4 - Animated Properties

Summary

Chapter 4 explores the foundation of extended business activities and tie-ins in the 1920s and 1930s that developed around Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse. The term ‘animated properties’ acknowledges that these popular fictional representations were attributed subjecthood and, as such, came alive outside the celluloid frame. Felix and Mickey were pre-packaged as family-friendly viewing. Doll effigies and other merchandise literally took the characters into the heart of the home. The chapter discusses the ambivalent role of intellectual property registration in stabilising the character merchandising trade, exploring what was particularly distinctive about the Disney Corporation’s industrial system of production and distribution. This successful strategy was an organisational one with cultural ambitions, engaging franchise managers and licensees in educating children and the trade about the protocols of consumption attached to play. The Disney brand came to signify child-friendly cultural content of all kinds, with trust in the name secured by the deployment of a new legal creation, the phenomenon of ‘world rights’ exploited by a new managerial class, Disney Enterprises’ agents.