On This Day in History: November 18
Steamboat Willie
WEIRD SHIT ALERT!
Last week I published a post for subscribers (now free for everyone) titled A Mickey Mouse Job that warned I was going to do two audio versions of today’s post for subscribers. There is:
And a totally fucked up Mickey Mouse voice version here.
And now here is the column:
You know that mice are vermin, right? Pests. Carriers of disease, destroyers of property and crops alike. Never mind that. Mickey Mouse was born on this day. Consequently, I was roped into not just taking the kids to Disneyland, but also Disney World.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: November 18, 1928--
And even fucking Tokyo Disney. Anyway, it was on November 18, 1928, that Steamboat Willie was released. It was the first ever cartoon with fully synchronized sound. Mickey and Minnie had been in a couple of other cartoons previously, but creator Walt said fuck it, November 18 is Mickey’s birthday.
The two other animated shorts Mickey and Minnie first appeared in Walt couldn’t find a distributor for. The first, Plane Crazy, featured Mickey taking Minnie for a ride in his new airplane. Midflight he repeatedly tries to kiss her, but she rebukes his advances. Then, and this is really fucked up, he throws her out of the plane by flying it upside down. He then uses the plane to catch her as she falls through the sky. Minnie is obviously terrified, and he then tries to kiss her again and she’s all fuck you no way so Mickey grabs Minnie and forcibly kisses her. Minnie, having no tolerance for mice who sexually assault, slaps him and jumps from the plane, using her bloomers as a parachute. Mickey then crashes, because karma. Dick.
In Steamboat Willie Mickey is also a dick, but to other animals, not Minnie. It begins with him piloting a—you guessed it—steamboat, pretending to be the captain. Then the real captain shows up and says get the fuck outta here. As Mickey runs away, he slips and falls into a bucket of water and a parrot laughs at him, then Mickey assaults the parrot. Continues below …
No animals were harmed in the creating of this column. I did hurt my voice on that one recording, but beer solved that. Please contribute to my beer fund by coming a paying subscriber. Click the green button.
Mickey then helps load livestock at a landing and Minnie wants to catch the boat but is running late. Chasing the boat and yelling hey motherfucker wait up, Mickey uses the ship’s crane to bring her on board. She didn’t seem too distraught that Mickey hooked her underwear to do so. In fact, she seems rather enamored of him. Then the pair torture a goat together. Mickey continues with shit that would seriously piss off the SPCA on a cat, a duck, some nursing piglets, and a cow. This is all done to the playing of a jaunty riverboat tune. The cow seems to get off on it. It ends with another assault of the parrot by Mickey, knocking it to the river below. Mickey laughs as the parrot drowns.
Anyway, the film was critically acclaimed and also lauded for its technical achievements. Later there were complaints about the cruelty to animals it depicts, and Disney edited that out of some versions. Speaking of editing shit, Disney successfully lobbied for the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act to give Mickey an extra 20 years before entering the public domain. Detractors called it the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act,” but it ends in 2024. Then get ready for some mouse porn, I guess.
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Did you go to Disney Land, Disney Sea, or both?