Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

234 reframing latin america
concluding frames show Donald in one of his many feminized poses,
draped head to foot in a Mexican serape and protectively fl anked by his two
cohorts [. . .].
Ninth Proposition: Illusory Reciprocities and Other
Deceptive Ways of Seeing Eye to Eye The notion of reciprocity is
deceptively evoked in the opening frames of the fi lm when Donald, who
has opened the fi rst of his birthday gifts from Latin America to fi nd a movie
projector and screen, subjects the strip of celluloid to the close scrutiny of
his naked eye. Cut to a point-of-view closeup of one of the frames, which
animates: Pablo Penguin turns his telescope toward Donald/the camera/the
viewer; its huge concentric circularity, a remote eye at its center, dominates
the frame. This brief sequence embodies what might be called the
“myth of the reciprocal gaze.” The Other who gazes back at the gazer in
fact “sees” nothing, since a fi gure imprinted on a single frame of celluloid
cannot be either animate or sensate—except of course in a cartoon, and in a
cartoon-within-a-cartoon.
But were Pablo Penguin to see the one who is seeing him (Donald Duck),
he would arguably be merely mirroring himself. The Antarctic penguin is a
notably “de-culturated” choice, a paradoxical bird if there ever was one: so
terrestrial that he seems to be the antithesis of the avian; so southerly that
he conveys the quintessence of northerliness. The “rare bird” given pride
of place in the fi lm’s order of presentation is thus not in fact “one of them”
but quite transparently “one of us.” The further we travel, the more we stay
at home—or some such paradoxical platitude—seems to be the subtextual
invocation here.
Furthermore, Pablo’s successful colonization of tropical America is rendered
innocent because he comes from an ephemeral “nowhere.” Without
any attachment to terra fi rma, he simply cuts his igloo free from the icepack
when he wants to navigate north to the tropics, and the ice fl oe which anchored
him to his Antarctic community becomes the vehicle for his solitary
migration. Similarly, he lacks the avian “ethno/specifi city” conveyed by
the coloration, symbolic accoutrements, and richly genuine accents of both
Panchito and Joe Carioca. (To his credit, Disney insisted on native voices
for these roles.) Even the frenetic Carmen Miranda-esque “song” of the mischievous
and disruptive aracuan bird, who appears at “random” moments
in parts I and II, connotes a cultural embeddedness of which Pablo is utterly
devoid. Pablo has no voice at all: Sterling “Doc” Holloway, the vibratovoiced
narrator of Peter and the Wolf, is called in to tell his story for him
in voice-over.