75 and still mousey
The New York Times reports that the Disney corporation is not planningretirement for Mickey any time soon, as they celebrate the mouse turning the big 7-5 (at which point he should – by all rights – be partially available in the public domain, but more on that later). And at least part of that celebration is over the Mouse dodging a bullet and being kindly allowed to remain the property of Disney Co. and all of its investors.
But there also appear to be some dark times looming in the Magic KingdomTM
Despite the hoopla, which included a party at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., for the unveiling of 75 hand-decorated Mickey statues, the mouse’s popularity is waning.Revenue of Mickey-related products sold by Disney’s consumer products division, for example, has shrunk to less than 40 percent of the division’s $2.3 billion annual total, down from 50 percent during the peak in 1997, according to Disney executives. Winnie the Pooh merchandise is now outselling Mickey items.
Even the company’s own research suggests that the 75-year-old mouse is becoming increasingly difficult for Americans of all ages to relate to – particularly children, whose entertainment world is filled with online computer games and other distractions.
Considering that Disney has actually considered Mr. Mouse to be in semi-retirement for many years – from 1953 to 1999 (with one starring role in 1983 and another in 1990, see Jan’s Mickey Mouse Page for a timeline) – it seems an odd concern now to go back and worry about whether or not he’s marketable.
He hasn’t been a marketable character for years. The only time Disney has pulled out the Mouse and let him squeak is whenever they needed to justify extending the copyright laws inappropriately. In the in-betweentimes, he’s been more of a company logo than anything else. A familiar sillhouette slapped on any and every project to come out of the company, a centerpiece to a stylin’ wristwatch, a silk screen design for T-shirts everywhere, a hat sold at an amusement park, and occasionally a pop art model appearing James Dean jackets with Harley Davidson motorcycles for jaded hipsters everywhere to hang on their wall and be keenly ironic.
But now Disney is very concerned about the Mouse’s marketability. So concerned, in fact, that they’re working on two whole new projects for the Mouse that Roared:
Disney is also planning new feature films, including next year’s “Three Musketeers,” the first full-length film starring Mickey Mouse and his friends, and for 2005 the first computer-animated Mickey movie, “Twice Upon a Christmas.” The movies will not be released in theaters, instead going straight to home video, under the theory that it can be difficult to muster cinema-size crowds for animated characters older than many of today’s children’s grandparents.
Wow. That’s amazing. I mean, that’s totally and completely… underwhelming.
There have been a lot of successful direct-to-video releases of late, and many of them have come from Disney. But let’s be honest. Direct-To-Video is still the dumping ground for many a half-hearted cash-in product – and most of those come from Disney, as well. Everything from poorly-conceived direct-to-video sequels for movies nobody wanted to see in the first place, to soulless sequels to movies everybody held near and dear to their hearts. When Disney has a prestige piece – a piece they really want to hang their ears on – they don’t care how old the characters are. They release it directly the theatres and spend a truckload of money to make it popular.
The fact is that Disney has become a heartless copyright hog. In fact, it goes farther than just fighting to extend the copyright law so they can hold onto Mickey Mouse (more like “Steamboat Willie,” but more on that in a moment). They’ve even started co-opting other people’s copyrights, as well. First, they announced their intentions to sue the people behind the popular Denmark children’s character Gummi-Tarzan, claiming that they owned the copyright to the character of Tarzan.
Even setting aside for the moment that Gummi-Tarzan’s only sin is having a similar name to the Edgar Rice Burroughs character, the truth of the matter is that Disney doesn’t own the copyright on Tarzan, the Burroughs Estate owns it. And even then, it’s a copyright on the character – the original novel’s copyright has expired and it is now in the public domain. But even in defending the character, the Burroughs Estate is supposed to take up that cause (and has – aggresively – over many years), and not Disney, who paid a licensing fee to make their movie (and the direct-to-video sequel).
And now there’s the more recent story in which Disney has pulled out of the new live-action Peter Pan movie just weeks before it was to be released because the Great Ormond Street Hospital – legal owners of the original play – decided that they wanted a share of the merchandising. Disney feels that having paid a yearly fee for the right to create their animated character (and – note – none of the profits from merchandising for those films), they shouldn’t have to pay anything else in order to use the character in a completely new production with a completely new and potentially very profitable line of marketing.
But that’s not really Disney trying to flex their stolen copyright muscle – even if it does suggest that Barrie’s work and the subsequent protection of the play by Great Ormond Street was nothing more than “work for hire” that was completed in 1953 when Disney made their first version of Pan.
Look down toward the end of the article, and you’ll find this neat little tidbit:
Last year Disney wrote to a Scottish retailer demanding she change the name of her Peter Pan clothes shop because it infringed the company’s copyright.The retailer was, however, able to keep the name after Great Ormond Street issued a statement confirming that it owned the copyright and was happy to let the shop continue trading in exchange for a one-off payment of £500 ($1180).
Once again, Disney sued somebody for use of a name that was not theirs to begin with. Legally, Disney had no business suing a Scottish company unless it used their version of the character in addition to the name. The people who had a claim on the name were the ones who had any business making demands – and they did. Five-hundred pounds.
Disney has become a heartless, soulless entity feeding off of ill-gotten lawsuits in which they claim restitution for use of properties that they don’t even own. Not only that, but they toss out token projects in order to justify extending the copyright laws inappropriately (if not indefinitely), and skew the public’s view of what they’re doing.
“We’ve built our entire company around Mickey Mouse! You can’t take him from us and make him public domain! Besides, what if people make him do things that are inappropriate for his image? Think of the children! For God’s sake, won’t somebody think of the children? (Shut up, Great Ormond Street).”
What Disney fails to point out, however, is that even if the copyright on the oldest of the Mickey Mouse cartoons lapses, Mickey Mouse will remain the property of Disney. Remember what I said about Tarzan earlier? Even though the copyright on the very first Tarzan novel has lapsed, the character is still owned by the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate. The Burroughs Estate can (and does) sue for unlawful use of the character and seek damages to their trademark on the ape-man.
Disney works very hard, however, to spread the idea that Mickey Mouse would become Public Domain – and to hide the fact that it’s actually “Steamboat Willie” that would be freed from copyright. People could use “Steamboat Willie”-era Mouse designs in their own work, true – but if it were marketed as “Mickey Mouse” (as in, say, Mickey Mouse Does Dallas, just for an example), Disney would still be able to exert their legal muscle and seek damages to their trademark – including shutting down such a production.
So why does Disney fight so hard to extend the copyright?
It’s not to protect the Mouse. If they cared about the Mouse, they would actually use him instead of letting him float around in a semi-retired limbo between court battles.
It’s because Disney just can’t bear the thought of anybody making money without having to pony up the big bucks to the House of Mouse.
And that, my friends, just isn’t good art.