Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Mickey Mouse and the Boy Thursday

My mother-in-law brought over some old books for Leonard, and included, for our mocking pleasure, Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and the Boy Thursday, published in 1948, a book so offensive that, as she says, it makes Little Sambo look like an anti-racist training manual. You can find the complete scanned text & pictures a few places around the web, including a self-proclaimed "sick" site and a white supremacist site. Google them if you must. I checked Gutenberg's renewal list and found that the book had indeed been properly renewed. How do we copyright minimalists feel about the possibility of Disney using its copyright to suppress these reproductions?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Holy crap.

Anonymous said...

This book isn't outlandish, considering it was published in 1948.

Anonymous said...

You really can't blame Disney considering the time that the book was published. I notice prejudice against obese/overweight people, kids/teens, people who are unattractive in various ways, non-human animals, and people of certain locations all the time in modern-day movies/books/TV shows, but it's just the time we live in.

RT said...

I disagree: Not everyone was producing that kind of entertainment at the time, for one thing, so I have no problem blaming Disney.

Anonymous said...

I have no problem blaming Disney either, but I'm glad someone brought up the way fat and/or unattractive people are portrayed.