Le Club Mickey

I was a charter member of The Mickey Mouse Club. On Oct. 3, 1955, I had my ears and my membership card as I sat in front of the TV and watched this marvelous new show. It wasn't just a show, it was my show and my club.

Disney was a genius at reaching children. Everything he touched was sprinkled with the golden glitter of fairy dust. After 48 years, I can still see it's sparkle.

The Mickey Mouse Club is an American Institution that has been resurrected decade after decade proving it's standing moral fiber. In the 1950s era, The Mickey Mouse Club was it for millions of children across America. You either were a Mouseketeer or you were not. This was the day and age of adjusting your dual antennas at the back of your television set to get a clear picture in either UHF or VHF. There was no digital cable or internet back then. When the mouse was on you sat and you watched till it was over. Children 5 days a week religiously tuned into see and hear what Mickey Mouse, Jimmy, Roy, and The Mouseketeers had planned for them.

With Disney nowadays being all about the Blu Ray Disc and High Def this that and the other I amazed that they have not gotten off their collective lazy rear ends and digitally restored all the episodes from beginning to end. Including all the bonus materials that currently resides in the archives of Disney Studios.

Next year this children's show of children's shows marks its 50th anniversary, and I am steamed that The Disney Channel does not air the retreads anymore. In fact, The Disney Channel hardly airs anything Disney anymore. Therefore, I don't watch The Disney Channel anymore.

It would be a great tribute to a classic if the following happened:

1) The Disney Channel would start airing the shows and airing them WITHOUT those cuts.

2) Disney Studios would put together either a 'season' or 'best of' set on DVD.

(At least, Disney should consider putting the Club serials on DVD, you know, Spin and Marty, The Hardy Boys, Corky and White Shadow, Annette).

The Mickey Mouse Club is one of the great achievements of television. A heartwarming beautiful show that always presents good individual segments. A classic that gives you a warm feeling. Great!

To create a show or movie with an animal character, such as Lassie, Benji, Charlotte or the Black Stallion is reasonable enough, especially for children. A show based on the worship of an animal character, in this case a mouse, seems a little ridiculous. Yet the whole Mickey Mouse Club idea has to be very American. Entertainment industries have constantly capitalized on icons produced for movies and television and exploited them to the hilt for profit. The studio corporations know that when Americans fall in love with characters and worlds from the movies and television, part of the spectator public wants to connect with it on a deeper level. The Mickey Mouse Club allowed younger viewers enthralled with the Disney universe to experience their favorite mouse on television once a week instead of only when mom and dad would take them to the cinema.

Simultaneously, all things considered, The Mickey Mouse Club was a good children's show with merit. The original show incorporated games, educational segments, sing-a-longs, and even some dramatic episodes. It seems to me I remember the Hardy Boys, but I am not sure. In short, the Mickey Mouse Club encouraged children to be children. And hey, the young Annette Funicello was worth the price of admission. She will probably be best remembered for this show rather than her silly beach movies 10 years later.

Today most children's programming via the networks is about pure entertainment, barring PBS, and a lot of it seems grossly inappropriate for underage viewers who are not yet pre-adolescents. Propagating that 8-to-10-year-olds should have boyfriends and girlfriends, i.e. behave like adults or even adolescents, is I think harmful misinformation. Children are still learning what is appropriate and inappropriate except for what they see modeled in front of them, which is often on television. If the Mickey Mouse Club had a clear message, it was that childhood should be enjoyed for what it is, and there is a magical wonder about childhood that should not be missed.

Still, it raises my eyebrow that the show's participants would not only sing hymns to a fictional mouse but don mouse-inspired attire. Even as a kid, I thought the mouse ears were ridiculous, especially on the adults! But given the low-quality of material being presented to children today, maybe the mouse ears are a small price to pay. Afterall, donning the mouse ears represents "make believe", the essence of childhood.