Mickeys Enormous Icon Status

Mickey Mouse is one of the most well-known and beloved characters in media, but it looks like some big changes might be coming his way. As 2024 approached, news that Mickey might be getting released into the public domain started popping up, leading to concern from fans about what could be happening to the iconic mouse. So what’s really going on, and what does it all mean for everyone’s favorite billionaire rodent? Here’s everything you need to know about Mickey, his legacy, and what it really means that he’ll be (kind of) entering the public domain.

Is Disney Exterminating The Mouse?

Walt Disney himself, with the help of animator Ub Iwerks, created Mickey in 1928 to get themselves out of a pit of a pickle. Disney’s original character mascot was actually Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who appeared in many cartoons that the company produced for Universal Pictures through the 1920s – until, that is, a lot of behind-the-scenes drama led to Disney losing control of the character to Universal in 1928. In need of a new cute animal cartoon character for their animated shorts, Mickey was brought to life with his first public debut in Steamboat Willie. He was originally named Mortimer Mouse, but thankfully Walt’s wife Lillian suggested Mickey instead, and an icon was born.

Audiences were, surprisingly, first drawn to Steamboat Willie not because of Mickey, but because of the sound. They used well-timed music and sound effects to enhance the comedy, which viewers loved (and which many other cartoon studios at the time couldn’t compete with because they were still making silent films.) When they began to have Mickey speak on screen, he was even voiced by Walt himself.

As Mickey became one of the most recognizable cartoons on the planet, he became the de facto mascot for the Disney Company. Over the decades, Mickey would go on to appear in hundreds of shorts and eventually feature-length films, comics, tv shows, video games, and merchandise. His image, with his big head and round ears, became synonymous with the company itself – from being the face of large-scale marketing campaigns to hundreds of tiny Mickeys being hidden around the theme parks for eagle-eye guests to find. Park guests even celebrate their trips by getting their own Mickey ears to wear.

With Mickey’s image seemingly such an integral part of the Disney brand, it’s almost impossible to imagine that they could ever lose control of him. There’s been a Mickey hysteria brewing in recent months as people realized that since Mickey first appeared in 1928, that he should be entering the public domain in 2024. But it’s not as clear-cut as some would have you believe.

According to the Stanford Copyright & Fair Use Library, the public domain “refers to creative materials that are not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws… Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it.” It had long been standard that after a certain amount of time, works would pass into the public domain so that they could be used freely by everyone. Disney, unsurprisingly, had a big problem with this idea when Mickey was first about to be released into the wild. They actually backed the legislation, mockingly called the Mickey Mouse Protection Law, in 1998 that stopped any new works from becoming public domain due to copyright expiration for twenty years. But in 2019, things started back up again and the clock began ticking for Mickey again.

So does this mean we’re in for a Mickey Mouse free-for-all when the clock strikes midnight on January 1, 2024? Not really. The copyright expiring, in this case, is only for the version of Mickey that appeared in that original 1928 Steamboat Willie short. So if your dream has always been to create your own commercial art starring the boat-driving rodent, you’re in luck! But if you try to use any of the other versions of Mickey, the lawyers of the House of Mouse will be knocking on your door. And don’t get too excited about waiting out the clock for those later versions, either, because Disney keeps the trademark on those until they stop using him as a mascot, so basically… forever. So it sounds like Mickey as we all know him, will remain firmly in the clutches of the Walt Disney Company until the sun engulfs the earth – but what was everyone so worried about, anyway?

A Constant Struggle For Copyright

Works going into the public domain, both before 1998 and after it was unfrozen in 2019, has often led to enterprising people attempting to make a quick buck off the now free-to-use known IP – from the mundane, like creating new stories for a beloved character like Sherlock Holmes, to the quirky but fun, to the… very weird. While Disney’s only concern is making sure it doesn’t lose a single drop of revenue from its most well-known property, many fans were concerned that if Mickey was let loose, people would tarnish his reputation. But is that even really a legitimate concern in the 21st century?

Public domain works being used for all kinds of things, amazing and terrible, is nothing new, but neither is people just flouting copyright law to do what they want. Even with Mickey locked down tight, there have been plenty of unauthorized uses of him, from knock-off merchandise to parodies (which actually do have a certain level of protection under the law) to really weird and slightly concerning YouTube videos made by AI. Disney has certainly done its best to stop any unapproved usage of its characters – even suing three daycare centers for putting up murals featuring them back in the late 1980s – but even they, with all of their high-powered lawyers, can’t stop every off-brand Mickey. But at the end of the day, that’s not a big deal because no one could ever really make any kind of content that would truly devalue or in any way eclipse the real Mickey.

While the company was never really in danger of losing its iconic mouse, the kerfuffle does highlight a much more important battle. Disney has been expanding its media empire for decades, buying up smaller companies and merging with larger ones, to become the absolute behemoth of industry that it is today. And while wanting to keep control over their literal mascot makes sense, their apparent desire to be in sole control of the media as we know it definitely isn’t okay. In addition to using its weight to get laws passed to protect its own interests, the company has also gone up against the very people that make all of the media that they profit from – with CEO Bob Iger even saying that writers and actors were not being “realistic” in their asking for… fair compensation for the work that makes his company billions of dollars (while Iger himself makes tens of millions of dollars annually.) With the company facing falling streaming numbers, possibly having to sell off its traditional TV assets, and up against growing viewer anger at choices like removing access to content for tax write-offs, it seems the company will have far larger problems on its hands going forward than people making weird art with public domain Steamboat Willie.

Conclusion

Regardless of Disney’s issues, Mickey and his menagerie of friends continue to bring joy to people of all ages the world over. Whether he’s popping up in a video game or movie, looking cute on merch, or showing up in real life to take some pictures with excited fans, Mickey is always a welcome sight. His century-long hold on pop culture has indeed allowed him to become an icon in his own right, the face of Disney but also separate from its darker side. Every generation has their own special connection with the Mickey of their era, and even if some people’s interest in him is a little odd, for most people he continues to be a symbol of childhood joy. Disney itself could take some notes from Mickey on how to adapt to a changing world, step up to do the right thing, and work to spread joy in the world. From his first appearance as a little whistling rodent driving a boat to his global dominance as one of the most recognizable faces in the world, Mickey has been able to hold on to the public’s fascination by inspiring the imagination in his audience, and he’s not going anywhere anytime soon.