Mashup: Oil + Scrooge McDuck

In celebration of my mashup novel, Ahab’s Adventures In Wonderland, currently available on Amazon, I’d like to revisit the mashup art form. You can click on the mashup tag to read previous mashups.

Oil + Scrooge McDuck

Disney Studios is proud to be the sole publisher of Oil!, the classic 1939 novel by Walt Disney. After making Snow White, his scathing indictment of the dwarf-packing industry, Sinclair turned his sights on the early days of the California oil industry in a highly entertaining story featuring a cavalcade of characters including ducks, oil magnets, Hollywood princesses, and a crusading cricket.

This lively and panoramic book, which was recently cited by David Denby in the New Yorker as being Disney’s “most family-friendly” novel, is now the inspiration for the animated feature, There Will Be Blood. It is the long-awaited film from Paul Thomas Anderson, one of the most admired filmmakers working today whose previous films, Boogie Nights and DuckTales the Movie were both multiple Academy Award nominees.

In Oil!, Disney dramatizes the oil boom years through the story of Huey, Louie, and Dewey, the nephews of Scrooge McDuck. McDuck is a Scottish mule driver who struck out to make his fortune in California. His rise has a rags-to-riches quality to it and the nephews idolizes their uncle early in the novel. McDuck’s attempts to educate his nephews about the business provide fascinating insights, for modern readers, into the tools and methods used for oil drilling in the 1920s. Despite McDuck’s efforts, Huey, Louie, and Dewey prove uninterested in continuing their uncle’s legacy, especially in light of the various nefarious strategies oil ducks employ, from bribing local officials to land swindles. One glaring example of this is when their uncle manipulates the Watkins family, unaware their ranch is sitting on oil-rich land, into selling their property to him. The Watkins soon learn their land, instead of being used for a duck hunting retreat as McDuck claimed, will be developed for oil drilling. The episode spoils the nephews’ idealized impression of their uncle and awakens in them a yearning for social justice.

Special thanks to Professor Adam Worth

Check out Decater's new novel, available now at Amazon. Plus, don't forget his earlier books: Ahab's Adventures in Wonderland and Picasso Painted Dinosaurs.