‘TRON’ MADE ME AN ATHEIST

Pause.

I’ve been thinking about ‘Tron Legacy’ a lot today. Here’s a spot of cinephile autobiography: I can break down my entire existence film by film. Officially, the film that I love the most is ‘The Outsiders’ but for all-out impact for the last twenty seven years the film has been ‘Tron.’ Why? Because it made me into a heathen. Before you assume it’s because this computerised ’82 epic made me contemplate our role in the world, technology’s prominence as the new god or Flynn’s faithless conquest over dark forces, it wasn’t that. I was four for fuck’s sake. On the run up to the film’s release I got hyped. Probably more hyped than you’ll ever know. Sick. Ill with the hype. So much so that my folks began to worry that I could be autistic.

THE MICKEY MOUSE T-SHIRT

I’m not the biggest Disney fan – never was. I always was more of a Tex Avery kid. I hold the Disney corporations precious approach to their films for this. I wasn’t going to buy ’em or squander a rental on a ‘U’ when I could be watching a ‘PG’ at the very least. Got ‘The Jungle Book’ as a book and tape and saw ‘Dumbo’ as an end-of-term school screening, but bar Donald flipping out after chipmunk troubles, the unexpectedly terrifying ‘Sleepy Hollow’ short and the glimpse of the black and white efforts on a Bank Holiday, I was never a Disney Club candidate. As I grew up as a tinpot socialist in my late teens, I treated Disney output with contempt.

I was a fool.

I’m no fan of Mr.Disney’s politics, but every time I see an atrocious ‘street artist’ use an appropriation (D*Face for example) of Disney logos or characters, my allegiance to the evil empire grows. The reason? Because these legal wall painting, fly postering, money-grabbing, A-level politicking, culture commodifying, watered-down wastes of Stolen Space don’t have a fraction of the talent that Mickey Mouse’s originator and animation legend Ube Iwerks or the cartoonist Floyd Gottfredson carried. In fact, anyone who painted a single cell for Disney’s key motion pictures of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s deserves a magazine cover over these clowns. And the Lichtenstein bites four decades too late? ‘Satirical’ reapproriations of Jack Kirby? Don’t get me fucking started. These frauds are Mickey Mouse in the most negative way.