God save Donald Duck, Vaudeville and Variety

May 15, 2013 8:15 AM

The Kinks' The Village Green Preservation Society is a song full of references to British culture and tradition. How exactly did Donald Duck end up being referenced?
posted by steinwald to Media & Arts (11 answers total)

Well, it doesn't HAVE to be consistent in ONLY mentioning British culture. The reference to Donald Duck in that song has always, to me, fit in neatly with the other signifiers of "traditional" or "old-fashioned" ways -- stuff that your parents, or your parents' parents, enjoyed, British or otherwise.

Village greens themselves are hardly peculiar to England!
posted by Dr. Wu at 8:19 AM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Donald Duck and Disney in general are fairly ubiquitous. I met a guy from Sweden who told me that one of the most popular television specials on Christmas Day in Sweden is a Disney TV special from 1958.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:21 AM on May 15, 2013 [2 favorites]

Thanks to work web filters I can't find a citation at the moment, but Donald Duck comics are very popular in Europe -- much more popular than they are in the USA. So if the English papers were publishing them from the 40s and still publishing them in the late 60s, I can see how he would make it into the song.
posted by kimberussell at 8:31 AM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Hmm. Certainly Donald Duck is very popular in Sweden and Finland; not so much in the UK, in my experience. Wikipedia agrees, sort of. In Finland you'll still see him on every news-stand, but I haven't noticed much of a following outside the Nordic countries and Germany. I do dimly remember that Disney Magazine might have been on sale somewhere during my 1980s UK childhood, but Dandy and Beano was where is was at, comic-wise (see the "Desperate Dan" reference in the song). Maybe things were different in the 60s, but even if the Duck was popular at the time it's hard to imagine him being classed with Sherlock Holmes, china cups, and Tudor houses.

In short, as a Brit, I think it sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the song, but then I'm a bit younger than the Kinks.

But wait! I've just found this old interview with Ray Davies, wherein he explains:

Somebody told me that I preserve things, and I like village greens and preservation society. The title track is the national anthem of the album, and I like Donald Duck, Desperate Dan, draught beer.

So perhaps it's more of a personal list than a carefully-constructed evocation of twee Englishness, and it just happens that most of the things he liked were twee and English. And/or Donald Duck is less popular now in the UK than he was half a century ago.
posted by pont at 8:54 AM on May 15, 2013 [2 favorites]

pont has it - it's personal, although Donald Duck is obviously a shared pop culture icon, and doesn't say anything about being English in general. I seem to recall Ray Davies has briefly alluded to it in an interview, saying he just likes these things and made a simple list. This might be intentionally underplaying his skills at lyric writing, and he simply didn't want to discuss or explain it further.

I think it reflects his sense of humor, personally.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:50 AM on May 15, 2013

The song is full of references to nostalgic things; it's just that the Kinks happen to British, and nostalgia tends to be specific. Vaudeville is American, for another one. If the song were about Englishness, he probably would have said music hall.
posted by thetortoise at 9:52 AM on May 15, 2013

(should be "happen to BE British" above, sigh...)
posted by thetortoise at 10:00 AM on May 15, 2013

For what it's worth, Donald Duck was massive in Yugoslavia and much of communist Europe, and remains so . . . Mickey not so much. Donald was banned once during the Tito era (before my time; I'm not sure why other than something about him being a negative influence) and fell victim to the trade embargo in the 90s, to the dismay of kids in Croatia and Serbia who could not get fresh comics.

In Hungary in the 70s and 80s, there was a gum that came with little Donald Duck comics that everyone traded (according to a nostalgic magazine article I read there; confirmed by friends), which was a true craze for quite some time. There is a Hungarian slang term, "donaldkacsázás," which means something like "Donald Duck-ing," meaning to go around with only a shirt on, no pants or underwear.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 12:58 PM on May 15, 2013 [4 favorites]

Could not resist posting Kate Rusbys version.
Donald Duck in a yorkshire accent. Irresistable.
posted by jan murray at 3:38 PM on May 15, 2013 [2 favorites]

Don't overlook the possibility that they just liked the way it sounded — the consonance of the repeated "d"s and hard beat of the "uck" sound.
posted by benito.strauss at 3:52 PM on May 15, 2013

Misheard "Donald Duck" as "Dumbledore" in Kate Rusby's version and didn't figure it out until I went back to listen to The Kinks version!! To me, Dumbledore just fit better with the theme of the song... :)
posted by kuppajava at 7:45 AM on May 16, 2013