Disneyland Memorial Orgy

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Disneyland Memorial Orgy
Wallace Wood , 1967

Link to the picture
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Disneyland Memorial Orgy is a lewd hidden object created by the American comic artist Wallace Wood . It first appeared in May 1967 as a centerfold in the satirical magazine The Realist and has since found wide distribution as a poster . It shows how the cartoon characters of the Walt Disney group celebrate the death of the company founder Walt Disney, who died in December 1966, with a dissolute orgy in Disneyland .

description

Woods Tableau shows the most famous characters of the Disney group indulging in unrestrained sexual and other debauchery: Lady and the Tramp are just as unabashed as Goofy with Minnie Mouse , while a rather neglected Mickey Mouse stands by and takes a shot of heroin, Tick, trick and track watch Daisy Duck under her skirt, the elf Tinkerbell performs a striptease in front of Peter Pan, Dagobert Duck and Pinocchio, and so on. In the background, Cinderella Castle shines with the glow of dollar signs , while in the lower center of the picture Pluto urinates on a Mickey Mouse poster.

Origin and reception

The idea for the cartoon came from Paul Krassner , then editor of Realist . He was inspired by the famous cover of Time magazine from April 8, 1966, with the headline Is God Dead? was titled; After some deliberation, Krassner came to the conclusion that the death of their creator must also have meant a liberation for Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and all the other Disney characters, which should be duly celebrated.

Wood's graphic implementation of the idea soon proved to be a resounding success. After the May issue was sold out, Krassner sold prints for $ 1 each; however, the original drawing was stolen from the printer's room.

Litigation

The Disney group has meanwhile considered a lawsuit against the realist , but finally refrained from drawing more attention to the work, and because the expected damages were hardly worth the effort. It was not until the basic idea of ​​the cartoon was picked up by the underground comic anthology Air Pirates Funnies in 1971 and rolled out into a multi-page strip that the company filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement . The four accused artists argued that their appropriation and re-use of the Disney characters was covered on the one hand by freedom of the press and on the other by the principle of fair use under copyright law. The federal judge Albert Charles Wollenberg , who previously in 1962 with his condemnation of comedians Lenny Bruce had caught for violations of morality stir condemned the defendants in 1975 to pay damages in the amount of $ 190,000. This decision was upheld in 1978 by a federal appeals court; a petition for appeal to the United States Supreme Court was dismissed in January 1979.

literature