Here’s what the twisted minds at Adult Swim did with Steamboat Willie

Most of the Internet’s use of Steamboat Willie—the earliest version of Mickey Mouse that has recently entered the public domain—can be summed up in one classic copypasta. “Drew like a dark, fucked up version of [Steamboat Willie] haha,” the meme goes. “Just a glimpse into my dark reality. A full stare into my twisted perspective would make most simply go insane lmao.” See: proto-Mickey with pointy little teeth and an evil expression. How ghastly, how grotesque! This is not the non-threatening Mickey Mouse we know and love! Many of these dark, fucked up takes on Steamboat Willie are ironic and in on the joke, serving as commentary on the inevitable “twisted” projects that will employ the mouse’s visage. Now Adult Swim has entered the fray with its own gently NSFW Steamboat Willie, and the lines have become blurred about what’s twisted in an ironic way and what’s a sincere attempt at edginess.

Adult Swim first aired the brief interstitial on January 7, which features an animation of Steamboat Willie thrusting onto and kissing the text “PUBLIC DOMAIN BITCH.” Adult Swim is known for its cheeky little bumpers between programming (in 2020, mimicking AS bumps became a whole viral TikTok trend). This one’s not so very different, and we can take it at face value as a mild middle finger to the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the world, from a tiny subsidiary of another major entertainment conglomerate.

The question is really: is scary Mickey or sex-act Mickey the best we can do? Is this the most punk public domain usage of one of the most iconic symbols in the history of media? Because Mickey is the pinnacle of children’s media, the obvious edgy twist on the character is to go bloody or sexy, but—as evidenced by the “twisted perspective” meme—it doesn’t take a lot of imagination or ingenuity to put a knife in the hands of a beloved kid’s character. In fact, it’s basically expected at this point that these characters entering the public domain will get a cheap slasher made shortly after, and even the producer-director of Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey is skeptical of the strategy.

“I don’t know if any of them are going to, you know, try to make them good,” Rhys Frake-Waterfield told IndieWire of the Steamboat Willie horror projects on deck. “That getting repeated all the time, it won’t have the same kind of hit. It doesn’t have the same kind of longevity for what we’re trying to do. I personally believe the only way that this becomes sustainable for us making films is to really focus on doing a select few, the ones we think are best, and making them have a really high quality.”

Whether or not public domain slashers are sustainable, it’ll be interesting to see if anyone finds any other kind of use for Steamboat Willie. Until then, it seems we’re stuck in this dark reality.