Brave. Cool. Terribly Important. Part 2.
Supermoons
On April 27th, 1989 the Chicago Tribune published an article about Walt Disney Productions after the theme park and entertainment corporation demanded that three daycare centers remove paintings of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy from their walls or else the the centers would face a lawsuit for copyright infringement. Rather than concerning ourselves with whether Disney or the Florida daycares were right or wrong in the issue, I think it’s more important to remove our desire to evaluate the circumstance from a good versus bad perspective, and instead ask a few questions. Did Disney have the children’s best interests in mind when demanding that ‘their’ characters be removed from the daycare walls? Did the daycares have the children’s best interests in mind when they painted Disney characters on their walls? In what ways does Mickey Mouse provide children with intellectual stimulation or encourage critical thinking skills? Lastly, and, maybe, most importantly, who cares?
We should care, and here is why. In part one of this article, I wrote about how I created a picture book called Moon, and how during the process of the book’s creation, I cautiously avoided writing a story that set out to teach lessons about how children — or anyone — should feel and react to experiences. I’ve never quite understood an adult’s condescension when addressing a child’s emotions as less important or trivial. How exactly does one quantify emotion, anyway? Is it because adults have experience that we tend to discredit a child’s emotions? Experience with what exactly? Experience in acclimating to myths to which we’ve been subjected since birth?
Characters and stories from popular culture have saturated our psyches with myth, where at an early age, we all inevitably catch the mythological virus. For better or worse we attribute many of our pursuits and desires to pop culture’s execution of myths that we adopt as common sense or absolute truth. The Disney versus daycare debacle of 1989 is one example of how we use and rely on popular culture to create meaning from our lives and relate to one another. Therefore, when considering myth, it should come as no surprise that people feel as though they share a bond with a character like Mickey Mouse, that Mickey is a part of them, a friend, and that they have a stake or ownership in how and where Mickey Mouse can be present in their lives. Yet as the Chicago Tribune article exemplifies, Mickey Mouse and his creators beg to differ.
But not to worry, Supermoons and I are taking care of this issue. How? Oh, it’s really simple. I published Moon and didn’t copyright it. Now I travel to schools with the book — a story about what the moon does when we fall asleep — and recruit members to my co-creating gang called Supermoons, who showcase their own interpretations of Moon through art and storytelling. Whereas popular culture exists as a means of production through which we relate to one another, I just made Supermoons in charge of the means of production. The children relate to one another through the process of their own personal creations rather than a commercially mass produced product. By doing so, Moon encourages critical thought from its audience in an effort to reject the ‘common sense’ barriers of myth while remaining in a constant state of process and change. Oh yeah, the kids also create all of their own merchandise. In other words, a Supermoon has swag. A Supermoon is brave, cool, and terribly important. Need to see it to believe it? No problem. Here are a few samples I’ve selected from over 500 Supermoons stories and artworks that I’ve published on my website so far:
Thanks so much for reading about Moon and Supermoons. To find out more about what I’m doing, check out:
