Giroux+on+disney+and+childhood

Annotations 2:

1. “How Disney Magic and the Corporate Media Shape Youth Identity in the Digital Age.” //Truthout//. Web. 19 Oct. 2012. 2. Henry A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department. His most recent books include: Youth in a Suspect Society (Palgrave, 2009); Politics After Hope: Obama and the Crisis of Youth, Race, and Democracy (Paradigm, 2010); Hearts of Darkness: Torturing Children in the War on Terror (Paradigm, 2010); The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (co-authored with Grace Pollock, Rowman and Littlefield, 2010); Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism (Peter Lang, 2011); Henry Giroux on Critical Pedagogy (Continuum, 2011). His newest books: Education and the Crisis of Public Values (Peter Lang) and Twilight of the Social: Resurgent Publics in the Age of Disposability (Paradigm Publishers) will be published in 2012). Giroux is also a member of Truthout's Board of Directors. His website is www.henryagiroux.com. 3. The topics in this article touch on youth today, their thinking habits, mega corporations like Disney and their influences, and society’s current problem with overconsumption. 4. The main argument of the text is that youth today are trapped in a journey toward a lifetime of constant, unthinking consumption. Mega corporations like Disney are mostly to blame for this shift and the article supports this with various arguments. 5. Three ways the argument is supported:a. According to this article people are spending record-breaking times in front of a screen (which is true, since there wasn’t much a record to break before) and that it is estimated that the average American spends more than six hours a day watching video-based entertainment. By 2013, the numbers of daily hours spent watching television and videos will match the numbers of hours spent sleeping. Through this medium advertising and marketing industry then spends over $17 billion a year on shaping children's identities and desires and that is why we’re trapped in a cycle of overconsumption. b. Disney has headed several projects to target toddlers specifically to turn them into unthinking consumer zombies before they can even speak. This has been done through their Baby Einstein Company and has been disguised as beneficial learning tools to be used in a child's most formative years and, at worst, harmless distractions for infant audiences. c. Finally, Disney’s “star factory” that churns out teenage celebrities by the bucket load supports the paper’s argument by one Disney’s representative’s comment on Miley Cyrus, a Disney celebrity, by commenting that she is (with her alter ego and stage identity) three girls for the price of one. The paper argues that that one comment shows how Disney and Miley are encouraging girls to view their bodies as objects, their identities as things to be bought and sold, and that their emotional and psychological health as best nurtured through "retail therapy" (shopping). 6. Three quotes:a. Children are not born with consumer habits. Their identities have to be actively directed to assume the role of consumer. If Disney had its way, kids' culture would become not merely a new market for the accumulation of capital, but a petri dish for producing new commodified subjects. b. Disney uses its various entertainment platforms that cut across all forms of traditional and new media in a relentless search for young customers to incessantly bombard with a pedagogy of commerce. In the broader society, as the culture of the market displaces civic culture, children are no longer prioritized as an important social investment or viewed as a central marker for the moral life of the nation. Instead, childhood ideals linked to the protection and well-being of youth are transformed - decoupled from the "call to conscience [and] civic engagement"[64] - and redefined through what amounts to a culture of excessive individualism and the numbing of public consciousness. c. As an icon of American culture and middle-class family values, Disney actively appeals to both conscientious parents and youthful fantasies as it works hard to transform every child into a lifetime consumer of Disney products and ideas. Put the Disney corporation under scrutiny, however, and a contradiction quickly appears between a Disney culture that presents itself as the paragon of virtue and childlike innocence and the reality of the company's cutthroat commercial ethos.
 * 1) Grace Pollack recently completed her doctoral degree at McMaster University and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Western Ontario. Her ongoing research interests include cultural and media studies, historical formations of the public sphere, social policy and community development. She co-authored with Henry Giroux the second edition of "The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence," (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).
 * 1) Grace Pollack recently completed her doctoral degree at McMaster University and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Western Ontario. Her ongoing research interests include cultural and media studies, historical formations of the public sphere, social policy and community development. She co-authored with Henry Giroux the second edition of "The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence," (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).

7. Three questions:a. At one point the article states that “childhood ideals increasingly give way to a market-driven politics in which young people are prepared for a life of objectification that will simultaneously drain them of any viable sense of moral and political agency”. This is a really heavy claim that is solely attributed to Disney’s horrible marketing policies. What should be done to combat this, and whose responsibility is it? What is being done now? b. What do the youth themselves think? Do they believe they are consuming zombies with zero critical thinking ability? What are their perceptions? c. What is the author’s intent with this article? Does the author just want Disney to cease to exist completely and suddenly? Will all the problems with overconsumption be solved if Disney were to just disappear, or are there other factors at play besides mega corporations, such as (for example) with the parents themselves and how each generation is being brought up?

8. Three future investigations:a. I’d like to take a closer look at Imagination Park, which is Disney’s 340 store redesign project. The renovated stores will be entirely networked with interactive technology to create a multisensory recreational experience that encourages consumer participation and emphasizes community through collective activities. By enabling visitors to generate a narrative for their own consumption, the stores will offer the illusion that kids are the producers of meaning and have the capacity to customize their identities through the stories that are created around Disney products and places. b. Of the children and youth I personally know, no one identifies things Disney churns out like “High School Musical” or “Hannah Montana” as real life or as gospel. I’d like to look into where that perception originated from and if it actually has any truth with youth somewhere in the United States. If there is an effect, I’d also like to see how the youth dynamic has changed because of it.
 * 1) c. A lot of what this paper’s author seemed to have a lot of issues with was the overall rise in strength of capitalism. I’d like to see what other effects capitalism has had on social interactions between everyday people in different societies.