Adrienne Wilson
10/16/12
Sustainability Research Methods
Annotations
(MLA Format)
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.
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).
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.
7. Three questions:
a. At one point the article states that “childhood ideals increasingly give way to a marketdriven 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.
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.