Donald Duck and the noble art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
SHORT CORNER
By Saska Snellman
Donald Duck. He turned 70 last week, and the Finns love him. In no other country, I dare claim, do the people follow the doings of the citizens of Duckburg as eagerly as the Finns do. And the success of the stories is based squarely on Donald himself, by far the most popular character in the Duckburg gallery.
And if you doubt this, how many votes will Mickey Mouse get from the Finns in today’s European Parliament elections? Not many, I assure you. But Donald now...
Clearly Donald Duck taps into something deep in the Finnish character: a rather simple figure, stubborn as a mule, who dreams of heroic acts but ultimately always winds up tripping over his own ingenuity or losing out of sheer lousy godawful luck.
Does this sound familiar? It’s the Finnish ice hockey team to a T. Or the national football squad. Or our trusty Eurovision hopefuls. Or...
When Donald hatched out seven decades ago, Finnish sportsmen could hardly have been described as seeing themselves as born losers. At the Olympics in those days, Finnish distance runners were as crushingly invincible as the Africans are today.
For some bizarre reason, however, Donald has popped up to quack on the Finns’ collective shoulder. Did the damn duck provide those two goals from Anders Carlsson in Moscow back in 1986, when the Swede scored twice in the dying minutes to deny us an ice hockey World Championship bronze medal? Did he summon up Mats Sundin’s repeat performance on the ice in Helsinki in 1991?
How about Lahti, 1997? When the Hungarians got that agonising own-goal equaliser in injury time, in a match that we needed to win to get a play-off spot for the World Cup Finals in France, it all seemed like déjà vu.
And we won’t even go NEAR the business last year. I mean, 5-1 up against Sweden and we go and lose 6-5; when that sort of stuff comes down you can only smile like you do at the travails of doomed Donald.
The poor Finnish coach, Hannu Aravirta, he believed he was the Gladstone Gander character, followed by good luck everywhere he went, but sure enough, by the end he was revealed as the hard-done-by Donald Duck.
The Finns tend to make such a meal out of their setbacks and last-ditch disasters that one begins to get this awful suspicion: what if we actually enjoy the Donald Duck role?
Victories and championship titles are all very well, but can anything hold a candle to a glorious defeat?
I mean to say, what are you supposed to DO in the hour of victory? Drive around town honking your horn and waving a flag out of the window, go bathing in a freezing-cold fountain, and feel really dumb. That’s all very well, but what then?
Now when you get beat, that’s a whole different matter! You can get the video out and go backwards and forwards over the fatal missed tackle that led to the crucial soft goal, you can yell at the family, you can go out for a run up an absurdly steep hill, you can drink warm beer out of a plastic bag in the park, and you can participate in the national debate over why this always, always keeps happening to us.
In many other countries, Mickey Mouse far outscores Donald Duck in popularity. For instance in France, Germany, and Italy, the Disney comic-books are published under the Mickey Mouse name. And the Americans, well they are a born Mickey nation.
Mickey is a winner. He’s a smart, energetic model citizen, who always comes out of his adventures on the positive side. Mickey would never have given Mats Sundin a sight of goal, and with that last-minute corner he’d never have cleared off the line so that the ball hit the prone goalkeeper in the back and trickled into the net. No, he’d have moved the puck smoothly out of harm's way into the centre of the ice, and he’d have made damned sure the corner never got taken by bringing on a tactical substitution.
Mickey would have a room set aside for all his cups and medals. Right now Mickey would be down in Portugal preparing for his opening game in the European Championships.
Boring little rodent. Much better to be Donald. Maybe.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 13.6.2004
SASKA SAARIKOSKI / Helsingin Sanomat
saska.saarikoski@hs.fi
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| 15.6.2004 - THIS WEEK |
 Donald Duck and the noble art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory |
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