Here’s what the twisted minds at Adult Swim did with Steamboat Willie
Adult Swim aired a raunchy interstitial celebrating the recent entry of Mickey Mouse's early incarnation in the public domain
Aux News Steamboat Willie
Most of the Internet’s use of Steamboat Willie—the earliest version of Mickey Mouse that has recently entered the public domain—can be summed up in one classic copypasta. “Drew like a dark, fucked up version of [Steamboat Willie] haha,” the meme goes. “Just a glimpse into my dark reality. A full stare into my twisted perspective would make most simply go insane lmao.” See: proto-Mickey with pointy little teeth and an evil expression. How ghastly, how grotesque! This is not the non-threatening Mickey Mouse we know and love! Many of these dark, fucked up takes on Steamboat Willie are ironic and in on the joke, serving as commentary on the inevitable “twisted” projects that will employ the mouse’s visage. Now Adult Swim has entered the fray with its own gently NSFW Steamboat Willie, and the lines have become blurred about what’s twisted in an ironic way and what’s a sincere attempt at edginess.
Adult Swim first aired the brief interstitial on January 7, which features an animation of Steamboat Willie thrusting onto and kissing the text “PUBLIC DOMAIN BITCH.” Adult Swim is known for its cheeky little bumpers between programming (in 2020, mimicking AS bumps became a whole viral TikTok trend). This one’s not so very different, and we can take it at face value as a mild middle finger to the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the world, from a tiny subsidiary of another major entertainment conglomerate.
The question is really: is scary Mickey or sex-act Mickey the best we can do? Is this the most punk public domain usage of one of the most iconic symbols in the history of media? Because Mickey is the pinnacle of children’s media, the obvious edgy twist on the character is to go bloody or sexy, but—as evidenced by the “twisted perspective” meme—it doesn’t take a lot of imagination or ingenuity to put a knife in the hands of a beloved kid’s character. In fact, it’s basically expected at this point that these characters entering the public domain will get a cheap slasher made shortly after, and even the producer-director of Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey is skeptical of the strategy.
“I don’t know if any of them are going to, you know, try to make them good,” Rhys Frake-Waterfield told IndieWire of the Steamboat Willie horror projects on deck. “That getting repeated all the time, it won’t have the same kind of hit. It doesn’t have the same kind of longevity for what we’re trying to do. I personally believe the only way that this becomes sustainable for us making films is to really focus on doing a select few, the ones we think are best, and making them have a really high quality.”
Whether or not public domain slashers are sustainable, it’ll be interesting to see if anyone finds any other kind of use for Steamboat Willie. Until then, it seems we’re stuck in this dark reality.
46 Comments
“The question is really: is scary Mickey or sex-act Mickey the best we can do?”I doubt it but it’s low hanging fruit.
Noir MickeyOppenmickeySteampunk Willie
Oooh Steampunk Willie, the kids will love that one!Grimdark MickeyKawaii MickeyKaiju MickeyWe can definitely do more than scary or sexy!
Snyderverse Mickey.
I think I covered that with ‘Grimdark Mickey’…or maybe we can do ‘MARTHA! Mickey’?
Snyderverse Mickey is grimdark for 14 year olds. He’s muddy brown-grey and has a Jesus complex and a babyfaced stripper girlfriend.
Holy crap dude if that movie comes out next year I am blaming you!
I can handle it. I saw Sucker Punch in the theatre.
The only one of his I saw in the theater was Watchmen, which I still think is mostly watchable.
Mostly Watchablemen.
My condolences.
Ahem, his girlfriend isn’t just hot, she’s also damaged. Gosh, what more characterisation do you need for women?
It’s already in black and white. How will he desaturate the colors even further?
He’ll print the director’s cut on film, using Vantablack ink. He’ll be the pinnacle of unwatchably dark movies.
His talking-head pundit show We’re All Thinking It With Michael T. Mouse on Fox News.He has some…opinions…about Speed Gonzalez and Pepe Le Pew, that’s for sure.
Nihilistic Mickey. It’s basically just Camus’ ‘The Stranger’ with a mouse.
So low it’s on the ground, really.Adult Swim is probably the best positioned to actually do something original, or at least different, given their history of unsettling surrealism.
So low you can’t get under it!I think you’re right there
This Steamboat Has Willies in It
Not judging by this nonsense.
Not adult swim, but this take made me laugh uncontrollably to the point my wife woke up angry/disappointed. (I don’t know how to add spoiler/nsfw tags, sorry)
We can make Steamboat Mickey drive something else, like a truck or a jet plane. Yeah, that’s the ticket…
Well, South Park turned Mickey into the unethical head of the Disney Corp. Sort of Scary Mickey at the end when he went on a god-like rampage.
He and Randy also went on a animal sex-filed drug bender that caused South Park’s Covid outbreak.
After Randy killed Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.
The novelty of ‘28 Mickey being in the public domain will wear off, but
he’ll still retain that status forever, which gives people plenty of
time to come up with interesting takes on him. Everything we’re seeing now is basically meme stuff on the level of “We can make Mickey Mouse say fuck!”
There’s other things?
“The question is really: is scary Mickey or sex-act Mickey the best we can do?”
When has something that’s been uploaded to the internet ever been “the best we can do”?
Out of all the public domain uses since Jan. 1, this one seems to be the best. Direct and to the point, and doesn’t wear out the joke.
Simpsons did it.
Burden of Mickey can document the mouse trying to get native species to help him drag the steamboat over a mountain in the Amazon. He’s pretty obsessive about getting that opera house built considering that he’s in a silent film.
I never want to see Slipme A. Mickey. That would be taking things too far.
Instantly forgettable, though, hey-o
“making them have a really high quality.”That is a bold-ass statement from the director of fucking Pooh: Blood & Honey.
Whether or not public domain slashers are sustainable, it’ll be interesting to see if anyone finds any other kind of use for Steamboat Willie. Until then, it seems we’re stuck in this dark reality.Comic author Randy Milholland (Something Positive, the Sunday edition of Popeye) is doing his own spin on what happened after the original short ended every weekday. So far, there’s no gore or bawdy humor.
https://mousetrappedcomic.blog/
Using it to tell a story? It’ll never catch on.
We haven’t had anything of value enter the public domain in so long, no one knows what to do with it.
Steamboat Mickey driving the boat to Jeffrey Epstein’s Island….
Have any of these people actually sat down and watched Steam Boat Willie? Mickey Mouse is a goddamn sociopath (that poor mama pig) you can’t make him any more of a gleeful, violent sex pervert than Walt Disney already did.
Watch “Plane Crazy” (which would have been Mickey’s first-released short) if you want to see him in full on rapist mode.
Hadn’t quite caught on yet that “no means no”.
There have always been low-effort short-term-return cash-ins when characters go into public domain, but we’ve also always had people making genuine efforts to do something interesting and creative with them, often while trying to recapture how the original works made them feel.
Feels like we’ve been missing that half of the equation over the last decade or so.
Here’s my pitch: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Steamboat Willie Are Dead.
Slender Mickey
So that’s it?
An artist who works for Disney (and other big companies) clarified some stuff related to all this and one thing you’re not allowed to do is use the name ‘Mickey Mouse’. So roll on all the Michael Maus cartoons, woohoo!