HE IS the saccharine-sweet foundation upon which the Disney empire was founded, the iconic character who has kept the corporation's tills ringing for the past 80 years. But amid evidence of growing ambivalence towards the leading man of the cartoon world, Mickey Mouse is getting a makeover for the modern age.
He's going to be darker, harsher; a sinister cynic for a generation of children weaned on Nickelodeon and Pixar and nourished through childhood by the edgy animated worlds of The Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy.
Not since Bruce Wayne metamorp
hosed from the wholesome crusader against crime into the troubled soul compelled to combat Danny De Vito's demented Penguin and Heath Ledger's maniacal Joker on Gotham City's mean streets has an American talisman undergone such a radical transformation.
Despite recognition ratings of 97 per cent in America, beating even Santa Claus, Disney is acutely aware that Mickey's allure is beginning to wane. Nowhere is that more true than in its home market, with only 20 per cent of the character's $5bn merchandising revenue raised domestically. That presents the corporation with a dilemma: if it leaves the character in suspended animation, trapped inside a cultural amber, it runs the risk that he will eventually become irrelevant; but if it tries to reinvent him it faces the possibility of alienating die-hard fans.
There is, however, a third way: to reinvent Mickey in the anarchic and lucrative gaming world, where extreme violence and role-playing are de rigeur. With Disney desperate to break into a rapidly expanding multi-billion-dollar sector dominated by Nintendo, what could possibly be a more image-altering statement of intent than reinventing its first superstar as a gaming hero?
The result is Epic Mickey, a role-playing game set in post-apocalyptic badlands. It will be launched on Nintendo's Wii console next year, and will radically recast the much-loved mouse. Out will go the falsetto voice that was done for 20 years by Disney himself, while the perennially cheery persona will be ditched too. Instead, in will come an AK47-wielding super-rodent with a ferociously bad attitude bordering on murderous intent.
"We've pulled Mickey out of the world of cartoons, which is where he belongs and feels comfortable and safe, and we pull him into a world we call the Cartoon Wasteland," says game designer Warren Spector. "Mickey is an adventurous and rambunctious mouse and I want to bring his personality to the forefront, place him in a daunting world and connect his spirited character with video game players worldwide. Ultimately, each player decides for him – or herself – what makes Mickey cool."
Players can either be butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth Mickey or I-can't-believe-it's-Mickey. If they choose the latter persona, Mickey becomes more ratlike with each foul deed and violent slaying.
Originally, Mickey Mouse was an act of revenge. He was Walt Disney's defiant reaction to losing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a successful character he and close friend Ubbe Iwerks had developed for Universal Studios, which registered the rights. Ironically, Oswald makes a guest appearance in the new Mickey Mouse computer game – as a baddie who Mickey has to destroy.
The partners quickly developed Mortimer Mouse – the idea came from a mouse Disney adopted in his Kansas studio – with Iwerks doing the artwork and Disney providing the voice and character. Disney's wife Lillian suggested the name be changed to Mickey.
In early 1928 the anthropomorphic mouse made his silent debut in Plane Crazy, but Disney always regarded the first movie with sound – the instant hit Steamboat Willie, which was released in November 1928 – as the character's real birth date.
For most Americans, Mickey Mouse is indivisible from their culture. Even Walt Disney, an aggressive patriot who helped set up the McCarthyite House Committee on Anti-American Activities and denounced many colleagues, was surprised by how synonymous the figure became with America itself, not just inside America but also around the world.
Just before the Second World War and with anti-American hysteria being whipped up in Germany, the German Board of Film Censors banned Mickey Mouse films, while one German paper described Mickey Mouse as "the most miserable ideal ever revealed. Healthy emotions tell every independent young man and every honourable youth that the dirty and filth-covered vermin, the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom, cannot be the ideal type of animal. Away with Jewish brutalisation of the people! Down with Mickey Mouse!"
The debate about Mickey's future reflects Disney's worries that he is seen as little more than a corporate logo rather than a concrete character. But with so much of the corporation's intellectual property wrapped up in the mouse – everything from the Disney Channel and Disney Club, to the new Disneyworld in China that has just been given the go-ahead after 20 years of negotiations, relies on him – rolling out character changes that may work in the chaos of cyberspace into the family market is a riskier proposition.
Much of the problem is that Disney is so commercially in thrall to its increasingly squeaky-clean creation that it has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure his persona does not evolve, either wittingly or unwittingly. Disney lobbied so persistently for the Copyright Term Extension Act to be introduced in the US and Europe that the legislation is widely known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. It applies it with an almost unrivalled zealotry, at one stage taking three Florida nurseries to court to force them to remove Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters painted on their walls.
Given the lengths to which Disney will now go to protect Mickey's saintly image, it is perhaps the ultimate irony that, despite the ridiculously falsetto voice, Mickey was originally conceived by Walt Disney as a maverick rabble-rouser who was as quick with his fists as he was with his wit. In Plane Crazy, the first Mickey Mouse adventure and one of just two silent films, Mickey is a mischievous, amorous rogue. By the time he is talking in the film that made Disney, the cartoon Steamboat Willie, Mickey is not only a scrapper but also a lover who pursues Minnie aggressively. He is also an occasionally cruel prankster who mercilessly teases friends such as the hapless Clarabelle Cow.
If Mickey Mouse has yet to come full circle and end up back as a true icon of the counter-culture, he has at least taken the first step on that long march. Whether his adoring public will follow his blood-streaked path from wholesome all-American boy to ultra-violent terrorist-smoking anti-hero remains to be seen.
YOU'VE BEEN GOOGLED• Although Elvis remains king as the most popular stamp subject, with an estimated 124.1 million collected, Mickey Mouse and his friends rule as the most popular stamp series, with 211.5 million collected.
• Mickey is often jokingly referred to as the boss of The Walt Disney Company, whose employees say they "work for the Mouse".
• In rhyming slang a "Mickey" refers to a Liverpudlian or Liverpool FC supporter (Mickey Mouser > Scouser). The term can also refer to someone's home (house > Mickey Mouse).
• In the 1996 Warner Bros film Space Jam, Bugs Bunny sneers at Daffy Duck's idea for the name of their basketball team, asking, "What kind of Mickey Mouse organisation would call themselves 'The Ducks'?" (The Anaheim Mighty Ducks hockey team was owned by Disney.)
• Walt Disney holds the record for number of Academy Award nominations with 59, and the record for the number of awarded Oscars at 26. Four of his Oscars were special awards and one, his last, was granted posthumously.
