Peter Saville and the Disney Debacle
When it comes to instantly recognisable symbols, they don’t come much more iconic than those famous ears of everybody’s favourite cartoon mouse. Yes, Mickey Mouse has been adorning clothes, mugs and just about everything there’s room on which to stick a logo, but the latest incarnation of Mickey’s celebrated lugs has upset some serious music fans.
A T-shirt entitled ‘Waves Mickey Mouse T’ appears to take its influence from a famous album cover by creators of glum, post-punk rock Joy Division. Unknown Pleasures, released by the band in 1979 and a staple in any muso’s record collection, features an image of a pulsar (or a pulsating star emitting a beam of radiation, to be absolutely clear) on its front sleeve. The image, by English graphic designer Peter Saville, has long been considered one of the most iconic album covers of the modern era. The album’s cult status moved into the mainstream following the suicide of Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis a year after its release.
Nobody is quite sure how the world’s most famous happy-go-lucky mouse came to be affiliated with a legendary, dark-hearted guitar pop group from Manchester, but fans of Joy Division are furious that their favourite band has been exposed to the commercialism of Disney. It’s also been noted on fan sites that the sad nature of Ian Curtis’s death, not to mention the slightly unpalatable origin of the band’s name are hardly a good fit for the global purveyors of good, clean, saccharin fun. Even on the bottom of men’s sandals this design would still manage to enrage die hard Joy division fans.
It seems, however, that those fans crying “rip-off!” may not have as valid a point as they think, as that unforgettable album cover is actually lifted from the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. This means that the image is in the public domain, so Disney wouldn’t have to get permission from Joy Division to reproduce the image and sell the T-shirt. While the Disney site did initially admit the design was inspired by the sleeve of Unknown Pleasures, they have since removed all mention of this, perhaps to avoid the wrath of angered fans who don’t quite understand that nobody is out of pocket.
While fans might be outraged that Peter Saville’s well-known design has found its way onto a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, former Joy Division band members don’t seem to be too upset. Well, one of them at least. Erstwhile bass guitarist Peter Hook told music magazine NME that he saw it as “quite a compliment for a huge conglomerate like Disney to pick up on a poor Manchester band that only existed for a couple of years”.
It’s not the first controversy to involve a T-shirt and the rock world. Recently, Nirvana fans were horrified when US clothing store Forever 21 aped the design of one of Kurt Cobain’s T-shirts.
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