Join author Vicky Osterweil for a presentation of her new book on the The Walt Disney Company and its starring role in the development of a ruthless global system of intellectual property.

This event is being organized in collaboration with our friends at The Final Straw Radio and will be recorded to air on their platform.

In The Extended Universe, Vicky Osterweil takes us on a quest to discover how Disney’s “imagineers” have made it impossible to reflect on the wonders of growing up without thinking of Disney's movies, amusement parks, and merchandising. Drawing on extensive interviews with filmmakers, screenwriters, union organizers, and Disney “adults” alike, Osterweil unearths reactionary political commitments and maleficent legal maneuvers so cartoonishly evil they would make one of Walt's own animated villains blush.

Along the way, Osterweil braids together corporate skullduggery with a not entirely unsympathetic analysis of some of Disney's most famous movies. The result is an entertaining and convincing case that Disney's entire business model has been built upon a ruthless and fanatical insistence on intellectual property rights—from Steamboat Willie to Avengers: Infinity War and beyond!

Vicky Osterweil offers a masterful exposé of, and intervention against, one of the most insidious and powerful property regimes of the last century—intellectual property. Osterweil is the brilliant, generous, and revolutionary guide we need to rethink cultural production today, and kill the Mouse inside our heads.
Natasha Lennard author of Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life

Vicky Osterweil is a Philadelphia-based writer, agitator, and brickmason whose first book, In Defense of Looting, described historical struggles for liberation in the US. She is a member of the anarchist journal CAW and has written about the intersections of film, politics, and culture for publications such as 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.