It’s hard to tell whether this is the most punk rock thing the Disney corporation has ever done or whether the company is just trolling the entire internet for the hell of it. Either way, Disney’s online store is now selling the shirt that you see on that waxy Justin Long-looking guy above, as the Daily Swarm points out. It’s Peter Saville’s iconic design for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album cover, except mutated into the shape of Mickey Mouse’s face. Seeing as how Mickey Mouse and Ian Curtis are on opposite ends of every cultural, emotional and voice-octave scale, this is pretty fucked up and/or funny.
Here’s how the Disney Store ad copy describes the shirt: “Inspired by the iconic sleeve of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album, this Waves Mickey Mouse Tee incorporates Mickey’s image within the graphic of the pulse of a star. That’s appropriate given few stars have made bigger waves than Mickey!” Well, that explains it.
UPDATE: Disney’s pulled the shirt.
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Now if they make a shirt with Donald Duck on the cover of “Closer”, I’ll be all on that.
I’m VERY tempted to take this to one of those “We’ll Print ANYTHING On a T-Shirt” mall kiosks…
Does it come in dog hoody?
Thank god American Apparel makes clothes for dogs. I’ve always wanted my dog to look like he has a smug sense of entitlement.
I love you for making this.
I love you too…but I fear that Love will tear us apart.
UPDATE: Peter Hook responds saying:
“I have seen a lot of Mickey Mouse t-shirts in my time. But I have to say this is probably the best… I hope that [Disney] will be as understanding when we start doing Donald Duck shirts.”
http://pitchfork.com/news/45214-new-order-members-not-involved-in-mickey-mouse-joy-division-shirt-peter-hook-responds/
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150563004719679&set=a.67762944678.69260.689784678&type=1&theater
You have no idea how hard that was to find
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to Radio Disney.
I prefer Zazu Order
next up: House of Dolls- The Ride
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do you work at urban outfitters?
I don’t think anyone thinks Joy Division is “underground.”
That’s because there IS no underground anymore, thanks to the double-edged sword that is the internet. I’m willing to bet that half the people who wear those shirts (and this POS shirt included) wouldn’t know one of Joy Division’s songs if it was featured on The Krapdashians. This band’s music meant a lot to me as a teen growing up in the 80s. To see it trivialized like this… not cool.
Of course, it does make perfect sense when you think about the Nazi connection between Disney (Nazi Propaganda films among other things) & Joy Division (named after the Jewish female prisoners made to “attend” to German soldiers during WWII).
Disney didn’t make Nazi propaganda films. Der Fuehrer’s Face was actually a piece of anti-Nazi propaganda, and it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 1942.
Yeah, and Factory Records also had a band called Durutti Column at the same time, as Tony Wilson said in “24 hour Party People”: Semiotic hijacking can be confusing at times…
SOPA, please come back. All is forgiven.
Christmas comes late.
That sound you hear is Ian Curtis rolling over in his grave.
Not rolling over so much as spastically dancing in his grave………….too soon?
LOLZ