My Response to Giroux

An hour ago I finished Henry Giroux’s article titled “How Disney Magic and the Corporate Media Shape Youth Identity in the Digital Age”. While I have read other Giroux articles on Disney, I found this article to be quite unlike his other articles. It is no secret that Giroux is critical of Disney’s intentions, but in past articles he has at least conceded that there are benefits of Disney’s prevalence in children’s culture. This article, however, was extremely condemnatory, and only condemnatory. I emphasize that I finished reading this about an hour ago because I felt a myriad of emotions after finishing the article and needed time to process. At first I was shocked. You read some disparaging claims about the greedy, sinister intentions. These claims backed by statistics and you cant help but feel aghast. That feeling, however, quickly turned to resentment. Disney for as long as I could remember has been an escape from the mundane for me. Through its movies, television shows, theme parks, and video games I felt able to be transported to fantastic, magical worlds. Disney was a source of inspiration, it encouraged me to dream and to explore, and now I am reading that Disney’s “corporate assault” is turning “kids into consumers and childhood into a scalable economy.” Disney has somehow maintained an identity of innocence and I couldn’t believe that it was a scam.  The craziest thing Giroux touches upon is the fact in 2000, Disney purchased the Baby Einstein Company and started developing baby videos, trying to retain the identity as a vehicle for education. Then in 2007 researchers at the University of Washington published a study denouncing the impacts of baby videos and asserting that reading to infants was more conducive to an increase in intelligence. Disney then demanded the University of Washington to retract their claims like a spoiled child that didn’t get his way. I felt played by Disney, for my parents poured money into their products that were nothing short of a brainwashing mechanism.

However, after further processing I started to realize what an absolute lunatic Giroux is. I understand Disney is not what it says it is. There is nothing innocent about Disney. However, Giroux’s disdain for Disney is so intense that I started disagreeing with some of his points because of his harsh choices of words. I mean right off the bat he uses strong language by saying children are “assaulted” by a ceaseless “proliferation of marketing strategies.” He refers to Disney’s marketing and advertising campaign as a “hostile” confiscation of “childhood”.  Moreover, he uses verbs such as “hijacking” and “lure”, and adjectives such as “grave” as if Disney is some sort of criminal that kidnaps the innocence of children and by doing so turns them into mindless consumers with no capability of creative self-thought.  Overall, I would have to say I agree with the point of Giroux’s article, but I disagree with his way about conveying this issue. We are being brainwashed by advertising masterminds that care solely about money. Children are the future and we should certainly be critical of how we invest in their upbringing, but we should spread this information in a less aggressive and disparaging manner.