DISNEY NIGHTMARE! (Mickey Mouse Horror Movie) Steamboat Willie Enters the Public Domain

It's Disney's worst nightmare.... the copyright on Steamboat Willie has expired and Mickey Mouse is now free to use by ANYONE!
So of course, the first response by the public is to make a horror film: Mickey's Mouse Trap.

[@JTonyArts]

Hate to break this to you: Thrre is no “Real Mickey.” Mickey is a fictional character. He ALWAYS has a human working in him or through him. He’s not real.

[@missysmouseears]

I guess what I mean when I say "the real Mickey" is what he has grown to represent... the face of a place I love and a wholesome, family friendly hero.

[@JTonyArts]

@@missysmouseears but that’s the thing with fictional characters, especially those that last: they are multi-layered and what they come to mean is subjective. Their meaning is dependent on the individual and the context. For some of us he has become the cute, bright shiny mask on a less than bright and shiny corporation that has harmed the culture more than it has helped. Changing copyright from a protection of the artist AND cultural access to public domain into a protection of corporate profit has literally set American culture back 100 years or more and is responsible for the current stagnation of artistic innovation in general and film in particular. Mickey is the cute little hero on the face but there’s monopolistic corporate rot just beneath those ears. Did you know that Steamboat Willie was stolen copyright? It’s ideas stolen from the film Steamboat Bill Jr with Buster Keaton just the year before? And the ideas for that were stolen from the song Steamboat Bill just a year prior to that? Ironic, isn’t it, that the world’s leader in prosecuting copyright got its start by stealing copyright, and Mickey has been the face of it all along? So, yeah, the “real Mickey” is deeper and has more layers and is going to represent different things to different people. The only way to explore those layers is to have him viewed and presented through the perspective of different artists. THAT’S what the public domain is supposed to do.

[@missysmouseears]

Well, when I used the term "real Mickey" it was sort of a joke, being that he is a drawing - but your comment looks at it on a much deeper level which could be a whole video on its own! I personally see Mickey as an icon of American culture and in my mind I link images of him back to my childhood trips to Disneyworld and when I thought everything about America was great. It's weird because now I am older, I recognise the corporate mask that Mickey has become and the murkiness behind it, yet I simultaneously still think of him with affection. No, I hadn't heard that about Steamboat Willie, but I do remember growing up thinking Walt Disney wrote Cinderella, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty etc. and being shocked when I realised he didn't! So, Disney has certainly made use of other works being in the public domain when it suits them!

[@jacobwilcox8659]

Ugh! This is why I didn't want My favorite Disney character to be in public domain

[@missysmouseears]

I wonder if the initial projects are just in response to the copyright change and after the novelty wears off, people will just leave him alone or whether people will continue to use and abuse him in the future?