Comment:

Walt Disney has, of course, completely altered our cultural picture of what Cinderella, Snow White, Pinocchio, etc. all look like and how their stories go. Even current depictions of these classic tales can't help but reference the more popular versions, can't help but copy - or at least nod at - Disney's modifications to their plot elements.

There is a videogame that came out recently called Lies of P that (for some damn reason) mashes the story of Pinocchio into a Soulslike format. The "cricket" in that game is not named Jiminy - the actual name "Jiminy Cricket" is owned by the Mouse - so they named it "Gemini"... which is, of course, pronounced by the characters in-game as "Jemminy". I admire the ingenuity.

I am certainly not the first to point out the cruel irony that a megacorporation which built its fortune from stories in the public domain is ceaselessly and cynically campaigning to extend their copyrights into infinity (and, presumably, beyond). Money does what money does, and it really doesn't matter how charitable and avuncular the hand holding it pretends to be.

But, of course, Disney's cultural and economic hegemony is tied to America's, and, in the future of Forward, that dominance has wilted somewhat. All empires wax and wane, do they not?

Transcript:

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0315 – 2167/07/07/09:13 – sidewalk, hover-skating to school
LC: Okay, this is really good.
Zoa: Once again, damké scharikato, Caleb Paratta.
CP: You’re welcome.
Zoa: And how’s your Jiminies?
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CP: M-m-my what?
Zoa: Jiminy Cricket? From Pinocchio? I was making a Pinocchio reference. It was that or “cricket” the sport.
LC: Yeah, I didn’t get that reference either. I’ve never heard of Jiminy Cricket, and I’ve seen Pinokyo five times.
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Zoa: Ah, you probably watched the Akemisteiner version, where the bug is named Chiyoko. “Jiminy” was from the Disney version back in the nineteen hundreds. That version got used in a bunch of promotional stuff afterwards, kind of like a mascot.
CP: This would have been before the b-big breakup, then. In the Conglomerate Age.
Zoa: Yeah, back when one corporation could own half the media in the world, instead of just a third of it.
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LC: So “Jiminy” is the original cricket, then.
Zoa: Actually, the original would be from Carlo Collodi’s book, where the cricket doesn’t have a name and Pinocchio immediately kills it with a hammer. It doesn’t mention if it gets blended up with caramel after that, though.
CP: I d-d-don’t think I’d w-want to eat this if it had b-been trying to t-teach m-me to be a real child a f-few seconds ago.
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