"A Spicy Tale"

 Hey, if you want, you can listen to me'n'Mark blathering about "The Twenty-Four Carat Moon."  To commemorate this occasion, I have chosen to write about a wholly unrelated story.  It's been a long time coming, though, as was me appearing on this podcast, so maybe that's a connection?  Well, maybe not.  Don't be mean to me.

It's actually quite surprising that it's taken me so long to get to this, which might possibly (the memory is a little hazy) have been my first duck story.  One of the first few, at any rate.  And I have to say, I still think it's a pretty darn solid story, especially for the time period (1962), problematic aspects notwithstanding.  So let's get into it, dangit!

The first thing to be noted is that Scrooge is apparently in the habit of counting coins for twenty-four straight hours.  Okay.  I will say that I find this somehow emblematic of late-stage capitalism: you have all this money, so what do you do?  You spend one hundred percent of your time wallowing in that money.  What does it signify?  Nothing, really, except for the bare fact that you have it.  We are very far from the idea that every coin has some specific meaning.

So...no nutmeg tea, is the lesson here.  And right at the start, we get to the problematic aspect.  You get the impression here that Barks wasn't quite sure how much he wanted the, hum, natives to speak in pidgin, as it kind of wavers back and forth.  We will talk more about the natives anon, have no fear.

This isn't as flakey as something like "The Looney Lunar Gold Rush" or "Queen of the Wild Dog Pack," but it's still a BIT flakey, as we can see.  I really love "smooth cookies out of rough rookies."  I didn't really note or appreciate that line when I was small, somehow.  But now that has changed!

Yup, Donald is a Peace Corps volunteer.  One of the first, actually, since the organization had just been founded in 1961.  Barks was on the ball, more or less, although he doesn't appear quite sure what this entails or whether it's a paying position.

Still, it's a noble thing to do.  Well, from my perspective it is; I don't think Barks was thinking along those lines at all, but that's still what I get out of it, regardless of where the story ends up going.  Donald is cool.

Also worth noting that this version of the Peace Corps has absolutely no concern for the safety of its volunteers, apparently.  And good god, look at the jowls on that bottom-left-most nephew.  That hearkens back to Barks's earliest drawing style.

The comic really pushes this idea about how the locals like eating alligator, and how repulsed the ducks are by this concept.  But I don't know; I try to maintain a vegetarian diet, but what is particularly gross about alligator, if you're eating meat?  It probably tastes pretty normal.  Seems like Barks had different sensibilities than I do.  

Elfish Pestly, not to be confused with Shoeless Pashley.  Anyway, I suppose I might as well comment on this aspect of the story.  I know there's been a lot of fustle and bustle lately about Disney deciding they don't want to republish certain stories.  And I hate to get involved in these arguments, because they always seem to devolve from "we shouldn't censor the past" to "old-timey racism was GOOD, actually!"  It rarely seems to bring out the best in people.  But, well, here I am.

My feeling is that this is an impossible question.  I read this story when I was small.  Did it turn me into a racist?  No, but imagining that that's the objection is just childish.  If a parent says "I'd prefer that my child not be exposed to sixty-year-old racist tropes"...it is extremely hard to argue with that.  And I kind of think that people are mostly fooling themselves when they suggest, oh, well, these books are aimed at adults, so it's different.  Do we really think these hardcovers are read mainly by adults?  I'd love to see some stats on that.  I can more or less buy it for the Gottfredson books, but that's about as far as I'll go.  I love these stories, but is there any justification for reprinting them?  I dunno, man!

But let's look past the controversies and just look at this story qua story.  Think back to something like "Darkest Africa:"

Pretty awful!  

But by the time you get to a story like this we are far, far removed from anything that could be considered representative of what anyone might mistake for anything real.  I know I've probably overused the word "postmodern" in the past, but it seems unavoidable here: these simulacra that dimly reflect half-remembered racist stereotypes, but are so caught up in this fragmentary, pop-culture buzz that it all becomes basically indecipherable.  I mean, it is what it is, and you can take umbrage if you like, but that does seem a bit performative when it comes to something like this.

Did I say that?  Well, I still believe it, and I can argue (accurately, I think) that even this doesn't really mean anything either, but I do have to concede that there will never be a situation where referring to indigenous people as "childlike savages" is okay.

I remember thinking when I read this story as a child--and still thinking now!  How wildly irresponsible Donald's behavior is here.  I mean, in a funny way, but still.  You were sent here to help the people develop sustainable agriculture!  I don't know how well this alternative is going to go down, man (actually, I do, from the end of this story, and the answer is: badly. Fair enough).

I also really like the business of Scrooge being chained up and giving out wholly useless/irrelevant financial advice.

Seeing him screaming about oil wells as he's drowned out by bongos is especially hilarious.  The reductio ad absurdum of capitalism, maybe.

I should probably at least point out this guy, even if I don't really have anything to say about him.  I like how the expressions on his barrel costume thingie change according to his mood.

Anyway, we move onto this business of animals getting giganticized.  It's just fun to see, okay?  Especially when you're a little kid.

Very convenient, I must say, how those animals all appeared at the same time, Three-Musketeers-style.  Still, who can say no to a giant armadillo?  No one, probably!

I do have to admit that the ending is a bit rushed.  You see that in a lot of later Barks stories, no doubt having something to do with page limits.  Still...a giant panther.  Can't complain about that.

So was Donald being paid, or not?  If not, I don't know that "fired" is the right word.  But I dunno; that madness seems like it might have SOME international appeal.  And to end on an incredibly trivial note, here's a Clerkly appearance that is not, as of this writing, inducksed.  Get on that, someone!