Happy birthday Mickey - cultural icons aren't created every day:
- Mickey Mouse arrived on the world's cultural stage 75 years ago Tuesday as a scrawny but buoyant black-and-white product of the Jazz Age.
He was a symbol of American pluck in his screen debut, "Steamboat Willie," on Nov. 18, 1928. The film at New York's Colony Theatre showed an irreverent rodent who takes Captain Pete's steamboat on a joyride and woos Minnie Mouse by making music on the bodies of various farm animals.
The years have dulled Mickey's personality, a result of him becoming the corporate face of a multibillion-dollar entertainment empire. In the process, Mickey also has become a cultural Rorschach test -a symbol of American optimism, resourcefulness and energy or an icon of cultural commodification and corporate imperialism.
"There are a number of qualities Mickey represents on which people like to stick their particular view of the world," said Janet Wasko, a University of Oregon professor and author of "Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy."
For Roy E. Disney, whose uncle, Walt Disney, created the character, Mickey Mouse is "'this friendly little guy,' which were Walt's words for describing him."
For Penn State professor Henry Giroux, however, Mickey Mouse represents the vast reach of American cultural power, symbolizing a company that has turned childhood into a function of consumerism as children feel obligated to purchase the latest "Finding Nemo" DVD or Mickey Mouse watch.
"Mickey Mouse offers up a ... symbol of innocence while hiding the role it plays in commodifying children's dreams and extending the logic of the market into all aspects of their lives," said Giroux, author of "The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence," a cultural critique of the company.
...."Mickey Mouse speaks an international language," Sklar said. "When I go to Tokyo and see how kids react to Mickey Mouse the same way they do in Paris. It's reassuring that there are some things that cross international boundaries."
Article comments
1 - Jim Carruthers
Free the Mouse!
It isn't the belief in cultural imperialism I have a problem with, it's the practise. Believe what you want.
Have you read Ariel Dorfman's "How to Read Donald Duck"? As a Chilean who faced US political imperialism first hand with the overthrow of a democratic government and the installation of a murderous dictator, he is somewhat qualified to comment on some cartoons.
From The Empire's Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds
The best example of Disney's cultural imperialism, is that they remove chunks of the public domain from around the world and give them a life copyright sentence in the United States (Pinocchio, Snow White, Cinderella, The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, and so son).
2 - Al Barger
I can't defend their abuses of law for extending copyrights, but I will otherwise largely defend Disney. People are buying buttloads of the Finding Nemo dvd because it is a really outstanding movie, not because there's a mouse with a gun at their back.
3 - Eric Olsen
AS I stated above, I hate the hypocritical extension of copyright law, which in Disney's case as Jim rightfully states, means the swallowing of previously existing public domain characters and preventing anyone else from using them. This is foul.
But this is completely separate from the quality of their products, which is remarkably high over time, and from the desirability of those products in the world marketplace. If people like the, they like them - "cultural imperialism" is a sham concept.
4 - Jim Carruthers
Actually, Al, "Finding Nemo" is a Pixar film (distributed by Disney). Pixar (headed by Steve Jobs) has soundly trounced Disney at their own game.
I just got the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, and one of the mottos of "Termite Terrace" where the Warner's animators worked was "Don't be like Disney". For the most part I haven't really liked Disney cartoons, too cutsy, infantile and straining to prosyltize a mythic USA which may be conforting to it's citizens, but is smothering to others.
And it is called marketing, you don't force people to consume, you entice them, you flim-flam them, you sell the sizzle not the steak, you fleece the rubes, you give them a man eating chicken.
5 - Al Barger
Flim-flam and sizzle might make A sale, but for repeat business over many decades, you have to have a good product.
Whoever exactly was hired to do it, Nemo is a Disney product ultimately, and has much more a (in the best sense of the phrase) touchy-feely Disney tone than anything to do with Looney Tunes.
6 - Jim Carruthers
Good grief, Al, Pixar is a studio, they create their own movies from start to finish (Toy Story, TS2, Bug's Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo). They have a contract (like many other studios) with Disney to distribute the finished product. Disney has nothing to do with the creation of the movies, they just distribute them.
Disney is in competition with Pixar, and the contract is coming up for renewal. Pixar has Disney over a barrel because all of the recent Disney productions have come up way short. And Pixar are negotiating to take their next movie (The Incredibles) to the highest bidder unless Disney picks up the option.
If distribution is all that counts to make a product Disney, what are you going to do with David Lynch's "The Straight Story"? Distributed by Disney, but if you think David Lynch is Disney, then you're just being willfully obtuse.
Given the concentration of media ownership and the convoluted intertwinings, it is impossible to say who owns or creates what.
7 - Eric Olsen
Yes, yes, Pixar is a separate studio Disney had the good sense and taste to hook up with. This doesn't change anything about the other 70 years of great stuff from Snow White to The Little Mermaid. They've had their ups and downs like any creative entity, but the cream is as good as any other set of cream in existence. That's why Disney is as popular as it is, marketing is only delivery.
8 - Jim Carruthers
One of the keys to Disney's success and longevity is their market is primarily children, which means they have a constantly renewing and expanding market. They can sell the same item over and over to a new audience.
That is why Disney restricts the distribution of their core properties. Pre-VCR, this meant releasing their movies theatrically every 7 years.
A similar approach is seen in their marketing of the theme parks. Now they are marketing to parents with a nostalgia hook, bring your kids, and relive your childhood.
It isn't just Walt who's frozen in time.
9 - Evan
well um if there is a House of Mouse there should also be a House of Bunny and when i say bunny i mean Bugs Bunny who is kind of like Mickey Mouse