Huey, Dewey, Louie, and a Magyar PM’s Demise
While touring Budapest during the Balkan Explorer Tour via Expat Explore in 2023, the free day coincided with Philippine Independence Day – also MY 34th BIRTHDAY. Being a Disney fan myself, the city’s sights brought up DuckTales.
And I do mean the original 1987-1990 run.
Photo taken 6/12/2023.
So what does a Disney animated series have to do with Budapest – or rather, the whole country of Hungary? Ask any resident who was between 3-12 years old and living in said country on December 12, 1993, and they’d likely tell you that something somber interrupted an episode of it.
Picture if you will being a kid watching Disney Sunday, the equivalent of America’s The Disney Afternoon in a post-Cold War Hungary (or a few other European countries) on that day. The theme song plays as normal.
“It will never leave,” said Doug Walker, the Nostalgia Critic. “it will never leave. It's like an addiction. You think you're over it. You think, “I only know a few lyrics of the song…’”
17 seconds · Clipped by True Freedom Believers On the Move! · Original video "Top 11 Catchiest Nostalgic Theme Songs - Nostalgia Critic" by
“Life is like a hurricane Here in Duckburg Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes It’s a Duck blur Might solve a mystery Or rewrite history." “DuckTales, woohoo! Every day that I've been making DuckTales, woohoo! Tales so daring, do-bad and good Luck tales.” “D-d-d-danger lurks behind you There’s a stranger out behind you Gonna find you What to do?” “JUST GRAB ONTO SOME DUCKTALES!” “WOOHOO!“
“I mean once you hear it once, it will never, ever go away. And you wanna know what the creepy thing is? I think this show stayed on the air strictly because of the theme song! I mean think about it, what do you actually remember about this show?”
Many a Magyar ‘90s kid’s disturbingly thorough answer came to a head during Uncle Scrooge’s breakfast conniption in the Catch as Cash Can story arc episode, “A Whale of a Bad Time.” He was dismayed and enraged when he lost half of his fortune via the boat containing it being eaten by a sea monster. As Huey, Dewey, and Louie restrained him, every TV screen in every Magyar household open to DuckTales desaturated, changed to static briefly, and went black for 15 minutes.
The Magyar Televízió logo appeared in a gloomy grayscale, accompanied by a track of the 3rd movement of Fredric Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in B♭ minor, Op. 35. It signified to Magyars of all ages – even and especially the perplexed ‘90s kids trying to make sense of whatever abruptly interrupted their DuckTales fix – that someone very important had died.
That someone very important was József Antall, the first democratically elected prime minister.
Shortly after his inauguration in May 1990, Antall was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He underwent surgery that October, with him having an interview on the response to the taxi blockade in ihis sleepwear. His cancer recurred in May 1991.
Antall died in his sleep due to complications on December 12, 1993. Magyar adults and well-informed teens who knew and loved him were bereft of a strong leader in Hungary’s post-communist history, whereas befuddled kids wondered why the TV cared more of about a prime minister’s death over a Disney animated series.
Those children who grew up back then were dubbed the “DuckTales Generation.”
“I wanted to switch channels to see if there was another cartoon,” recalled one Magyar adult, “but my parents wanted to watch M1 because – unlike me – they knew who PM Antall was and why the news of his death was important.”
“As a result of the shock, I rushed to the bathroom,” recalled another, “but I could barely tell what had happened all the way through. My mom cried to my dad, ‘Antall is dead!’ And then they looked at me, over my head. The children watching DuckTales at the time experienced a minor trauma as they were torn out of the safe world of Disney magic – and the unknown, incomprehensible blackness came.”
“Chopin's funeral march and the deep blackness cast a pall over the country for just a couple of minutes.”
“I called my parents, ‘Dad, I think (Antall) had died,’” recalled the owner of conservative blog Meanwhile in Budapest.
The death announcement of Antall wasn’t the only kids’ show interruption in history. On June 2, 2020, Viacom-owned TV channels (including Nickelodeon) around the world interrupted TV shows with an 8:46 PSA.
The white text, “I Can’t Breathe,” faded in and out to the cadence of a sound effect of a human breathing. The duration matched the one in which Derek Chauvin held his knee down on George Floyd’s neck till he suffocated. Either a Color of Change text number or the Amnesty International website (depending on country) appeared alongside it.
The PSA scared some kids, which lead some of their parents to rant about it on the Viacom channels’ social media accounts, some with some political rebukes.
But whichever their political views, most Magyar children who grew up when a death of a beloved dignitary interrupted a Disney TV show in the ‘90s knew that their moment was a blindingly brighter lightbulb memory. Even a traveling exhibit by Magyar artists on the childhood children in Hungary spent between the late ‘80s and noughties was APTLY named after that episode of which doleful breaking news interrupted it.
As Walt Disney said, “Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality.”
Simply put, life HAS BEEN like a hurricane, anywhere in the world, whether kids and parents like it or not.
Especially in early ‘90s Hungary.
Photo taken 6/12/2023.
