BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Mafalda, a precocious bushy-haired girl with the insatiable drive to question everything, will on Wednesday make the jump to television streaming in a Disney+ and Star+ docuseries that will examine the beloved Argentine comic strip through a feminist lens.
Joaquin Salvador Lavado, known as “Quino”, launched the comic six decades ago, initially as a failed covert advertising campaign for electrical appliances.
Mafalda, however, evolved into something else, questioning everything from nuclear power to overpopulation and capitalism to dictatorship, with kindness and a razor wit disguised as childish ingenuity.
“Quino built the story with very human characters through the eyes of children, who say terrible barbarities with no filter,” series director Lorena Munoz told Reuters.
“He constructs meanings, indictments and declarations of principle through humor. I think it’s a fantastic way of sharing knowledge and entertainment.”
The two-hour docuseries, “Rereading: Mafalda”, will reexamine the series through a feminist lens and its historical context, especially its criticism of the 1960s military dictatorship of Juan Carlos Ongania.
With interviews from cartoonists and international actors, it will revisit the first sketches and inspirations and analyze some of the series’ most loved characters, such as Mafalda’s friends Susanita, Felipe, Libertad and Manolito.
The Mafalda comics have been published in 28 languages and are sold worldwide. Work on the series was paused during the pandemic but was nominated ahead of its commercial release for best documentary at this year’s Canneseries Festival.
“Being so local to Buenos Aires, I find it impressive that it has reached all parts in the world, that even in Japan people identify with the characters and what they say,” Munoz said.
Munoz, who lives just a couple of blocks from where Quino lived and created Mafalda, said the character has accompanied her since she was very young, just as she did her parents, her siblings and her children.
“This is a new reading,” she said. “It is a way for the work to keep spreading to new people.”
(Reporting by Candelaria Grimberg; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
