Disney's War Against the Counterculture.

December 9, 2004 1:27 PM

Disney's War Against the Counterculture. Parody Mickey Mouse and see your life turn to madness, even if things are more or set straight in the end. “The main point,” O’Neill says, “was to buck corporate thinking. We just didn’t like bullshit.” [via]
posted by Sticherbeast (8 comments total)

Want to join the fight against censorship? Send a contribution to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 1:48 PM on December 9, 2004

“Doing something stupid once is just plain stupid,” says O’Neill. “Doing something stupid twice is a philosophy. When you’re down $190,000 in a poker game, you have to raise.”

That's going in my new, highly derivative book Everything I Need to Know, I learned in Atlantic City.
posted by ba at 2:12 PM on December 9, 2004

fascinating read! what a character. disney is the beast. but disney vs o'neill, unfair fight... how about a REAL GRUDGE MATCH?
posted by jcruelty at 2:54 PM on December 9, 2004

Thumbnails, linking to sizable jpegs of the Air Pirates Funnies covers mentioned in the Reason article, can be found, along with related text, on The Hippie Years, Page 2 of Mogo Zuzu.
posted by y2karl at 3:35 PM on December 9, 2004

Its good-hearted, uplifting, family-oriented fare drew upon values—patriotism and Puritanism, consumerism and conformity—that the cultural revolution of the ’60s had called into question

i boil everytime i see a reference like this. disney owned subsidiaries have been pumping out a steaming geyser of explicit violence and implicit sex since the 1970's.
posted by quonsar at 5:12 PM on December 9, 2004

Here's an old post of mine about Disney's killjoy attitude toward counterculture parodists in the 1960s. Disney's role as 800-pound gorilla in intellectual property disputes goes back many decades.
posted by jonp72 at 5:50 PM on December 9, 2004

Odd Bodkins

I guess he's still doing them . . .
posted by undule at 6:07 PM on December 9, 2004

We just didn’t like bullshit.

Steinbeck, through Cannery Row's Doc, warned us of the rarity of love for true things.

I used to think a contempt for outright bullshit (like that emanating from the corporation in question...as well as from most corporations) was universal.

Then I awoke in them there good ol' U.$. of A. Keeps one's idealism in firm check.

~wink~
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 8:50 PM on December 9, 2004