Taking the Mickey
Kenneth Anger presents…
My understanding was that the Disney Corporation, AKA Mauschwitz, AKA Duckau, objected to Kenneth Anger’s celebratory short film and were suppressing it — but there it is on YouTube, so here it is here! Thanks to C. Jerry Kutner for pointing me in the right direction.
shadowplay 
May 21, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Disney and its lawyers would have a very hard time sueing Mr. Angerim. To start with he doesn’t apporpriate images form films, only early comic illustrations and Mickey toys from his collection.
He has pointed out on many occasion that the origianl Mickey was quite the upstart prankster and not the sweet and loveable icon he became once Disney achieved mega-success. In fact the wealthier Disney became the more rapidly Mickey vanished, until he was reduced to a mere marker of Disney Inc.
May 22, 2009 at 12:11 am
Funny, I asked him about this very film at the NFT last week!
May 22, 2009 at 12:15 am
Mickey always interested me because he was such a cypher. I did one movie where an artist friend drew some tarot cards for my end credits, but out of fearfulness I didn’t use his splendid Hanged Man, which showed the dangling man’s change falling from his pockets, to be collected by an army of rapacious Mickey Mice.
May 22, 2009 at 9:58 am
Hey David, and all, long time listener, first time caller.
This is one of those rare, happy instances when something I’ve just written in an exam is in anyway useful thereafter. I’ve just done a question on the Maus comics of Art Spiegelman and recall these ernest words from comics theorist (and e-business homonym) Joseph Witek, briefly exhibiting the aggrieved stringency of a steadfastly logical child when discussing Mickey Mouse;
“Mickey Mouse poses a conundrum of animal metaphor; his friend, Goofy, is a dog, but he also owns an appropriately canine pet, Pluto”.
His inner toddler seems particularly annoyed at those instances when “the beast fable uses animal characters to engage an elaborate language of conventional meanings” as “the ‘funny animal’ genre often uses those meanings only to establish relationships among the characters, and the ‘animalness’ of the characters becomes vestigial or drops away entirely”.
He’s right I say, it is false advertising to even call him a mouse. Although, I suppose the fear is that “Mickey Beast Fable” wouldn’t shift as many units in today’s competitive market for childrens’ ward curtains.
May 23, 2009 at 7:11 am
Paul Duane, what a small world, I was sat next to the uploader of this short during the Anger event last week; and when you asked your question, he tapped me on the arm as if vying for unspoken credit, haha.
I believe Anger said that they couldn’t sue him over the title because Disney do not have claim to the words ‘Mouse’ or ‘Heaven’.
May 23, 2009 at 11:39 am
…but they’re working on that. Just soon as they change the copyright laws to give them control of the Mickster ad infinitum, they’ll start working on attaining mastery of the afterlife (henceforward to be known as Disneyland Paradise).
May 23, 2009 at 11:59 pm
hi Seamas, sorry your comment got filed with spam for some reason. You’re safe now.
I would totally watch a cartoon about Mickey Beast Fable. Plus, his ears are nominally discs, but they behave like spheres, appearing circular from every angle, have you ever noticed? Damn dimension-defying vermin.
May 24, 2009 at 1:38 am
It’s funny, I *feel* safer.
As for Mickey’s ears, I don’t think I ever noticed their contra-dimensional aspect. Egyptian art has a similarly shoddy attitude to perspective, that insistence on profile, from all angles. You can engineer a pyramid but you can’t draw a Y-cube?
What always got me about Mickey and his Disney kin was their inability to walk remotely like normal people. He has the bandy gait of someone trying to appear cool while making their way to the bar at a reggae gig. As Steamboat Willie he’s practically bogling into that steering wheel.
No worries about the spam thing, if you want to make it up I could tell you all about an EXCITING BUSINESS PROPOSITION that I have for you. You see, good sir, I represent a vastly wealthy king here in Burkina Faso…
May 26, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Well, the hieroglyph people have been positioned like that to show each body part from it’s most recognisable angle: the head is clearer in profile (you can’t see what a nose IS from the front) whereas you need a frontal view of the hands to see all the fingers, etc. It’s unreal but quite logical.
Mickey’s ears are just lazy!
That last comment is probably what got you exiled to spam again!