalism), but that they are also aware of this, and are active agents in spreading the ideology. To do so, Disney comics use images of the everyday world:
This closeness to everyday life is so only in appearance, because the world shown in the comics, according to the thesis, is based on ideological concepts, resulting in a set of natural rules that lead to the acceptance of particular ideas about capital, the developed countries' relationship with the Third World, gender roles, etc.
As an example, the book considers the lack of descendants of the characters. Everybody has an uncle or nephew, everybody is a cousin of someone, but nobody has fathers or sons. This non-parental reality creates horizontal levels in society, where there is no hierarchic order, except the one given by the amount of money and wealth possessed by each, and where there is almost no solidarity among those of the same level, creating a situation where the only thing left is crude competition. Another issue analyzed is the absolute necessity to have a stroke of luck for social mobility (regardless of the effort or intelligence involved), the lack of ability of the native tribes to manage their wealth, and others.
According to John Tomlinson, How to Read Donald Duck is a "celebrated exemplar" of a genre of analyses, which focus on particular media texts with the aim to expose their imperialist nature. In this case, writers Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart aimed to demonstrate the imperialist nature of the values concealed in Disney comics. The writers argued that imperialism was hiding beneath an innocent and wholesome facade. The Disney comics presented themselves as a harmless fun product intended for consumption by children, while they were actually a powerful ideological tool for American imperialism.
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