FISCHER: A mouse on the loose!

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

It looks like 2024 will be the year of the mouse.

At long last, after decades of Disney using its considerable influence to extend the clock on copyright law, Mickey Mouse has entered the public domain.

Sort of.

Specifically, after 95 years, the copyright has expired on “Steamboat Willie,” the animated short that introduced the world-famous rodent to the masses.

This puts the seven-minute black-and-white cartoon, and all the characters and story elements within it, in the hands of the public for use as it sees fit, so long as Disney’s lawyers can be avoided.

So what can people do with Mickey now?

Ironically, Disney itself has provided an ample number of examples of what this means for Mickey moving forward.

In spite of Disney producing the most well known adaptations of public domain characters like Peter Pan, Cinderella, and Snow White, anybody is free to use these characters in their own works so long as they stick to the public domain aspects and shy away from the unique characteristics that Disney has introduced.

You can do your own version of “The Little Mermaid,” but you can’t name her Ariel and she can’t have an overly protective crab friend with a Jamaican accent.

Likewise, it’s perfectly legal to tell your own story about a Danish snow queen, but if you start getting too similar to anything out of “Frozen” you’re likely to draw the ire of Disney’s lawyers.

And such is now the case with “Steamboat Willie” and the characters and events portrayed within.

If you’d like to put out your own take on a story about a whistling cartoon mouse getting into misadventures while working on a boat, you are now free to do so, so long as you steer clear of every other creatively identifiable aspect of the character Disney has established over the last 95 years such as his distinctive eyes or iconic red shorts.

By entering the public domain, storytellers are now free to develop their own versions of Mickey Mouse, along with the earliest incarnations of supporting characters Minnie Mouse and Pete, much in the same way characters like Sherlock Holmes and Dracula have been re-imagined time and again.

The difference of course is that the original Dracula novel and Sherlock Holmes stories are, on their own, compelling works of fiction rife with characters and ideas to explore. “Steamboat Willie,” on the other hand, is a largely mundane animated short with more historical value than entertainment value.

While there may be creative avenues to explore, in practice it seems any new ideas about what to do with Mickey Mouse have taken a backseat to the novelty of being able to use the beloved Disney character in ways that Disney would never allow.

Since the clock ran out on Disney’s copyright the internet has been slammed with announcements of projects that exist not to put their own take on Mickey Mouse as he appeared in “Steamboat Willie,” but to capitalize on the name recognition Disney developed over the last century.

Within hours of the ball dropping into 2024 a trailer was released for “Mickey’s Mouse Trap,” which looks like a cookie-cutter slasher film that would be utterly un-noteworthy were the killer not dressed up as a recognizable mouse. Likewise, “Infestation: Origins,” a co-op horror game cobbled with a similar aesthetic, appeared on Steam before the New Year saw its first sunset.

Projects like these probably could have been classified as parody to begin with, so the public domain aspect doesn’t actually mean a whole lot.

Perhaps eventually somebody find something to do with Mickey that is more in the spirit with the intent of public domain protections, but that will take time and effort.

In the meantime, expect an annual deluge of “because we can” projects over the upcoming years as more and more popular stories enter into the public domain. The 1920s were the golden age of pulp fictions, followed by the golden age of Hollywood in the 1930s and the golden age of comic books in the 1940s.

For generations, public domain has largely consisted of stories and novels that predated electricity as a common utility. Only now are we getting into relatively modern commercial franchises that have persisted into contemporary day and that is going to be a wild adjustment.

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and kind of can’t wait for the inevitable “Batman vs. James Bond” crossover movie made by whoever wants to do it.