The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and Took Over the World

(Hardback)

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Description

A sweeping history of Disney's rise to cultural dominance that pulls all the skeletons from the corporate closet and playfully decodes the hidden political messages in all of your favorite childhood movies.

Vicky Osterweil takes us on a quest to discover the black magic by which Disney has successfully made its image synonymous with not only youthful splendor, but pop culture itself. Their "imagineers" have made it impossible to reflect on the wonders of growing up without immediately thinking of Disney's movies, Disney's amusement parks, and various other bits and bobs of related Disney merchandising. What Osterweil unearths are reactionary political commitments and maleficent legal maneuvers-from fighting to protect the patent on the COVID vaccine, to breaking early efforts at an animator's union-so cartoonishly evil they would make one of Walt's own animated villains blush.

and beyond!

Reviews

Praise forIn Defense of Looting:

"Osterweil debuts with a provocative, Marxist-informed defense of looting as a radical and effective protest tactic...a bracing rethink of the goals and methods of protest."
Publishers Weekly

"A reflection on violence as a form of social protest that can lead to social change."
New York Journal of Books

"[In Defense of Looting] is as much an argument for the possibilities of a riot as it is a reckoning between history as it happens and history as it is read.... [Osterweil's] readings of history lend the book its exhilarating quality and make anything seem possible."
Frieze

"In Defense of Lootingis a clear and damning indictment of the origins and evolution of property rights, race, and policing in the United States. Ultimately, Osterweil demands we not only overcome the respectability politics animating our desire for 'peaceful protests,' but that we ambitiously work to abolish the racial capitalist logics at the heart of American empire."
Zo Samudzi, coauthor ofAs Black As Resistance

"In engaging and accessible prose, Vicky Osterweil lays out an intellectual defense of looting that is as thorough and compelling as it is necessary and revolutionary. The history here is alive and vital, and Osterweil's grasp of it pushes any reader who has doubted the legitimacy of looting as a political action to search deeply and reconsider their position."
Mychal Denzel Smith, author ofStakes Is High: Life After the American Dream

"With the right ideas at the right time, Vicky Osterweil has given us a powerful tool for resistance in the 21st century. In Defense of Looting could change American politics forever."
Malcolm Harris, author ofKids These Days: The Making of Millennials

"A passionate, in-depth study of one of history's most radical-and reviled-forms of direct action. In clear, precise prose, Osterweil lays bare the racialized settler-colonial roots of policing and property in the US, outlines the possibilities of militant resistance, and emphasizes the necessity of Black and Indigenous liberation. In Defense of Looting is a bracing and necessary read, written with great care and radical hope. As Osterweil herself says, 'The future is ours to take. We just need to loot it.'"
Kim Kelly, author ofFight Like Hell

"In this book the act of looting is the starting point for challenging the conventional beliefs around people, property, and justice. How we treat looting, whose acts are considered looting, and what is looted frame essential interventions in understanding uprising. The stakes are not of 'stuff,' TVs, and clothes; they're about ourselves and our communities. Whether at the policy level or in our personal daily politics, the historical insights and moral clarity of this book illuminate a way forward from the real crimes that structure our society."
Ayesha A. Siddiqi, writer and emeritus editor-in-chief ofThe New Inquiry

Author Bio

Vicky Osterweil is a writer, organizer, and brick-mason based in Philadelphia. Her first book, In Defense of Looting, was an account of historical struggles for liberation in the United States. She is currently the in-house film critic for AJ+, and cohosts a popular movie review podcast, Cerise and Vicky Rank the Movies.

She has written about the intersections of film, politics and culture for a variety of outlets, including The Paris Review, Art in America, Al Jazeera America, The Baffler, Dissent, Lux Magazine, and The New Inquiry, where she was also a culture editor for many years. Her series on the political economy and cultural role of videogames, Well Played, which ran in Real Life Magazine from 2019-2020, won her the Blogger of the Year award from prestigious video game criticism outlet Critical Distance.