From Walt to Woodstock: How Disney Created the Counterculture

Many biographies on famous people fit an agenda. In the case of Walt Disney, many biographies have axes to grind. Walter Elias Disney was a complex man. Douglas Brode illustrates how the conventional wisdom about Walt Disney isn't accurate. Walt's father was a socialist--in the days of the Red Scare, no less. "From Walt to Woodstock" provides ample evidence that Walt Disney was no reactionary--the commonly-held image of the Disney company is of a right-wing conservative corporation promoting an agenda out of the 19th Century. When I ordered this book, I was expecting the thesis to be "Walt the Bohemian." After reading the book, I got the impression that Walt did not set out to create the counterculture, but instead laid the groundwork for it by trying to improve mainstream society. Not just by making great entertainment, Walt Disney field-tested urban planning, social engineering, and mass media techniques. I think Walt did improve mainstream American society. Walt Disney was a progressive man--progress was good! View his presentation of E.P.C.O.T. --made about six weeks before he died--and see for yourself. Go back to 1943 and the release of "Victory Through Air Power." Look at Walt Disney's prophetic "Man in Space." I enjoyed Brode's book. His viewpoints on Disney movies were fresh and new for me, and now I want to see them again to see the things Brode saw in them. Usually I get something out of a book even when I don't like it. Many books on Walt Disney paint a dark picture of an evil, greedy man--if not for the name, I wouldn't know who they were talking about. Brode's Walt is someone I'd like to have for a friend. I'm happy to add this book to my collection of Walt Disney biographies.

I enjoyed reading this immensely. Brode's argument is quite convincing, but I must point out that (1) Peter Max did not create the movie Yellow Submarine, he had nothing to do with it whatsoever, (2) Ken Kesey did not cross the county spiking water reservoirs with LSD, although I believe the possibility was DISCUSSED once, at least in the pages of Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and (3) the Beatles did not create a song about Mary Poppins' Uncle Albert, but Paul McCartney did, after the break-up of the band. The song is called, I believe, Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, and I have a new appreciation for it now. I was born in 1958, and I can remember as a teenager hearing my father say something to the effect of "Whoever wrote that song had to be smoking something." How right he was!

As always, Douglas Brode delivers in spades. Professor Brode completely overturns the idea of Disney as a middlebrow filmmaker by detailing how Disney movies played a key role in transforming the children of the Eisenhower era into the radical, pot-smoking Aquarians (also known as losers) of the '60s. Fortunately, Professor Brode either lacks or effectively hides any bias (such as mine) against those members of the '60s movement that to this day ruin our nation. Another testiment to Brode's professionalism and character. A must read for Disney movie buffs...