Monday, November 5, 2012

Mickey , the Nasserite

Mickey Mouse has been always an icon of Pure American Capitalism since Walk Disney was introduced to the world in 1928 but only in Egypt, we managed to make him Nasserite Socialist !!
Mickey mourns Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970
Mickey cries for Nasser


Here is the cover of Mickey Magazine in Egypt on 5 November 1970 mourning the 40th Day after the death* of late President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Mickey Magazine was then published by Dar El Halil which was nationalized in 1961 and had been following the state since then. 
To be honest as a reader of the famous comic magazine, this was the first time I discover that it was reflecting social and political issues to kids in this way.
Now the magazine is being published by Nahdet Misr, a privately owned publishing house after Dar El Halil sadly could not pay the license fees to Disney as it refused to raise its price. I miss the old Dar El Halil’s Mickey Magazine, to be honest but Nahdet Misr did a great job of paying respect to the old Dar El Halil and its founders.
By the way, did you know famous Mahmoud Salem, the Godfather of the Egyptian pulp fiction adventure genre in literature started to write for children and teens in Mickey Magazine !?
*The 40th Day after death is an old Egyptian social tradition of memorial after the death of the deceased where the family of the deceased meets and prays for him.

2 comments:

  1. Dear Z.,

    Walk Disney -> Walt Disney
    Dar El Halil -> Dar El Hilal

    MaM

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cute . Did you know (little known fact ) that Walt Disney never wanted to be put into the ground or cremated?
    He was one of the first to be frozen, perhaps hoping science can bring him back into a new Walt Disney, to pick up where he left off at Disneyland. Having fun with Minnie & Mickey & Goofy.

    (correction) turns out to be just another urban myth, a rumor:
    from Wikipedia: " Although the rumor is acknowledged as false by most historians, Robert Mosley (in Disney’s World (1986)) and Marc Eliot (in Walt Disney – Hollywood’s Dark Prince (1993)) argue that Disney may have known of cryonics and may have had an interest in the science. However his daughter Diane wrote in 1972, "There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that my father, Walt Disney, wished to be frozen. I doubt that my father had ever heard of cryonics."

    ReplyDelete

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