Minnie Mouse Scary Drag Parody (Mickey's Missing)

Please watch in HD! Click from 240/360/480p to 720p.

Written and Performed By: Felix Bernstein
Filmed By: Patrick Urbankowski
Made in the summer of 2009, my junior year of High School.

The film follows Teeny Mouse, my parody of Minnie Mouse, as she attempts to process the loss of her husband Mickey, who has disappeared. She wonders if, without him, she will have to go on playing the same pathetic roles she did before. Mickey, who silently gazes upon and records Teeny, encourages and choreographs her hysterics; in much the same way normative spectators encourage queer spectacles of parody, pathos, drag, and camp. The struggle to create a politically empowering parody of Minnie Mouse was difficult since gender parodies have both the subversive potential to reclaim negative images and the destructive potential to fail and reproduce the very norms and traumas they attempt to subvert. Therefore, sometimes Teeny Mouse shows distance from her cartoonish helpless role and sometimes she is entirely absorbed by it.

*
Finding my way as a young, gay individual amid cultural and social pressures for spectacle and specialness has been a chaotic and exciting journey. YouTube has been the perfect grounds for me to explore these complex issues. I came out of the closet on YouTube in 2009: comically embodying a manic gay stereotype, in clown face paint with big cherry-red lips and a powder-white face. Then I confessed with feigned naiveté: "My name is Felix Bernstein and I am a homosexual." My coming out video was as much a satire on my generation's use of the Internet to publicize private information, as it was an affirmation of my sexual orientation and identity.
In addition to playing Minnie Mouse, I have also played Lamb Chop, and Cinderella's Wicked Stepmother in films for YouTube. I'm drawn to cartoon characters because they have no independent existence outside of their performed artifice. I look for the repressed shadows of the characters, the inappropriate, perverse, and "wrong" emotions that go hidden in their performances. Then I play with these shadows, allowing Lamb Chop to show her hidden rage and sexuality, the Wicked Stepmother to show her vulnerable dependence for male approval, and Minnie Mouse to show her frustration at always performing a helpless, naïve femininity. I also play with my own shadows, for instance my desire as a gay man to identify with and portray stereotypical images of women. In this way I hope to add a new critical and reflective dimension to queer spectacles. Beginning a process of healing that I hope continues with the viewer, who can now question the roles that they have been asked to perform and explore the shadows that they have hidden.

© Felix Bernstein 2010

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• Felix Bernstein
• camp
• campy
• Disney
• parody
• satire
• drag
• hysterics
• bathos
• pathos
• melodrama
• queer
• gay
• Douglas Sirk
• Mickey Mouse
• minnie mouse
• wacky
• crazy
• colorful
• bard college
• theory
• scary
• bloody
• dark
• gender
• critique
• teen
• video
• art
• performance
• zizek
• judith butler
• shame
• homophobia
• anti-gay
• it
• gets
• better
• young
• sexy
• homosexual
• faggot
• twink
• clown
• freak
• deranged
• nostalgia
• trippy
• ryan
• trecartin
• john waters
• george kuchar
• kuchar brothers
• Slavoj Žižek

[11meow11]

Sequel to Mulholland Drive?

[puck0630]

love that final shot. mickey's ears and camera. always watching!... didn't notice that until i watched it this time. haha.  love this

[TalkoftheHill]

Pushing Postmodernism's pliable boundaries, eh?

[DarkwingMantis]

huh.... well what do you know. I work in TV and thought Id seen it all.......

[anemone9]

Oh Mickey you're so fine

You're so fine you blow my mind

[395073]

What is this I don't even

[Liam888888]

Wat.

[pandacaekz]

wtf?

[mk9412]

lolwut?

[onlyonebowman]

WHAT THE FUCK! GAAAAAHHHHH