Walt Disney

The King of Pop Culture

Four decades after his death in 1966, Walt Disney remains one of the most important – and divisive – figures in American popular culture. Disney and his legacy are a tangle of contradictions. He cared little about making money and spent recklessly to perfect his early films, yet his name has become inextricably linked with crass commercialism and big profits. He was an artistic visionary who pushed the limits of technology, yet he's better remembered as an old-fashioned nostalgist whose films portrayed small towns and cheery endings.

Disney had stopped drawing characters by the time his studio created Mickey Mouse, yet he's seen as the creative force behind his company's ubiquitous characters. He worked in cartoons, a medium seen as a sideshow or novelty, yet he transformed the form to the extent that Snow White, his first feature film, won critical accolades and huge box-office receipts. Disney yearned for utopian environments both in his workplace and in his theme parks, yet he made employees miserable with his mean streak, vindictiveness and nitpicking perfectionism. He was often oblivious to politics, yet Disney's detractors paint him as...