Forties Backlash
"A degenerate 'middlebrow' horror, mass-produced for profit."
Codes and myths, narratives and icons, rituals and representations.
"A degenerate 'middlebrow' horror, mass-produced for profit."
Comical yet not funny, equal-opportunity in its portrayal of human folly, artificial in the extreme.
From 1944–1953, Mickey was a Mouse Without Qualities.
Single-night movies aren’t snapshots, they’re moonlit summoning rituals.
“Win big at parenting.”
Mickey’s repressed characteristics had returned… in a deformed (duckbilled) fashion!
Beatnik gives us anti-highbrow Beat-ness without the exaltation.
Over time, Mickey became progressively more juvenile in appearance.
How best to convey the pathos and tragedy of the Ex-Ex-Human Condition?
Mickey had become a cash cow.
The unmentionable boogeyman is hermeneutic vertigo.
"He is the voice and personification of the weltschmerz to the sophisticate."
For captive and captor alike, there is no escape.
"Too much whimsy and fantasy are objectionable.”