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Mickey Mouse becomes independent.
The most famous mouse in history (and that includes Pérez and his Chilean, Mexican, and Peruvian colleague El Ratón de los Dientes) will cease to be under the administrative tutelage of Disney on January 1, 2024. At that time,
Mickey will leave of being owned by the multinational that created it
and, after 95 years, it will be free.
What happens from then on with Mickey will be the subject of scandal.
Not so much because of what other creators do with him, since Disney will retain considerable control over Mickey, but because this
black rodent with red pants and huge shoes
is one of the icons of world culture.
So no matter where Mickey goes, he's always going to be in the spotlight.
Disney has been successful in extending its control over Mickey.
US legislation prior to 1928 established only 28 years of intellectual property on this type of creation, but the company managed to extend that period twice for Mickey.
Although it is assumed that he will try again now
, his chances of success are nil.
The loss of control over Mickey also comes at a key moment for Disney.
For one thing, the company has unprecedented leadership in Hollywood.
Its
streaming
division , Disney+,
is growing faster than expected
.
But Disney has immersed itself in America's "culture wars," and is paying a price for it.
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For American conservatives, the company is the quintessential
woke
company trying to change
the moral framework
of society.
Disney opposed the Florida law that prohibits sex education for those under the age of nine.
The response of the governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump's rival for the Republican candidacy in 2024, has been to threaten to remove
the extravagant tax aid that Disney has in the city of Orlando
, the headquarters of its mega-amusement park Disney World.
Meanwhile, the animated film
Lightyears
, which has just been released, has been banned in a dozen Muslim countries because two women kiss in it.
So, starting January 1, 2024, will we see videos on YouTube in which, with Mickey in the background, someone says that the mouse has "left home" because
"his house" is not what it was
?
It's possible.
Although that is a very slippery legal ground.
Last January,
Winnie the Pooh and most of its accompanying characters ceased to be owned by Disney
.
Since then, the bear, created in 1926 by AA Milne and EH Shephard, and purchased in 1961 by Disney, has been the subject of
a relatively well-intentioned mockery
on YouTube, where a short video is available in which the charming Winnie discovers to her horror what you have to pay to use the mobile.
'Willy and the steamboat' (1928).
It sounds innocent.
But companies like Disney are famous for the tight control of their creations, and it is to be expected that the joke, which was posted just 48 hours after the copyright of the drawing expired, did not sit well with the Burbank-based giant. , outside of Los Angeles.
Although more nerves must have caused there the next premiere of the
horror film
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
.
That film can be a reason not only for controversy, but also for
denunciation
.
Because, although it does not have absolute control over the product, Disney does maintain image rights over Winnie the Pooh and the other characters of that animal dynasty, such as Tigger or Piglet.
That, according to intellectual property rights experts consulted by
The Guardian
newspaper , means that the director of that film, Rhys Waterfield,
has to walk a fine line
: Disney characters cannot perform acts that could cause the public to establish any type of partnership with Disney.
Imagining Winnie the Pooh and Tigger as gory-toned serial killers
is
not what one would consider traditional activity for such lovable creatures.
But in the case of Mickey, the limitation will probably be even stricter, because
the multinational has been using the big-eared mouse practically as its mascot -or even its logo- for decades
, and it is the center of its universe in an informal way for almost a century.
Because Mickey's story is Disney's story.
It is also, of course, a much less friendly story than the one that the creator of the company marked in the collective memory.
First things first:
Mickey was not the creation of Walt Disney
.
It is true that he created the draft, but the one who gave it shape and was in charge of directing the first animations was his collaborator
Deél Ub Iwerks
.
Mickey's official history hardly remembers Iwerks, in large part because, just two years after creating the character, he left the company, fed up with Disney's dictatorial control over all aspects of the artistic process and, also, that the owner of the company would have made it disappear from the collective memory.
Without Iwerks, Mickey would have been nothing more than a doodle.
Disgruntled, the cartoonist launched his own study
of him.
But he crashed, and a decade later he returned to Disney, where he continued to work for the rest of his life.
By then, the Walt Disney Company was already an established corporate giant, and its founder
the quintessential American Dream
.
A dream that began with the rodent steering a ship down the Mississippi River.
As Walt Disney himself said in 1957: "The only thing I hope is that we do not lose sight of one thing: that it all started with a mouse."
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