Disney uses Joy Division album cover for Mickey Mouse T-Shirt

Most of us Floridians are familiar with the big-eared mouse and the hordes upon hordes of traffic his squeaking voice draws in to the Orlando area. He puts a smile on children’s faces all over the world, but who would have known he’s such a huge post-punk fan.

Disney recently started selling a T-shirt, which is now sold out, featuring Mickey Mouse’s head in the shape Peter Saville’s iconic cover design for 1979′s Unknown Pleasures. This is how the Disney store described 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!” (Let’s just not let the kiddies in on lead singer Ian Curtis’s suicide or the fact that the name “Joy Division” comes from the prostitution wing of a Nazi concentration camp.)

It turns out that copyright infringement is not an issue with this shirt, because the cover art was originally a diagram of PSR B1919+21, the first pulsar recording, which is published in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy and is therefore in the public domain.

Peter Hook, bassist for Joy Division and New Order, actually seemed charmed by it. The Los Angeles Times quoted Hook, saying, “I take it as a compliment . . . . If I had a pound for every time someone bootlegged Joy Division, I’d be as rich as Disney. But it’s interesting in a kitsch way. It’s this cross between something very adult and this well-known image of childhood. I’ve heard it’s sold out, so maybe it’ll become a kind of urban legend.”

Time will tell if post-punk fans are as accepting of it. But for now, if you desperately need to blend your love for Joy Division and admiration for the Disney corporation, pray for a new shipment and fork up the $24.95.

–Robert Miller