Amidst Disneyland's 50th anniversary celebration, DisneyLies.com claims to be serving 50 to 100 gigabytes a day of such online imagery as a couple of newlyweds caught on Tom Sawyer Island after dark, major nudity on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, and a virtual orgy on Pirates of the Caribbean. There is also a steamy incident with a couple of cast members in the secret room at the top of the Matterhorn, too. But the chastity and clean reputations of all those Disney characters, however, have been guarded like that of vestal virgins' by Disney's lawyers.
After Walt Disney died, I had expected Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and the whole gang to attend the funeral, with Goofy delivering the eulogy and the Seven Dwarfs serving as pallbearers. Disney's death occurred a few years after Time magazine's infamous "God Is Dead" cover, and it occurred to me that Disney had served as God to that whole stable of imaginary characters now mourning in a state of suspended animation.
Disney had been their Creator, and he had repressed all their baser instincts, but now that he had departed, I imagined that they could finally shed their cumulative inhibitions and participate together in an unspeakable Roman bacchanal binge to signify the crumbling of an empire. I contacted Wally Wood – who had illustrated the first piece I sold to Mad magazine: "If Comic Strip Characters Answered Those Little Ads in the Back of Comic Books"– and, without mentioning any specific details, I told him my general notion of a memorial orgy at Disneyland to be published in The Realist. He accepted the assignment and presented me with a magnificently degenerate montage.
Pluto was pissing on a portrait of Mickey Mouse while the real, bedraggled Mickey was shooting up heroin. His nephews were jerking off as they watched Goofy fuck Minnie Mouse on a combination bed and cash register. The beams shining out from the Magic Castle were actually dollar signs. Dumbo the elephant was simultaneously flying and shitting on an infuriated Donald Duck. Huey, Dewey, and Louie were staring at Daisy Duck's asshole as she watched the Seven Dwarfs grope Snow White. The Prince was snatching a peek at Cinderella's snatch while trying a glass slipper on her foot. The Three Little Pigs humped each other in a daisy chain. Jiminy Cricket leered as Tinker Bell did a striptease, and Pinocchio's nose got longer.
The Disneyland Memorial Orgy center spread became so popular that I published it as a poster in 1967. The Disney corporation considered a lawsuit but realized that The Realist had no real assets, and besides, why bother causing themselves further public embarrassment? They took no action against me, never telling me to cease and desist. Recently I found a carton of the original posters in my garage (available via Paulkrassner.com); fortunately, the statute of limitations has run out. I had broken through the cultural taboo unscathed.
As artistic irreverence toward the Disney characters has continued unabated, attorneys for Walt Disney Productions have been busy filing lawsuits to stop the sale of items like my poster because their corporate client has worked "for many years to acquire the image of innocent delightfulness known and loved by people all over the world, particularly, but not only, by children," [according to what?], and now these characters are being depicted in a "degrading, lewd, drug-addictive, offensive, and defaced" manner, some of them "in poses suggestive of a love-in."
On one hand, lawyers complain, "Some of the cartoons portrayed by these people are pornographic," and on the other hand, they complain of "copyright infringement and unfair competition." Isn't that sort of like having your cake and eating Olive Oyl too?
Britain's official artist for the Persian Gulf war, John Keane, got in trouble for his painting in which Mickey Mouse appears on what looks like a toilet, with a shopping cart of anti-tank missiles nearby and a background of shattered palm trees. A spokesperson for the Disney empire said they were considering possible copyright violations. The artist said that the idea came to him in Kuwait City, in a marina used by the Iraqis, where he found a Mickey Mouse amusement ride surrounded by shit.
And on the same day that Disney stock jumped 6 3/8 points in active trading, their infringement-fighting attorneys ordered white paint splashed over the "innocent delightfulness" of Disney characters in murals at three day care centers in Florida. They were replaced by less tightly policed Hanna Barbara characters Yogi Bear, Fred Flintstone, and Scooby Doo, in yet another Mickey Mouse decision.
Here's to another 50 years of magic, wonder, and legal defense.
