Profile: The 20th century's most famous mouse was too successful for his own good. As he turns 75 he has become a target of abuse from left and right, writes Donald Clarke
Barely a year goes by without the shout going out that some modish, and allegedly malign, popular icon is now "more recognisable than Mickey Mouse". In the 1970s it was the beef patty-flogging harlequin, Ronald McDonald. In the 1980s it was Sega's mallet-wielding plumber, Mario. And, over the last decade, Lara Croft and her digital drumlins have been regularly accused of stealing Mickey's limelight.
How peculiar that a cartoon hero who has made only fleeting appearances on film and TV over the past half-century should still be expected to have such a resilient profile. Nobody under the age of 50 will remember Mr Mouse as anything other than a curious amalgam of Kim Il-Sung and the Nike Swoosh. He is a trademark, a logo, yet, like the late North Korean leader, he presides over a highly ordered realm - several realms actually - whose buildings are bedecked with images of himself chuckling benevolently. Children may enjoy their time at Disneyland, Disney World or the (yet again) financially troubled Disneyland Paris, but few of them still regard Mickey as a substantial media personality.
It was different once. Mickey Mouse made his screen début on November 18th, 1928 in the short film, Steamboat Willie. The 26-year-old Walt Disney, already a modestly successful animator, had devised the character while on a train journey from New York to Los Angeles. He first planned to name him Mortimer, but his wife, Lillian, while approving of her husband's alliterative instincts, felt the name was too pompous and suggested Mickey instead.
Steamboat Willie was an immediate success; so much so that Disney, desperate for a follow-up, recut two earlier, abandoned Mickey projects, added sound and offered the three films to exhibitors as a package. Disney's commercial instincts proved reliable and his company prospered as its little movies came to be regarded as one of the great sources of emotional relief during the Depression. Their power is best illustrated by the closing scene of Preston Sturges's great 1941 comedy, Sullivan's Travels, in which a group of dehumanised convicts finds a moment's hysterical escape as they watch a Disney cartoon.
Mickey Mouse, who appeared in 87 shorts during the 1930s, is a quintessential product of the Depression. He radiates the same frantic, near-psychotic cheeriness that came off the musicals of Busby Berkeley; a quality heightened, in Mickey's case, by that helium voice, which, until he got too busy in 1946, was provided by Disney himself. His success is proof of the saloon-bar philosophy which states that glum times invariably produce jolly popular culture: while the 1930s saw the rise of Mickey, Minnie and Pluto, cinema-goers of the prosperous 1950s preferred the sardonic, cynical wisecracks of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
As a fictional cartoon mouse, Mickey was ineligible for the draft, but ended up having a good war anyway. He appeared on posters urging citizens to buy war bonds, his image was used alongside messages stressing the importance of what we now call homeland security, and he ended the conflict with his position as an American icon secure.
Ironically, this may have been one of the causes of his decline as movie star. Americans had come to regard Mickey Mouse as the embodiment of a shining ideal: this was what the nation was fighting for. Audiences would not have felt comfortable watching Gen Eisenhower being knocked off a step-ladder by a big, orange dog, and they weren't sure they wanted to see Mickey being similarly inconvenienced. Thus it was that the star of Steamboat Willie found himself being transformed from a comedian into a point-man for the Mouse House's reinvention of the vacation industry. Like the great heavyweight fighter who ends his days greeting gamblers at a Las Vegas Casino, Mickey, not quite three decades into his career, found himself the official face of Disneyland on its opening in 1955.
He was still in show business of course. The Mickey Mouse Club TV show began broadcasting in the same year that Disneyland opened. And this highly buffed extravaganza, despite its terminal lack of cool, remained popular with less interesting children for several decades. Indeed, Britney Spears and her sinister antithesis, Christina Aguilera, both began their careers as Mousketeers on the show. But, however much The Mickey Mouse Club caught the imagination of the nation's youth, it was still telly. And film stars don't do telly.
"I was in Fantasia, you know!" he may well have squeaked to the mirror after one too many Drambuies.
Still more of his dignity was stripped away as he found himself quite literally reduced to a shadow. Increasingly, the Mickey Mouse image appeared simply as three dark disks, intersecting like the elements of a Venn diagram or the wheels in a crop circle. Then children began wearing this characterless simulacrum on their heads, as if to purposefully remind him of how thin his persona had become.
And, as the years progressed, the insults began to fly. As the representative of one of the world's most powerful entertainment conglomerates, Mr Mouse found himself increasingly ridiculed by anti-globalisation campaigners and, more confusingly, peace protesters. A popular banner at the anti-war rallies earlier this year depicted President Bush wearing a pair of mouse ears.
Meanwhile, more extreme wings of the American Christian right have identified Mickey as a different kind of Satan. Disney's policy of extending company benefits to gay partners and its association with Miramax, the perpetrators of such godless filth as Kill Bill, have attracted a sizeable amount of pious wrath towards the corporation and its anthropomorphic agents. A particular bone of contention has been Disney's liberal approach to the celebration of so-called Gay Days at its theme parks. The company is not affiliated with the organisers of the events, but, say Christian extremists, they have not banned them either.
"There is not a major corporation in this country that is doing more to harm traditional American family values than Disney," says Rev Flip Benham, national director of Operation Rescue, an American fundamentalist group. "There is another king, and his name is not Mickey. His name is Jesus."
And, as if all this weren't enough, as the 75th anniversary approaches, news comes that, following the recent failure of its underwhelming cartoon epic, Treasure Planet, Disney has, for the first time in decades, no traditionally animated feature in production. The medium Mickey helped to popularise is becoming unwelcome in its natural home.
But, despite the success of computer-generated entertainments such as Toy Story, Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo, each of which Disney produced in tandem with Pixar Films, the corporation still knows the value of Mickey Mouse. Five years ago, Disney lobbied Congress to pass the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended copyright from 70 years to 90 years, just as Mickey and his friends were about to pass into the public domain.
And, earlier this year, it was announced that production had begun on a straight-to-video feature, Mickey's Twice Upon A Christmas, in which our friend will appear in computer-generated 3-D for the first time. So, as he opens his presents on Tuesday, the 20th century's most famous mouse can console himself with the knowledge that he is not quite forgotten and may still be loved. Even if he is less recognisable than Homer Simpson.
Who is he?
Terrifyingly perky cartoon mouse who usually wears little other than a pair of white gloves. Lover of Minnie. Friend to Goofy. Enemy of right-wing, fundamentalist lunatics and those whose hobbies include throwing street furniture through the windows of Starbucks.
Why is he in the news?
This Tuesday marks the 75th anniversary of his first screen appearance in the Disney short film, Steamboat Willie.
Most appealing characteristic
Head is easily reduced to a pleasingly balanced design consisting of three interlocking black discs.
Least appealing characteristic
Emotional cowardice, which has, over 75 years, seen him fail to pop the question to Minnie or clarify his ambiguous relationship with his close friend, Donald Duck, who wears only the top half of a sailor suit.
Most likely to say
Gosh, I hope that Pluto's lead doesn't get tangled up in my ankles as I carry this large unwieldy tray, laden with open cans of paint, up to Minnie's house. Pluto, no!
Least likely to say
Oh Christ, It's all just so dreadful, I don't think I can carry on.