Mickey Mouse, political agitator and propaganda puppet
Bruce Forsyth and Fats Domino have beaten him to it. Noam Chomsky's coming up fast behind. Mickey Mouse is 80 today.
We've been having a look into his early life and found it unexpectedly eventful.
On December 15, 1937, questions were asked about him in the House of Commons:
"Mickey Mouse" in Belgrade: The expulsion of a British journalist
Mr Mander (Wolverhampton East, Labour), asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he would state what action he proposed to take with reference to the expulsion of Reuter's correspondent, Mr H. D. Harrison, from Yugoslavia on the ground that he transmitted to foreign countries a statement that a "Mickey Mouse" comic strip in a Belgrade newspaper had been banned because it bore on national politics.
The offending story had appeared on December 3.
Mickey Mouse as a "revolutionary"
According to reports from Belgrade the Yugoslav censor for art, literature, and drama has recognized in Mickey Mouse a dangerous agitator and ordered the Politika to surrender to him for destruction the latest strip or two (drawings and text) portraying Mickey Mouse's adventures, which have been appearing in serial form exclusively in that paper. There is happily no ground to fear that Yugoslavia is in any danger of losing touch for long with the personality or the activities of Mickey Mouse. But Mickey's activities in the guise of a "Prince" acquainting himself with the alleged corruption existing in high places in his country are regarded by the censor as containing revolutionary doctrines which must not be allowed to penetrate to the unsophisticated citizen.
In reply to Mr Mander, Anthony Eden (for it was he) said:
I was informed by the Yugoslav Government on December 7 that, in spite of repeated warnings, they had on many occasions had cause to complain of Mr Harrison's presentation of news to the British public. The Yugoslav Government further stated that they had been obliged on the occasion of Mr Harrison's last dispatch, dealing with an act of the censorship, to intimate to him that his continued presence in Belgrade would be undesirable. His Majesty's Minister at Belgrade took the matter up with the Yugoslav authorities, but they informed him that they were unable to alter their decision. It will be realized that the grant or withdrawal of permission to reside in any country is entirely a matter for the Government of that country to decide.
Mander wasn't going to give up that easily:
Is it right that a British subject should be expelled from a country for such a ridiculous reason as this?
But Eden gave the politician's answer:
It is not a question of whether it is right. We have always claimed for ourselves the right of acting as we think fit in relation to foreigners living in this country and as we attach importance to that, clearly I cannot take action which contradicts it.
This wasn't the first time Mickey had been in political hot water. In 1930, he was banned in Germany for reawakening "latent anti-German feeling" after a visit to the trenches. The German Board of Film Censors said:
the "artist evidently aimed at a comic representation of an action in the War. While the victorious mouse is distinguished by the French kepi, his enemies the cats are clearly recognizable as the German Army by their German steel helmets".
Revenge had to wait until the start of the war. In 1938 the Italians had banned Mickey for not being fascist enough, but in 1940 came the ultimate abuse; the Nazis enlisted him in a crude propaganda film, entitled Naughty Naughty, to represent America.
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