Book review from Active Minds: How are children–and their parents–affected by the world’s most influential corporation? Henry 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. Giroux goes beyond this concern (that the entertainment Disney cloaks in innocence and good fun is a constant sales pitch) to examine the varied messages of Disney’s films for children and adults; for example, the racial coding in Aladdin and The Lion King and the positions, roles, and values of specific characters in Good Morning, Vietnam and Pretty Woman. Although Giroux charges no conspiracy, he maintains that “challenging the ideological underpinnings of Disney’s construction of common sense” is a vital step in understanding corporate infotainment media and in empowering citizens to demand something better and more democratic.
Rowman & Littlefield, 2001
186 pages
Available in the Healey Library
Mickey Mouse MonopolyDisney, Childhood & Corporate Power
Producer, Writer: Chyng Feng SunDirector, Co-Producer: Miguel Picker
Documentary overview: The Disney Company’s massive success in the 20th century is based on creating an image of innocence, magic and fun. Its animated films in particular are almost universally lauded as wholesome family entertainment, enjoying massive popularity among children and endorsement from parents and teachers. Mickey Mouse Monopoly takes a close and critical look at the world these films create and the stories they tell about race, gender and class and reaches disturbing conclusions about the values propagated under the guise of innocence and fun. This daring new video insightfully analyzes Disney’s cultural pedagogy, examines its corporate power, and explores its vast influence on our global culture. Including interviews with cultural critics, media scholars, child psychologists, kindergarten teachers, multicultural educators, college students and children, Mickey Mouse Monopoly will provoke audiences to confront comfortable assumptions about an American institution that is virtually synonymous with childhood pleasure.
Duration: 52 minutes
Available in the Healey Library From Mouse to Mermaid: the politics of film, gender, and culture
By Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, Laura Sells
Book overview: From Mouse to Mermaid, an interdisciplinary collection of original essays, is the first comprehensive, critical treatment of Disney cinema. Addressing children’s classics as well as the Disney affiliates’ more recent attempts to capture adult audiences, the contributors respond to the Disney film legacy from feminist, Mmarxist, poststructuralist, and cultural studies perspectives. The volume contemplates Disney’s duality as an American icon and as an industry of cultural production, created in and through fifty years of filmmaking. The contributors treat a range of topics at issue in contemporary cultural studies: the performance of gender, race, and class; the engendered images of science, nature, technology, family, and business. The compilation of voices in From Mouse to Mermaid creates a persuasive cultural critique of Disney’s ideology. The contributors are Bryan Attebery, Elizabeth Bell, Claudia Card, Chris Cuomo, Ramona Fernandez, Henry A. Giroux, Robert Haas, Lynda Haas, Susan Jeffords, N. Soyini Madison, Susan Miller, Patrick Murphy, David Payne, Greg Rode, Laura Sells, and Jack Zipes.
Indiana University Press, 1995
264 pages
Available in the Healey Library