Disney likes to refer to Disneyland as "The Happiest Place on Earth." The band Joy Division, in spite of having the word "joy" right there in its name, was the least happy band on earth. It made dark and depressing music, until lead singer Ian Curtis committed suicide. As a result, one would not expect Disney to take inspiration from one of Joy Division's albums for a new shirt design, but expectations and reality sometimes don't align.
Joy Division's cover art for their first album Unknown Pleasures was very distinct, the successive pulses from the first pulsar discovered, rendered in white on a black background. Disney, which believes all things in the world must, at some point, resemble Mickey Mouse, altered the artwork accordingly. You can purchase the shirt on Disney's website, and all proceeds go to a corporation which has probably never heard the album which they openly state inspired the garment. If they had, the shirt likely would not exist.
I bring it up only because it emphasizes the importance of understanding what you're associating yourself with when making a product. I like Joy Division, though I'll freely admit that the band isn't exactly filled with sunshine and happiness. I even like Disney, or at least I like many of the films they have made. The problem is that while they are two flavors that taste good on their own, depending on your mood, they don't go well together. It's not even the most ridiculous example of such a manipulation. There was a song called "What Have They Done to My Song Ma," which was about having the meaning of a song altered by others. This song was later altered to be about a new kind of oatmeal, and I've always wondered if this was a subtle joke that people at the top of the food chain didn't catch.
It's a problem that could be easily avoided by doing a bit of research, which makes it strange that the mistake happens repeatedly. If you're going to link your brand to a band, it's easy to listen to their work - Unknown Pleasures is under 40 minutes, for example, and you can probably get a good idea of the content even quicker. Just reading a lyric sheet or a short biography about a band is enough to tell if you want your corporation associated with them, and it's just common sense to see if two brands can be linked together happily.
While in some cases people won't get the association - this particular band was defunct before I was born, and Disney remains a brand dedicated to kids - if you do it seems at least a bit unseemly. I don't want to think of a depressed Mickey Mouse, it seems wrong, but now Disney is making that association, and it leads to an entirely new aspect of his character that they never really planned to reveal.
I'm sure this is just the first of many such associations which will happen this year. It's an election year in the United States, and their politicians are notorious for doing the same thing, and making artists quite angry in the process. As long as people identify brands with music, there will be more people who question whether or not the associations being made are wise ones, or if anyone actually chose to listen to the band in question before signing off. In the process, it'll continue to amuse people who actually do pay attention.
