It all started with a mouse. For real!
Most people know the story. Walt Disney and his lead animator, Ub Iwerks created Mickey to replace Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a character created by Disney, but owned by Universal. In 1928, Mickey was born in the minds of Disney and Iwerks in a garage and, in 1928, he made his public debut (There was a short called Plane Crazy, but it wasn’t distributed) in Steamboat Willie, one of the earliest sync-sound cartoons. From there, Mickey Mouse became one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood.
What many people may be missing is how Mickey’s journey informed the evolution of the Walt Disney Brand. The Disney + documentary, Mickey: The Story of a Mouse, fills you in on every step from an image in a mind to one of the only true icons in entertainment.
Mickey Mouse cartoons were unlike most cartoons of the time because he was not a typically heroic character nor did he have many jokes to tell. The humour and the joy of his entire being is in his faults. He messed up, he got angry, but the cartoon always ended with him achieving his goals. He personified perseverance in the face of imperfection and, because of that, Mickey Mouse was a particular inspiration in animation of that time.
How three circles turned into a legendary character stretches beyond the shorts that you saw on the screen. His voice, originally done by Walt Disney himself, turned him into a meek character; a little nervous and vulnerable. The simplicity of his design allowed for the movement to take a front seat in the early shorts.
“No matter who you vote for or who you pray to, you are all in line to see Mickey Mouse.”
The movie explores his appearances beyond the shorts, as well. Being a part of 1940s instructional videos and propaganda for the war effort and even Mickey’s role in the counterculture movement in the 60s and 70s.
The documentary doesn’t shy away from the imperfections in Mickey that, frankly, didn’t age well. Footage of Mickey in blackface, seeing him sexually aggressive and, for lack of a better term, culturally insensitive in a way that doesn’t look good on one of the most family-friendly faces in entertainment history.
They also dive into one of the aspects of the Walt Disney Corporation that often makes them unpopular; their litigious protection of the Mickey Mouse Image. The company, admittedly, did not always handle those actions well, once even forcing a daycare to remove images of Mickey and Friends from their walls, but on the other side, stopping a company from flat-out drawing their own version of Mickey and Minnie to get people to buy their car. The doc adds a lot of context to their philosophy, particularly pointing to Disney’s loss of Oswald as a reason for their tight grip on Disney’s intellectual property.
Mickey Mouse, in many ways, devolved into a background character in the cast of characters in a company where he was literally the face. He was watered down by early parents complaining about many of the Mouse’s taboos (most being quite tame for today’s standards). He became less of a leading man and more of a logo and the veritable Walmart greeter at the entrance of their parks. The film looks at the company’s journey to return him back to his original form through the creation of new shorts, allowing him to be the star of his own stories again.
But if you never knew these things or never saw the old cartoons outside of a few clips, what is Mickey Mouse to you? To me, he is a symbol. He’s a symbol of childhood, innocence and the existence of magic in a very real way. I’ve stood hand in hand with my daughter at the foot of main street as I watched her take it all in for the first time and, while I had been there many times myself, it never felt anything but new. It’s a reinvigoration of the spirit.
No matter who you vote for or who you pray to, you are all in line to see Mickey Mouse. You can feel the magic in every movie, park and cruise ship, all of which with hidden Mickeys of their own, imbibing them with their own energy that makes them one of the most successful entertainment companies in the history of the planet… and it all started with a mouse.
Mickey: The Story of a Mouse premiers on November 18 on Disney +
