The Mouse that Roared, Updated and Expanded Edition: Disney and the End of Innocence by Henry Giroux

How are children--and their parents--affected by the world's most influential corporation? Henry A. Giroux explores the surprisingly diverse ways in which Disney, while hiding behind a cloak of innocence and entertainment, strives to dominate global media and shape the desires, needs, and futures of today's children.

*Starred Review* Giroux is an author of many books and articles on education, politics, and corporate influence. This highly critical examination of the Disney corporation explores the scope of influence that Disney has over the developing minds (and bodies) of children as it uses the facade of innocence and nostalgia marketing to promote consumerism over values such as reading and creative play, which are known to stimulate intelligence and social interaction better than the passive viewing of television and movies. Giroux asks us to reevaluate the seemingly innocuous animated Disney productions and theme parks, which focus on a safe, sanitized, middle-class white depiction of the American ideal, while promoting racial and sexual stereotypes in films such as Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. He points out the hypocrisy (or is it irony?) of the feature WALL-E, which depicts Earth as a desolate wasteland despoiled by rampant consumerism and an overreaching mega-corporation, while at the same time promoting WALL-E robots, action figures, playsets, apparel, stationery, and other “collectibles” in the real world. This updated and expanded edition (with the help of coauthor Pollock) includes a discussion on Disney's focus on marketing toward the lucrative “tween” segment, as well as two new chapters, “Globalizing the Disney Empire” and “Disney, Militarization, and the National Security State after 9/11.” Well researched and well written, despite the academic jargon. --David Siegfried 

To many people, the name Disney has become synonymous with childhood innocence and squeaky-clean fantasy. But in this polemical, didactic work, Penn State education professor Giroux (Channel Surfing) charges that Disney is in fact a powerful corporation whose ideologyAlargely predicated on getting the consumer to buy Disney productsAis far from innocent. Giroux tackles Disney's theme parks, its recent forays into education and its movies in an attempt to expose how Uncle Walt's legacy is eroding democracy and endangering our nation's youth. He disparages Disneyland and Disney World for whitewashing history and casting America's past in a nostalgic light, excluding any mention of slavery, civil unrest, racial tension or war. In keeping with this practice of regulation and homogenization, employees are required to dress a certain way, to have their hair a certain length and to adhere to the "Disney philosophy." Disney's movies, argues Giroux, promote sexism and racism ("bad" characters speak with thick foreign accents, or in inner-city jive; female characters, however strong, depend on the men around them for identity) and encourage massive consumer spending while assuming the guise of innocuous family fun. But because children learn increasingly from popular culture, Giroux warns that it is dangerous to ignore the influence of a corporation whose private town, Celebration, dictates the color of its residents' window shades and house paint. The notion of Disney as a corporate, market-obsessed monolith was hilariously expounded last year in Team Rodent, Carl Hiassen's contribution to Ballantine's Library of Contemporary Thought series. In contrast, Giroux's sustained shock and outrage, buried in thickets of dense, academic prose, quickly wear thin. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Who is Henry Giroux ?

Henry Giroux, born September 18, 1943, in Providence, Rhode Island, is an American cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory.
A high-school social studies teacher in Barrington, Rhode Island for six years,^[1] Giroux has held positions at Boston University, Miami University, and Penn State University. In 2005, Giroux began serving as the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario^{[2][dead link][3]}
Giroux has published more than 35 books and 300 academic articles, and is published widely throughout education and cultural studies literature.^[4] Since arriving at McMaster, Giroux has been a featured faculty lecturer,^[5] and has published nine books,^[6] including his most recent work, The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex.^[7]
Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period in 2002.^[8]

Biography

Henry Giroux was born in Providence, Rhode Island. After teaching high-school social studies in Barrington, Rhode Island for six years, Giroux earned his doctorate at Carnegie-Mellon in 1977. His first position as a professor was in education at Boston University, which he held for the next six years. Following that, he became an education professor and renowned scholar in residence at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. While there he also served as the founding Director of the Center for Education and Cultural Studies.^[9]
In 1992 he began a 12-year position in the Waterbury Chair Professorship at Penn State University, also serving as the Director of the Waterbury Forum in Education and Cultural Studies.^[10] In 2004 Giroux became the Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.^[11] He currently lives there with his wife, Dr. Susan Searls Giroux.

Theory

Giroux has been an important contributor to the field known as critical pedagogy. His work draws from a number of theoretical traditions extending from Marx to Paulo Freire to Zygmunt Bauman. He is also an advocate of radical democracy, vigorously opposing the anti-democratic tendencies of neoliberalism, militarism, empire, religious fundamentalism, and the ongoing attacks against the social state, the social wage, youth, the poor, and public and higher education. Giroux's most recent work focuses on public pedagogy, a term he coined to describe the nature of the spectacle and the new media, and the political and educational force of global culture.

 

Accomplishments

Henry Giroux's writing has won many awards, and is written for a range of public and scholarly sources. Giroux has written more than 40 books; published almost 300 papers; and hundreds of chapters in others' books, articles in magazines, and more. Seven of Giroux's books have been chosen as significant books of the year by the American Educational Studies Association.
While at Miami University Giroux was named as a Distinguished Scholar. He won the Visiting Distinguished Professor Award for 1987-1988 at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. Between 1992 and 2004, he held the Waterbury Chair Professorship at Penn State University. He was awarded the Visiting Asa Knowles Chair Professorship by Northeastern University in 1995. He won a Tokyo Metropolitan University Fellowship for Research in August 1995.
In 1998 Giroux was selected to the Laureate Chapter of Kappa Delta Phi. He was awarded a Distinguished Visiting Lectureship in art education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998 and 1999. He was the winner of a Getty Research Institute Visiting Scholar Award for May-June, 2000. He was selected as a Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor at McMaster University in 2001.
Giroux was named as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period in Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education: From Piaget to the Present as part of Routledge’s "Key Guides Publication Series" (2002). In 2001 he won the James L. Kinneavy Award for the most outstanding article published in JAC in 2001, which was presented by the Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition at the Conference on College Composition and Communication Chicago in March 2002.
Giroux was selected as the Barstow Visiting Scholar for 2003 at Saginaw Valley State University. In 2005, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by Memorial University of Newfoundland.^[12]

Books by Giroux

In addition to being a co-Editor-in-chief of the Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies^[13] published by Taylor and Francis, Giroux has published the following books:

• Ideology, Culture and the Process of Schooling. (1981)
• Theory and Resistance in Education. (1983)
• The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education: Deception or Discovery?. (with David E. Purpel)(1983)
• Education Under Siege: The Conservative, Liberal, and Radical Debate Over Schooling. (co-authored with Stanley Aronowitz) (1985)
• Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life. (1988)
• Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning. (1988)
• Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education. (1992)
• Between Borders: Pedagogy and the Politics of Cultural Studies (with Peter McLaren) (1993)
• Disturbing Pleasures: Learning Popular Culture. (1994)
• Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence, and Youth Routledge Publishing. (1996)
• Living dangerously: Multiculturalism and the politics of difference. (1996)
• The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence. (1999)
• Stealing Innocence: Corporate Culture's War on Children. (2001)
• Breaking In to the Movies: Film and the Culture of Politics. (2002)
• The Abandoned Generation: Democracy Beyond the Culture of Fear. (2004)
• Terror of Neoliberalism. (2004)
• Against the New Authoritarianism. (2005)
• Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism: Global Uncertainty and the Challenge of the New Media. (2006)
• America on the Edge: Henry Giroux on Politics, Education, and Culture. (2006)
• The Giroux Reader. (2006)
• Stormy Weather: Katrina and the Politics of Disposability. (2006)
• The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex. (2007)
• Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Beyond the Politics of Greed. (2008)
• Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability? (2009)

 

Books about Giroux

• Reading & Teaching Henry Giroux. Doyle & Singh. (2006)

 

See also

• Paulo Freire
• Peter McLaren
• Joe L. Kincheloe
• Teaching for social justice
• Youth empowerment

 

References

1. ^ Personal Essay "The Kids Aren't Alright: Youth Pedagogy and Cultural Studies" in Fugitive Cultures'[1] Retrieved 21/09/08.
2. ^ (2005) "McMaster attracts widely acclaimed U.S. scholar Henry Giroux" McMaster University. Retrieved 8/6/07.
3. ^ (2005) ""McMaster University snags famous theory professor," e. Peak News. Simon Frasier University. Retrieved 8/6/07.
4. ^ Dr. Henry A. Giroux - Books. Personal website. Retrieved 8/6/07.
5. ^ (2005) "Giroux's inaugural lecture takes aim at our current 'Dark Age'". McMaster University. Retrieved 8/6/07.
6. ^ "Dr. Henry A. Giroux Books," Personal website. Retrieved 8/6/07.
7. ^ "The University in Chains", Paradigm Publishers. Retrieved 8/7/07.
8. ^ Palmer, J. (2002) Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education: From Piaget to the Present Day (Fifty Key Thinkers) (Routledge Key Guides). Routledge Publishers. p. 208.
9. ^ (n.d.) Henry Giroux Miami University.
10. ^ (n.d.) Henry A. Giroux - Biography The Arts Council - Dublin.
11. ^ (n.d.) Henry Giroux - Author Bio In These Times magazine.
12. ^ (2004) "McMaster U. Woos Education Scholar With Job for His Wife", Chronicle of Higher Education. 28 May 2004
13. ^ Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies Taylor and Francis. Retrieved 7/21/07

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Giroux