Painted Pictures On Silence

A Positive Music Blog

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Mickey's Lost Control



Joy Division was a band from the UK. The band was one of the most influential post punk groups. Their slow, somber, music, fronted by lead singer Ian Curtis’s deep baritone voice would influence many bands from rock and roll, new wave, industrial and Gothic music. Joy Division’s debut album Unknown Pleasures was released in 1979. The album was critically acclaimed right from the beginning.

 Because of emotional turmoil caused by the relationship with his wife as well as another woman, epilepsy and the pressure of dealing with his new found fame, Ian committed suicide on May 18th 1980. Even though Joy Division had released another album Closer before Ian’s death, Unknown Pleasure’s cover, with it’s pulsar image taken from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy, would go on to be one of the images Joy Division would most be known for.




 So it only make sense to take one of the worlds most recognizable and beloved cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and parody the Unknown Pleasures cover image. Not only that but take this new Disneyfied pulsar image, put it on a t-shirt to sell at Walt Disney World.

I wonder who the "imagineer" was that brought this design to the table. An image that pretty much will always be thought of as a symbol of musical starkness, despair and tragedy is on a t-shirt for sale at "The Happiest Place On Earth".

I could understand a t-shirt parody of other classic albums. Maybe the Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald walking across the Abbey Road crosswalk or something along those lines.Even the image of Donald Duck smashing a guitar on stage in the style of The Clash's London Calling album would not be too startling. But Joy Division? A band who was named after a fictional group of women kept alive at Concentration Camps for the purpose of satisfying German Soldiers.

Were sales of A Nightmare Christmas merchandise on a decline and Disney is attempting to hold onto their "goth" demographic? Is Disney attempting to attract a new "hipster" phenomonon? Was the "imagineer" not fully aware what the design was know for? How was he able to slip this design the know for being very "attentions to detail" Walt Disney World corporation? Maybe the "imagineer" was an avid follower of Astronomy and had no idea of the images connection to Joy Division. Was the "imgineer" let go as soon as the history of Joy Division was discovered?

What would Ian and the rest of the guys in Joy Division (of course all now in New Order) would think about this shirt?

Either way I was totally stunned when on the first day of my recent trip to Walt Disney World, (and you can bet you will be hearing about that trip in future posts) I walked into Epcot's Mouse Gear store and laid my eyes this shirt up on the racks next to all the classic Disney World shirts.

During the rest of the trip I spotted at least a dozen other people sporting the shirt around the parks and hotels. A quick Google search when I returned home shows this to be a highly sought after piece of Walt Disney World attire.It looks like the Unknown Pleasures "imagineer" may have just known what he was doing.


The title of this post was totally stolen from my friend Carlos A. Thanks Carlos!


1 comment:

  1. Did you notice that Pitchfork ran a story on this shirt this week? I almost bought the shirt at Disney last week, but after spending all of my high school years in black t-shirts I can't seem to wear one anymore.

    ReplyDelete