A reminder that Mickey Mouse is thinly coded minstrelsy. The tune he whistles in Steamboat Willie has a previous title so racist I won’t note it here. And Disney adopted that ditty to open all its animated films a few years ago. Minstrelsy is a long scar on our cultural landscape, one of the most popular forms of entertainment for a century, and its vestiges and symbols remain with us.
Happy New Year!
@glennf I'm uncomfortable with treating symbols as immutable. Maybe Mickey Mouse WAS thinly coded minstrelsy, but today he's just some goofy cartoon mouse and has little symbolic weight other than entertaining animation when you're younger, and is the face of a wealthy corporation when older. But I'm white so maybe there's something visually encoded in him (the white gloves?) that are immediately triggering and that just doesn't register with me.
