Changing cultural values - Richie Rich & Scrooge McDuck

Images courtesy of the internet (and 'shopped by me)

Recently global market woes, wealth, poverty, wealth discrepancy and societal values have been key topics of conversation in our house. I forget what particularly brought Richie Rich and Scrooge McDuck to mind but it had something to do with how values have changed in the space of 50 years.

I remember loving comics as a kid and I remember the characters as all having their own distinct “flavour” – good characterisation, I guess. There were a few characters that didn’t do it for me, some that I loved and some that I didn’t like at. I always recall Richie Rich and Scrooge McDuck in a very particular way. To me, Scrooge was mean, nasty, miserly and downright sneaky – he was not a likeable character. His money grubbing ways were just too over the top. Yes, he’d risen from humble roots but he was “nouveau riche” of the worst kind. Richie Rich on the other hand was, for me, just plain pathetic. Here was a kid who had everything and was just so “nice” - far too nice, and always so desperate to have friends and to be accepted. And the reason for his desperation was because his wealth put him out of everyone else’s league. It’s ironic that his two closest pals, Pee Wee and Freckles were seriously poor kids and his girlfriend, Gloria, always refused his luxury gifts. As I recall, most of my friends weren’t too keen on Scrooge or Richie either. Both characters were, in their own right, just not “nice”, unlikeable in their own ways. Although Richie wasn’t a “bad” guy, in my book, Scrooge was.

Now, zoom forward 50 years and consider where Scrooge and Richie would be today, how they might be perceived in a world where greed and wealth have become the norm.
First off, I imagine that with all his money, Richie would have no problems finding friends. For one thing, there’d be a hundred willing hangers on, only to glad to be noticed by him. For another, he wouldn’t be the only seriously rich kid around. In fact, he’d probably hang out with Paris, Hannah and the rest of the seriously rich kids. Richie’s world would be completely different – and Richie would be no different from the rest. In fact, in the Richie Rich movie starring Macauley Culkin, Richie is overindulged and has few troubles, he spends most of his time oohing over the junk his money can buy and he wins friends by wowing them with his toys. By the 90s, when the film was made, money bought love. A far cry from the Richie of fifty odd years ago.

Then take Scrooge – as a businessman he resorted to aggressive tactics and deception – and we didn’t like him one bit for it. He manipulated people and events for his own ends, had a nasty temper and didn’t hesitate to use violence against those who provoked his anger. He even exploited his own nephews – Huey, Dewey and Louis, and Donald Duck - to accumulate his fortune. And most of us thought he was a rotter – Ebenezer Scrooge all over again. His creator would no doubt argue that he did have morals but that didn’t really make him any more likeable.

Again, zoon forward 50 years and Scrooge McDuck could be anyone of the in-crowd amongst whom wheeling and dealing and screwing your opponent has become the norm. Today, Scrooge would fit right him with all the other greedy and acquisitive fatcats. He’d be the guy that everyone had on their party list. He’d be famous and be on the Forbes 500 list. Scrooge, in today’s world, becomes one of the main guys.

It’s ironic to note that Scrooge today is more popular than ever, while Richie Rich had to be adapted to make him even vaguely appealing to today’s audiences. Now that should tell you something.

It begs some serious questions though; it’s taken a mere fifty years for our values to change so substantially, for greed and excessive wealth to become an acceptable and desirable norm. Look, for example, at the madness that is modern Dubai, look at the lifestyles of the rich and famous – and the reasons, moreover, for that wealth and fame. None of them want for friends like Richie did, no one minds their piles and piles of filthy lucre like we did with Scrooge.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not about me being a have not and banging on about the haves. I’ve been blessed to lead a comfortable life but that doesn’t make me unaware and more than a little concerned about the horrible and increasing discrepancy between rich and poor, and values which drive the rich to profit at the expense of the poor. I’m struck that somewhere along the way we’ve gone badly wrong and have seriously lost the plot of what it is to be human. As I said before, the global economic shakedown is, to my mind, a wake up call – or at least, it should be.

And all of that leads me nicely to reminding you that Wednesday the 15th of October is Blog Action Day and the topic this year is poverty. It’s not too late to register and join in, if you haven’t already done so!

Stream of consciousness ramble – Culture and Belonging

It’s as hot as hell here and I think my brain has turned to mush, or just melted. In view of the fact that thinking is presently beyond me and my ISP is broken yet again, I’m tunneling out briefly and resorting to something I scribbled a couple of days ago - and sharing some cooling pool reflection shots, which I know those of you in the cold, wet and snow probably really don’t need to see right now.

The previous post on The Material Culture has caused me to ponder a somewhat related concept, prompted by D’s remark that it must be quite fun to have blog visiting to do. My response was to say that I felt that blogosphere was a community to which one belonged and within that community - that culture of blogging - were individual communities of writers, photographers, cooks, gardeners, knitters, dog lovers, scientists, lawyers etc etc. Tribes, I suppose one might call them. And it struck me then, thinking of what I’d posted on the new culture of materialism that blogging goes perhaps, in some way, to also make up for the other crumbling “old” cultures and structures. Of course, there’s no doubt that it’s unquestionably a part of the globalization trend. If I think of those who visit here - there are Americans, Brits, French, Welsh, Irish, Indian, Australians, Canadians and a host of others – although once very separate, in blogosphere we find ourselves very much together, sharing thoughts and ideas, finding ourselves in agreement – and occasionally in conflict - but all reaching out to one another - one being to another, linked through cyberspace. And, as G&G from It Must Be The Vapors pointed out, beyond, for now, the grasp of government.

His comment, which I hope he doesn’t mind me quoting said:

“The interweb blogosphere is a perfect working model of how relationships across the globe serve the same function as tribes, enterprises, and self sustaining trade agreements with no need of government regulation whatsoever. We are much better than governments gives us freedom to be. Not being bound by physical location nullifies the ideas of nations and borders except for the unique cultural contributions we all bring.”

So perhaps blogosphere and cyberspace also go some way to create a new culture where the old cultures are crumbling. Perhaps blogging is another cultural construct, much like shopping – but, perhaps a considerably more meaningful one.

For me, this creation of new cultural constructs is quite pertinent since I have little concept of nationality, of what it is to be a South African. My heritage is central and northern European. My education was very much in the English/British mold. I have never felt a sense of belonging here – it’s just where I am. As such the nationality by which many define themselves has never really had much of a claim on me. Likewise, I belong to no religious grouping – been there, done that and decided to focus on a far broader spirituality than one defined by a particular doctrine and dogma. Similarly, as an only-child, family has little significance so again, it’s not something I feel I belong to. I consider myself, ultimately, I suppose, to be a citizen of the world – whatever that might be, and yet, I also don’t subscribe to the Material Culture.

All this has often left me wondering about belonging and where I belong - and yet, at the same time, I don’t feel like I don’t belong. I suspect, perhaps that being part of other communities, like blogosphere, a community of like-minded thinkers and a community of writers, is what does it. And of course, I also happen to know that I am part of a very different community, a far greater one that goes beyond the Earthly realm and I think that, more than anything else, gives rise to a tremendous sense of being and belonging - and of being interconnected.

How about you? How are you impacted by culture and community? How much do you belong, need to belong? Is blogosphere a cultural concept or a “tribe” for you?


And if none this post makes any sense, you can safely assume my brain has fried, melted and leaked out all over my desk. Now will someone please send some snow! What do you mean it will melt in the post? Oh well, best I go and through myself in the pool then.

The Material Culture

Well, the ISP has been buggering about something terrible these last few days making access to the blogosphere nigh well impossible. A “major international failure” was how D described it. Anyway, before the lines all crashed down, I was able to get to Baino’s site and to this post on seasonal sales and rank consumerism which really struck me. (Please do read it to put my post into better context.) Just what is it, I wondered, that has made the world so increasingly materialistic?

Although the consumer culture is true of most places today, I thought specifically of South Africa because it’s where I am and it’s a place where everyone noticeably suffers from an incredibly bad dose of “Gotta Have”. Do bear in mind though that most here live well below the poverty line, that the vast majority struggle to put food on the table and that unemployment is high. One of the worries at this time of year is how many school leavers will pass their final year – not because there’s a worry that many will fail – but that the pass rate will be too high and there is little hope of employment for most of these children. But here’s the thing, everyone, rich and poor, have to “Have”. Interest rates are running high as it is, inflation is looking skywards and the government consistently urges low or no spending. But do the general populace heed any of this? Not a chance – they’re out there spending and buying like there is no tomorrow - buying on credit, running up debts with little or no concept of the true cost. I asked a woman I know how, when she had to borrow money for school fees and had defaulted on her electricity and municipal payments, she could even think of buying a new TV, a microwave, a ceiling fan and a computer. She said it was important to have these things or others thought less of you, to have them meant you had “arrived”. And if you had them and someone else didn’t then you were better than them. The confusion of values struck me forcibly. And perhaps I should add that this woman lives in a tin shanty in what was originally a squatter camp. Her debts are not insignificant and she regularly receives “red letters” from various credit agencies but this doesn’t seem to trouble her – so long as she “Has”, she’s fine. Yet hers is not an isolated case, and, more curiously, the “condition” is not isolated to only the impoverished. South Africa, like so many places is caught up in the mayhem of consumer greed. Gotta Have is the new culture, the new means of defining who one is.

And see, here’s the thing, in pondering the Rise of Stuff: Stuff - materialism - has become the new culture, the new religion, the new family and value system – the thing that defines us - in a world that has seen the increasing demise of the role of the nation state. And along with the watering down of nationality through globalization, there has also been a whittling away of religious influence and the break up of the family unit – as a result of both the former. In South Africa this break down is felt particularly acutely.

Apartheid saw to the destruction of the family when men were forced away from the rural areas to work on the mines, leaving women, children and old folks at home. Traditional family values were corrupted and families were scattered. In a similar way, these same people have been propelled from separate “tribes” (Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Venda, Tswana etc) into homogeneous South Africans at an incredible speed. They’ve also shot from rural lifestyles into cities (in the constant search for employment – so they can buy stuff) and, increasingly, the global village. They’ve gone from thatched mud huts to New York skyscrapers and the “glamourous life of plenty” through the medium of television and Hollywood movies. They’ve gone from donkey cart to jets in a few short years. Traditional religions have likewise given way first to Western religions and then the erosion of those Western religions. But it’s not just the impoverished masses who are affected, everyone is. The guy storming along the motorway in his brand new BMW 6 series or his Bentley is not really that much different. He too clings to Status as a means of defining who he is. See, where he used to business in Cape Town and perhaps Johannesburg, he now does business in Hong Kong, London and New York. Where his family used to be all around him, he now has kids in Sydney, Los Angeles, Toronto and London. Where he used to have just one family unit he now has three scattered families courtesy of his three wives. Where Church gave him direction he now thinks it’s a load of old cobblers. And so, Materialism and Fun have become his culture, his religion, his family and his value system – and, as such, his means of defining who he is.

The reality is we are “developing” so fast that we have spiraled out of control and the things that held us together, the old values, have flown out the window as we whizz through time and space attempting to (re)define ourselves. It seems that we are not yet sufficiently evolved to get along without needing to define ourselves - and so enters the Culture of Materialism. We are our stuff, and we are defined, made meaningful, by the amount and kind of stuff we own. And of course those who don’t fit the box, who do not conform, are the heathens – because they too, by definition, must be defined and boxed in some way by all those others.