About the Book
Today, cultural practices and institutions shape nearly every aspect of our lives. Giroux takes up this issue by looking at the world's most influential corporation. He explores the diverse ways in which the Disney Corporation has become a political force in shaping images of public memory, producing children as consuming subjects, and legitimating ideological positions that constitute a deeply conservative and disturbing view of the roles imparted to children and adults alike. Giroux shows how Disney attempts to hide behind a cloak of innocence and entertainment, while simultaneously exercising its influence as a major force on both global economics and cultural learning. Disney is among several corporations that not only preside over international media, but also outstrip the traditional practices of schooling in shaping the desires, needs, and futures of today's children. Written by one of the nation's leading cultural critics, this book is important reading for anyone interested in education, society, and political culture.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Introduction: Disney's Troubled Utopia
Chapter 2 Disney and the Politics of Public Culture
Chapter 3 Learning with Disney
Chapter 4 Children's Culture and Disney's Animated Films
Chapter 5 Memory, Nation, and Family in Disney Films
Chapter 6 Turning America into a Toy Store
Chapter 7 Index
Chapter 8 About the Author
About the Author :
Henry A. Giroux is the well-known author of many books and articles on society, education, and political culture. He is the Waterbury Chair of Education at the Pennsylvania State University and author of Channel Surfing.
Review :
An absolutely fascinating book about our children and commercial culture! A brilliant, lively, and complex analysis by one of the most interesting public intellectuals in the United States-and one that is remarkably fair-minded. Giroux does not deny the real delight that Disney brings our children. What he questions, really, are the 'uses' of delight-and, at a deeper level, the misuse of innocence. All in all, a freshly written, unusually invigorating book that even fans of Mickey Mouse will find compelling.
Lost in the vast wilderness of 'Disney studies?' Henry Giroux's stunning meditation on what the Disney empire teaches children is like having a compass in the enchanted forest. Like all of his work, he never wanders from his ultimate course: a radical democratic vision. Anyone who hopes to challenge the Imagineering of America and the world and promote an educational culture free of corporate domination must read this book.
Henry Giroux has led the way in contemporary cultural studies in insisting on the need to address the critical question of the effects on children of cultural production and representation. Giroux links the cultural messages promoted by Disney Inc. to the corporate economy, exploitative, and exclusionary practices it at once represents and pushes. In doing so, he faces squarely and analyzes uncompromisingly the implication for democratic politics of culture and desire, education and entertainment, representation and responsibility that most critics fail to register, let alone face.
Henry Giroux's pioneering spirit of inquiry never ceases to impress. Here he opens our eyes to the messages that consumer mass culture sends to our children, our schools, our homes. What you see is not what you get-read this book and learn what that is.
Henry Giroux's provocative study interrogates the pedagogy of the Disney empire, dissecting the many ways that Disney films, advertising, theme parks, and products transmit a view of the world, teach us values, and are thus an important vehicle of socialization and education. This excellent study shows us how cultural studies can address key issues of the contemporary world and provide tools of analysis, critique, and contextualization that enable us to gain critical insight into the cultural forces that shape us and to resist their seductive power.
Readers awed by the broad power of Disney Company should read this critical examination.
Ideal supplementary material for students examining the commercialism of American culture.
The Mouse that Roared . . . by the eminent cultural critic Henry Giroux . . . is unusually balanced, conceding that Disney's products can be viewed different ways and recognizing the company's occasional good deeds before lowering the boom with an extremely disturbing array of facts gathered from widely disparate sources. . . . Giroux provides invaluable documentation of the company's exploitative labor practices abroad, its censorship of specific authors, its killing of particular ABC news stories and, most troubling of all, its recent efforts to exert influence over public education both within its planned community (Celebration, FL) and beyond.
Disney is masterly at rewriting history to convey self-serving messages. . . . [Giroux] makes the link between the corporation's use of 'imagineering' and the broad way in which many big companies (through advertising and other promotional material) do all they can to distort either the past or the present in order to make it more likely that people will buy their goods or services.
This book illuminates well the particularly important variety of cultural and pedagogical critique that Giroux has advanced during the past 15 years. . . . A work accessible to the general reader that models the kind of 'language of critique' for which he has made the case in the past. Giroux closely examines Disney's role in shaping consciousness through its animated children's films, its amusement parks, its intrusion into public schooling, its toy stores. . . . Because the current class of undergraduates was raised on this stuff, the book will necessarily resonate with them. Highly recommended for all levels.
This volume presents an extremely readable analysis of what the Disney empire teaches children. It takes a comprehensive look at the implications of corporate domination of education culture for the democratic politics of culture, desire, and entertainment, without denying the delight that Walt Disney's creation provides, or suggesting that the company's theme parks and other products should not be enjoyed.
Giroux's book would make an excellent supplemental text in a mass communication and society course and provocative reading for anyone who wants to see beyond the Disney facade.
One of America's boldest critics. . . . Giroux's is a voice to which we would do well to listen.
Aims to expose the cultural manipulations of global corporate capitalism, as embodied by the Disney Corporation, and its allegedly malign effects on children and families. Giroux's contention is at once fecund and ironic, and deserves a thorough examination.
Giroux's warning that Disney's main interest is in turning the yonger generation into perfect little consumers remains alarmingly valid.
A must for everyone who feels uncomfortable with the actual commercialization of public culture. The dialogue between Giroux's analysis and the reader's discomfort creates interesting insights, especially in the position of the educator towards the signs and images of his own daily cultural environment.
What Henry Giroux offers in his latest book is a take on the relationship between learning to become and the ways in which possibilities are constrained, channelled and directed by forces which lie outside what is normally recognized as the educational sphere.
It does contribute to a writing style that is both informative and easily accessible to nonacademic readerships. Moreover, this book's well-organized, highly readable, and carefully footnoted condensation of a large body of multidisciplinary research on both Disney and corporate culture in general makes it a useful text for both introductory and upper-level courses. Giroux's linking together of texts, practices, and institutions that are usually addressed separately makes The Mouse That Roared a thought-provoking addition to almost any popular culture course syllabus.
In this polemical, didactic work, Penn State education professor Giroux charges that Disney is in fact a powerful corporation whose ideology is far from innocent.
Giroux's book is a must for parents and teachers.
Henry Giroux has long been known as one who relishes digging into the meaning behind everyday social phenomena. That's what makes his exploration of Disney Corp.'s influence-reported in his book The Mouse That Roared-so intriguing.
The larger point of The Mouse That Roared is a warning not just about Disney, but about a public culture in which the will of the people is increasingly represented and/or dictated by the fight for market share among huge corporations.
Henry Giroux doesn't deny Disney's ability to delight us, but he does debunk the notion that the entertainment offered by the 'world's most influential corporation' is just innocent fun. Analyzing the messages sent by Disney through its movies, merchandasing and attractions, he convincingly demonstrates how insidious the company's portrait of the United States-as white, suburban, middle class and heterosexual-can be.
Giroux makes clear that Disney is an extremely important vehicle of education and deserves critical attention by parents, educators, consumers and cultural critics alike.
