Synopsis:
Ira warns Amy Schumer about the folly of fucking with the House of Mouse and Lucas Film, the greatest battle between the conservative right and the hippie counterculture that was sparked by a comic book, Walt Disney Productions vs Dan O’Neill and the Air Pirates, Amy Schumer and her sexy spoof of Star Wars, Richard Belzer vs Hulk Hogan & Mr. T on live TV and the eight ways your mind can be bent against your will.
Recommended Reading:
The Pirates and the Mouse: Disney’s War Against the Counterculture by Bob Levin (ISBN: 1-56097-530-X) – During a time of unprecedented political, social, and cultural upheaval in U.S. history, one of the fiercest battles was ignited by a comic book. In 1963, the San Francisco Chronicle made 21-year-old Dan O’Neill the youngest syndicated cartoonist in American newspaper history. As O’Neill delved deeper into the emerging counterculture, his strip, Odd Bodkins, became stranger and stranger and more and more provocative, until the papers in the syndicate dropped it and the Chronicle let him go. The lesson that O’Neill drew from this was that what America most needed was the destruction of Walt Disney. O’Neill assembled a band of rogue cartoonists called the Air Pirates (after a group of villains who had bedeviled Mickey Mouse in comic books and cartoons). They lived communally in a San Francisco warehouse owned by Francis Ford Coppola and put out a comic book, Air Pirates Funnies, that featured Disney characters participating in very un-Disneylike behavior, provoking a mammoth lawsuit for copyright and trademark infringements and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Disney was represented by one of San Francisco’s top corporate law firms and the Pirates by the cream of the counterculture bar. The lawsuit raged for 10 years, from the trial court to the US Supreme Court and back again. | |
The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation by Robert Jay Lifton (ISBN: 0-465-06421-3) – “Proteanism”—or the protean self—describes a psychological phenomenon integral to our times. We live in a world marked by breathtaking historical change and instantaneous global communication. Our lives seem utterly unpredictable: there are few absolutes. Rather than collapsing under these threats and pulls, Robert Jay Lifton tells us, the self turns out to be remarkably resilient. Like the Greek god Proteaus, who was able to change shape in response to crisis, we create new psychological combinations, immersing ourselves in fresh and surprising endeavors over our lifetimes. |
Playlist:
1. Excerpt from Dr. No
2. History Repeating (Featuring Shirley Bassey) – Propeller Heads (Decks and Drums and Rock and Roll)
3. Black Light – Material (Halucination Engine)
4. If 666 was ’96 (DXT Mix) (Featuring Bootsy Collins) – Altered Beats (Assassin Knowledges of the Remanipulated)
5. No One In The World – W.F.O. (Excursions In Ambience)
6. Ladbroke Grove – Danny Saber (The Acid Jazz Test Part Two)
7. Le “Main Guache” De Fats Waller – Bonjour Monsieur Basie (The Acid Jazz Test Part Two)
8. Deadman Walking – Praxis Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis)
9. Ali Click – Brian Eno (Nerve Net)
10. Christiansands – Tricky (Pre-Millennium Tension)
11. Words of Advice (featuring William S. Burroughs) – Material (Hallucination Engine)
12. Four Cornered Room – War (The World Is A Ghetto)
13. Ashes to Ashes (Single Version) – David Bowie (Scary Monsters)
14. Been Through The Storm – Black Violin (Unleashed 2)
15. Superman versus The Clan of the Fiery Cross Episode #5