.
Property relations in Mickey Mouse cartoons: here we see for the first time that it is possible to have one's own arm, even one's own body, stolen.
The route taken by Mickey Mouse is more like that of a file in an office than it is like that of a marathon runner.
In these films, mankind makes preparations to survive civilization.
Walt Disney's Touchdown Mickey (United Artists, 1928): movie poster, image via Don Markstein's Toonopedia
Mickey Mouse proves that a creature can still survive even when it has thrown off all resemblance to a human being. He disrupts the entire hierarchy of creatures that is supposed to culminate in mankind.
These films disavow experience more radically than ever before. In such a world, it is not worthwhile to have experiences.
Similarity to fairy tales. Not since fairy tales have the most vital events been evoked more unsymbolically and more unatmospherically.
All Mickey Mouse films are founded on the motif of leaving home in order to learn what fear is.
So the explanation of the huge popularity of these films is not mechanization, their form; nor is it a misunderstanding. It is simply the fact that the public recognizes its own life in them.
The route taken by Mickey Mouse is more like that of a file in an office than it is like that of a marathon runner.
In these films, mankind makes preparations to survive civilization.
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Walt Disney's Touchdown Mickey (United Artists, 1928): movie poster, image via Don Markstein's Toonopedia
Mickey Mouse proves that a creature can still survive even when it has thrown off all resemblance to a human being. He disrupts the entire hierarchy of creatures that is supposed to culminate in mankind.
These films disavow experience more radically than ever before. In such a world, it is not worthwhile to have experiences.
"Medieval Mickey Mouse" (c. 1300 AD.), detail of fresco depicting St.Christopher on church wall, Malta, Austria: photo by BBC, 2002
Similarity to fairy tales. Not since fairy tales have the most vital events been evoked more unsymbolically and more unatmospherically.
All Mickey Mouse films are founded on the motif of leaving home in order to learn what fear is.
So the explanation of the huge popularity of these films is not mechanization, their form; nor is it a misunderstanding. It is simply the fact that the public recognizes its own life in them.
This post dedicated to Tom Luddy
Mickey Mouse (fragment): Walter Benjamin, 1931, edited excerpt (translation by Rodney Livingstone in Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934, 1999)
Mickey Mouse (fragment): Walter Benjamin, 1931, edited excerpt (translation by Rodney Livingstone in Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934, 1999)
