From Walt to Woodstock: How Disney Created the Counterculture

Douglas Brode

University of Texas Press

PO Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819

www.utexas.edu/utpress

ISBN 0292709242 hc $55.00 252+xxxii pp.

ISBN 0292702736 trade paper $22.95

Brode takes up the incomparable, extensive influence of Walt Disney on the counterculture of the 1960s. Disney's influence is seen in the 60's utopian social ideas, psychedelic art, rebellious individuality, and subversion of traditional, middle-class, family values, among other attributes of the time. Needless to say, this is not the common view of Walt Disney. But Brode's drawing together of a great amount of material from diverse, but inter-related fields such as psychology, fairy tales, and cinema is persuasive. The author sees into the seemingly innocuous Disney animated and film characters and the surface sentimentalities raised by their personalities and situations. For instance, Brode exposes how the infectious liveliness and optimism of Mary Poppins played by Julie Andrews called into question family values. Similarly, the Davy Crockett character played by Fess Parker was an almost visionary individualist going against authority. In "Fantasia"--cited also as "the ultimate trip" reminiscent of an aesthetically awesome, mind-changing drug-induced "trip"--the Mickey Mouse character transcends the dislikable world of physical labor by learning the wisdom of ancient texts. And so on through numerous comparisons between the abundant works of Walt Disney and aspects of the 1960s counterculture. Besides teaching cinema at Syracuse U., Brode is also a screenwriter and journalist. "From Walt to Woodstock" is cultural analysis at its most illuminating.

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