There’s a book called ‘How to Read Donald Duck’ and it does examine how the Carl Barks stories espouse a form of colonialism, especially whenever ‘exotic’ locales are concerned where they are often exoticised and othered in ways they wouldn’t be when left to their own. It’s like how the Africans in the Carl Barks stories are portrayed in a demeaning, primitive manner and a cursory glance at African countries in those days show that there is room for modern technology. There are newspapers, radio stations, television channels and book publishers in African countries after all, then comes the Internet and it’s no different really.
I myself have perused African newspapers and radio stations, I still do to this day but for the purpose of worshipping God. Disney, as an American multinational corporation, has multiple branches almost anywhere in the world. It has many divisions dedicated to different media in whatever permutation they appear in, it even has a series of radio stations called Radio Disney and they’re still a thing in Latin America, including Ariel Dorfman’s native Chile (just type emisoras.cl/disney). Disney comics used to be a big thing in both the Americas and are still a thing in places like Brazil and Europe.
The Disney comics are a major focus of Dorfman’s thesis, though if he wrote this book this time he would’ve certainly included Radio Disney and critiqued it the same way. It’s not hard to say that even when Disney has improved itself when it comes to portraying foreign countries and culture, there’s still the potential for othering in ways it never intended to. Looking at one of its purchases like Marvel, it’s not hard to think some of Dorfman’s arguments could also be applied to characters like Black Panther and Storm to a frightening extent.
Because a chunk of Dorfman’s thesis is dedicated to the global north’s impression of global south countries, it’s not hard for one to come to the same conclusion considering Marvel has done the same thing. It’s like how someone has pointed out the problems with the way Marvel named its Vietnamese characters, it’s not that China didn’t influence Southeast Asia at all (it did to varying degrees depending on the country). But that their names are kind of strange and strangely spelt to anybody familiar with Vietnamese, sort of like how one came to this conclusion concerning Karma.
She has the ability to influence and possess people’s minds but what’s not brought up is that Marvel missed an opportunity to celebrate the Year of the Cat, it’s a thing in the Vietnamese zodiac and one that replaces the Year of the Rabbit for some reason, just so it could have a variant cover of Karma hanging out with cats. But this makes you wonder if most Marvel writers actually knew about Vietnam and Vietnamese culture in specific to do this, the best this writer did is to change her name into something realistically Vietnamese (it turned out in-story it’s a big mispronunciation of her real name).
Similar things can be said about Sha Shan Nguyen, who is a Spider-Man character by the way, one wonders why nobody bothered renaming her to San Sang since it sounds close enough (in my opinion as I’ve just started learning Vietnamese). Then we get to Storm or Ororo Munroe, who’s pretty much Marvel’s most famous Kenyan. But also one who’s hardly like actual Kenyans, especially if you actually know Kenya in some way. She doesn’t speak Swahili, Luo or Gikuyu to any degree, she doesn’t even celebrate Boxing Day (which happens every 26 December).
She’s a character who’s pretty much a white person’s idea of an exotic black woman, not so much an actual Kenyan woman which explains why she’s so oddly divorced from Kenyan culture. Also both Disney comics (especially when written by Carl Barks) and Marvel Comics sometimes have stories taking place in made-up Latin American countries, which further exoticises Latin America. It’s kind of shockingly recent for Disney to place its stories in actual Latin American countries, be it Mexico for Coco or Colombia for Encanto. But every now and then it falls back on exotic, made-up countries.
Recently we have Wish, which takes place in an island called Rosas. Though I think it would’ve worked just the same if it was actually set in Spain, despite having never watched the film myself. One would only wonder why does Black Panther have to come from Wakanda when he could’ve come from Cameroon and be Bamileke himself, the very people who even associate leopards with royalty and where fons/chiefs are said to become leopards themselves. Black Panther being an actual Cameroonian wouldn’t hurt really.
Cameroon even has websites which you can peruse such as Camerounweb, Actu Cameroun and more in addition to Radio Balafon (radio.co.cm/radio-balafon/). Or for another matter, Madripoor when it comes to the X-Men stories when Singapore could’ve sufficed. Using actual Latin American, Asian and African countries would have a major advantage, since you could actually look up on them and go there if you’re willing to. You could even peruse their websites, it’s not that hard really since I’ve done this before. If you could use the Internet to find X-Men fanfics, you could do the same with Senegalese websites.
I could go on saying that even when Carl Barks has been proven to be a good writer on most counts, when it comes to portrayals of nonwestern and nonwhite cultures it leaves much to be desired. The Africans in his stories tend to be stereotypical primitives, even when it was written there were actual Africans editing and publishing newspapers, writing for newspapers and using the radio themselves. There are even libraries in African countries, many of which have survived to the present day. Or how Donald and gang have a habit of going to made-up countries, when actual ones could’ve sufficed.
I feel we could’ve gotten stories where Donald and Uncle Scrooge would go to Afghanistan instead of Unsteadystan, though one would only wonder if even when the Internet wasn’t there yet in its present form Barks himself may have been more ignored than one realises and just as prone to Orientalism as his contemporaries at Marvel. So both Disney and Marvel act as agents of American media imperialism, both of them impart an American perspective of things onto non-Americans. Regardless of how suspicious their portrayals of foreigners are, they remain popular to the present day.
Because of the way Disney expanded and acquired brands like Marvel and Lucasfilm, we have an even more potential form of American imperialism as delivered by this company. We don’t just have Disney fabrics, comics, books and toys but also Radio Disney, Disney ships and Disney bridal wear. Even when Disney bothered to improve its portrayal of foreign, often non-western cultures but sometimes it still leaves much to be desired. In some properties like the Marvel stories, Wakanda takes priority over Cameroon and likewise Madripoor over Singapore.
The potential for exoticising, othering foreign regions is there and the precipice will always be there in some form, sometimes it’s so unavoidable that it’s easy to come up with Madripoor, Unsteadystan, Wakanda, Latveria, Rosas, Inca-Blinca, Aztecland and Kumandra than to actually set them in Singapore, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Slovenia, the Canary Islands, Peru, Mexico and Cambodia. It’s always the veneer of exoticism that others actual geopolitical regions, instead of the reality of such places as they actually are. A lot of it seems to come from an insincere interest.
Like trying to be interested in something foreign, but not actually committing to it in any way. I have done this before with China and it’s only now that I’ve gotten actually interested in it (with God’s help), it seems with some Marvel and Disney writers they want something foreign but can’t commit to it in any way. So Doctor Doom comes from Latveria, but not Slovenia (which actually exists by the way). A Yugoslavian Doctor Doom wouldn’t hurt, so would a Cameroonian Black Panther. Or Raya actually coming from Cambodia, but as one said these don’t have any messy real-world baggage.
I guess if Wish was actually set in Spain, one would have to deal with the messy complications of colonisation. After all it was Spain that colonised parts of Africa (Equatorial Guinea and part of Morocco), it was Spain that enslaved many Africans and have them forcibly going to its colonies to do work there. Likewise with Raya not coming from Cambodia, you’d have to deal with America having waged war there. Ethiopia could qualify but to my knowledge, it doesn’t have a tradition of associating leopards with royalty the way Cameroonian Bamilekes do.
Or for another matter, the messy reality of Singapore having seceded from Malaysia and the messy legacy of British colonialism in both countries. It seems with Disney over the years and whatever permutation it appears in, whatever company it has acquired there’s always the precipice of exoticism and othering. Geopolitical regions like Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and southern Europe find themselves exoticised by Disney, real countries could’ve sufficed but you have to deal with the ugly geopolitical reality we live in.
At best, Disney and its vassal companies promote an American way of looking at things. Rather othering and exclusive at that concerning foreign countries at all.
fynm 