Artists are free to violate the law? :wave:
well, I was going to say yes, but regardless of whether they are free to "violate the law" or not, it happens. It happens all the time. That's art. Appropriate, steal, homage, whatever you may call it, using other people's works as a source is a very common happening in the world of art. Its been done, especially ever since the "pop" art movement of the 60s and subsequent post modern movements. Its when you start making money off these images and mass producing it that it becomes a concern. Copywrite infringement can be complicated. Also, you need to take into consideration how close to the original "source" the images appear.
There's a large piece here at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis done by a guy who juxtaposes side by side images from Walt Disney World and Nazi Germany. Its quite alarming. And I doubt that if Disney had any say in the matter that it would still be in the gallery. Of course, they were probably his own photographs.
As for Walt stealing the idea of Mickey, well..if you are talking about the
design of the character, then, yeah. Mickey, Felix the Cat, Oswald, Bosko, Foxy, Bimbo from the Betty Boop cartoons, all these characters were based on the simple black body with a white mask design. For animator's purposes at that time, in the early, developing days of animation, it served everyone well. The design was simple, straight forward, and easy to re-draw. I wouldn't doubt that even these designs were taken out of the early comic strips of the time, like, probably Krazy Kat.
But if you are talking about Mickey's entire persona, well, I really find it hard to distinguish what Disney had Mickey do in his early cartoons with anything that any of those other characters did in their cartoons. The plots were thin, personalities were there, but very vague (usually the character, like Mickey, could simply be described as "happy-go-lucky".) The Disney Studio just got lucky and Mickey's popularity ended up dwarfing those characters at other studios. Where-as Warner Brothers dumped Bosko in favor of new characters (Porky Pig, Daffy Duck). The fact that Disney continued to use the character of Mickey Mouse in later projects,\ (the color shorts, Fantasia, the Mickey Mouse Club) is why he has obtained the world renouned statud he has today.
You could also go into an argument over whether or not these images have any roots in comic portrayals of African Americans at the time.
Sorry for responding to an old post, btw!
