Simply Mad About the Maus

If you aren't hip to the jive bub, you've been snowed. I'm talkin origins, capeesh? When your lobe don't get it and you think what they've been laying down is the real dealio, that's where you're wrong, frankenstein.

Conventional wisdom indicates that one Mickey Mouse, pictured here...


... made his debut to the world in the animated short "Steamboat Willie". The real origins of the character lie several years earlier than the Disney Corporation's proclaimed "birth" of Mickey Mouse in November 1928. Before Mickey, there was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Disney's main character. After his boss tried to chince him out of some loot, he was strong armed out of the rights to the Oswald character, so he took off and created Mickey. Or so the story goes.

Take a look at this Oswald clip from 1927, before Disney left his contract with Universal Studios. Note the Mickey-esque character that comes onto the scene at 3:00. Observe how much of a little fucker he once was as he gets his ass beat by Oswald:



Before he became the bright eyed everyman that stood for all that was deemed "American", Mickey Mouse was a deviant sociopath with revenge-bent aggression that would make Donald blush. In 1928 when Disney struck out on his own, he brought animator Ub Iwerks with him and commissioned him to create the Mickey design that's become burned into the rentinas of every post-war youth. Yet, before the oft-cited "debut" of Steamboat Willie and ascension to Apple of America's Eye status, a still malicious version of Mickey appeared in Disney's first post-universal short titled "Plane Crazy". Straight up tries to kiss-rape Minnie, dang.

To think what the world would have been like if the character had never changed. I couldn't see the public latching onto him the same way. Who knows what society would have become? Would Times Square still be dirty? Would Florida be considerably underdeveloped? It's tough to put any measure on the impact that Disney has had on the world, and I sure as shit ain't gonna try and quantify it. From massive media holdings to subliminal messages, you know that shit is Xtra large, sonnnnnn.