Response: After All, It Brought Forth A Mouse
It's yet another tragic episode in the sad tale of Generation X's childhood. It's well-documented that we were neglected by our parents. The Boomers had stay-home moms and the derivatively named Generation Y at least had daycare centers while we had only the keys around our necks as our guardians. Yes, we were neglected even by Disney. From the time I entered first grade to the time I entered college, there were exactly two new Disney animated movies - The Fox and the Hound and The Resucers - neither of which featured a certain mouse. No, we had Jodie Foster and Kurt Russell and Paris Hilton's aunt as the face of Disney.
Boomers were steeped in Disneyana. There were, of course, all the classic movies but there were also the Mickey Mouse Club and Wonderful World of Disney shows on television and maybe even shorts shown before features in theatres which starred the squeaky rodent. And forget the comics. The scant comics rack was stuffed with Archie and the DC and Marvel universes -- no topless mice on those pages. Bunky and Guy experienced Mickey's reappearance in Mickey's Christmas Carol, and of course his daily performances on the early incarnation of the Disney Channel not to mention widely available videos of his oeuvre. Being pre-cable and pre-video, we didn't have those.
Unfortunately, Flatulus, I cannot aid you in your quest. I don't even know the mouse, let alone the details of his possibly sordid past or his sketchy family background. It is certainly an intriguing situation. No, my question has always been, where in the hell was Mickey during his wilderness period from, say 1960 to 1985? I'm not kidding, the whole time I grew up Mickey was very rarely seen and only then in a historical context. The only thing you saw was the outlined mouse-ear logo. Was he killed in an industrial accident at the studio? Did Pegleg Pete or one of the Beagle Boys go too far and extinguish his tiny little life? I hate to think he was snuffed out in a fit of passionate rage by Donald or Minnie following an interspecies tryst with Clarabelle or Daisy. Either way, there's been a studio coverup.
I've often wondered if he had taken the path so many chose in the 60s and gone to the Himalayas on some spiritual quest only to be lured into the soporific stupor of the poppy. I sometimes imagine Goofy and Pluto tracking him down in some back alley Kathmandu opium den -- bursting in just moments before he succumbs to the demons chasing him in the form of bucket-toting brooms.
I suspect the answer is that he truly was the avatar of Walt Disney and that he was frozen the whole time until modern technology found a way to somehow download Walt's brain into the little mouse. They don't call it suspended animation for no reason. So now he's still kickin' it everyday on House of Mouse or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or whatever his show is called now.
To be honest, though, Mickey always annoyed the hell out of me. I'm not sure if it was Loony Toon loyalty or the voice or the confusion over the fact that he didn't wear a shirt and Donald didn't wear pants. I have always have been able to relate to Donald - still do - but I always rooted for the Beagle Boys where Mickey was concerned.
Hopefully one of our blogmates has a good answer for you...
Labels: cheap sarcasm, Disney, Hollywood, mice
posted by St. Fiacre @ 9:50 AM,
1 Comments:
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At Sunday, February 11, 2007 12:17:00 PM,
said...
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"They don't call it suspended animation for no reason."
Wicked good line. I'm glad you found a way to use it after I suggested it to you. (You didn't really think I wasn't going to try to take credit for a joke that good, did you? Be your age.)
Actually, I'm more of a Looney Tunes guy myself. Daffy is my hero, although I learned a lot from Bugs, too. Hopefully, some of our blogmates will let us know about their cartoon favorites as well.
