The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (Culture & Education) (Culture & Education Series) The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (Culture & Education) (Culture & Education Series) Otherwise, the ideas of less spending, less tax, less regulation, and more civil liberties were received favorably. Perdue and the grant application in the amount of $300,000,000. The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (Culture & Education) (Culture & Education Series) I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (Culture & Education) (Culture & Education Series) in my ear. The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (Culture & Education) (Culture & Education Series) London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977. htm Police crackdown on airport drinking halves The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (Culture & Education) (Culture & Education Series) trouble on planes. SIGNED by the author on the Dedication Page, with Best Wishes. The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (Culture & Education) (Culture & Education Series)

Original Title: The Mouse that Roared Author: Henry A. Giroux Edition Language: English ISBN10: 0847691101 ISBN13: 9780847691104 Pages: 202 Published: April 28th 1999

Description: A while ago I was reading the introduction to some essays by Adorno and the author was talking about Adorno's idea of dual consciousness or double consciousness, something like that. The example used to explain this idea was horoscopes - I suspect that very few of us really 'believe' in horoscopes, but that doesn't stop them being amongst the most popular parts of newspapers and magazines. And even though we that it is probably something of an overstatement that one-in-twelve people in our society are born with multiple personality disorder, just because they were born in the month of 'the twins' - even so, if our horoscope says, take a different route home today - something good awaits you - well, what's the cost? We don't believe, but we quite possibly might act as if we do believe... And if that is true for stars, it is also true for other parts of our culture. Disney is an interesting case in point. I think we have trouble in really taking Disney seriously. I mean, it's meant for kids and it is the definition of light and innocent entertainment - so, how can you take it seriously? Disney, as an organisation, is very focused on perpetuating this perception. It wants to be understood as 'wholesome' and fun. But as such we might not approach what it does with the kind of critical eye that we should approach material that, let's be honest, we often use to babysit our children. Also, Disney is a huge corporation. In fact, so big that it owns whole other corporations ,like the ABC network in the US, that are also household names. You don't get to be huge by being innocent - and this book documents many of the corporate practices Disney uses to produce, protect and popularise its product that, frankly, might make your hair curl. This is particularly true of how the 'cast' in the various Disney Worlds are employed, but also, and particularly, in relation to its various films - the product from their 'imagineers'. The idea of us having a kind of dual consciousness is no where better exemplified than our attitude to marketing. We seem quite willing to believe that other people are manipulated by marketing, but that we,

quite on the contrary, are just too sophisticated to be taken in. As is pointed out here - advertising is a quarter of a trillion dollar industry, do you really think it would exist if it didn't work? And for Disney it works in spades. Even films that don't do particularly well in the cinemas go on to make billions in the sidelines of toys, videos, various other merchandise products and god knows what else. One of the main functions of Disney is not so much to train children in innocence, but rather to train them to be consumers. And Disney is more than just a provider of entertainment - it also wants to shape the world of its customers so that Disney's world vision becomes their common sense. It even has its own 'town' where you give up your freedom to choose various aspects of your own life, so that you can live in the Disney version of ideal small town America. As is repeatedly said here, a kind of Norman Rockwell painting brought to life. White, middle class, walled and constrained. Something else I read recently pointed out that in this most commercial of environments what you don't see is corporate advertising. Disney appropriates many American cultural archetypes, strips them of anything deeper than the most superficial of content and then uses these as the definition of 'entertainment'. As such it seeks to define what is American culture - and increasingly, universal human culture - by reference to what it has appropriated, copyrighted and marketed. Many other cultural organisations seek to effectively educate society into accepting their view of the world as being common sense, but Disney is much more upfront about this. They have even set up their own schools. These schools could hardly be said to practice the kind of critical pedagogy that the author would advocate instead, they seek to encourage people to accept and adjust to change, rather than to have a role in affecting change. This is a similar message to just about everything else that Disney does. Creativity is something done by very clever people, who you aren't, given you are part of the audience rather than one of the imagineers. Your role is to wonder at the marvels of this creativity. As the author says, this is a kind of Taylorist entertainment experience - standardised, timed to within a microsecond and generally unchallenging and meant as spectacle, rather than something requiring thought. The pedagogy of Disney is an important question - just what is it that this organisation is seeking to teach? As I said before, given that this is 'just' kids entertainment, too often people turn off their critical faculties and go with the flow. So, this book presents us a critical analysis of a number of Disney films - both children's cartoons and adult movies such as Good Morning, Vietnam. The analysis looks at issues of race, class and gender. Invariably, the lessons are anything but 'PC'. Women are always seeking that highest of all human attainments for their sex - a good husband. People of colour are stereotyped and are either irrationally violent (think Aladdin and anyone with a non-North American accent) or they are black and just about as deliriously happy that the nice young white couple have gotten together as it is possible to be, Pretty Woman. Parents hardly ever exist (something noted in How To Read Donald Duck, too) and when they do exist they are nearly always stupid (Beauty and The Beast) or needing to be rebelled against (The Little Mermaid). Rebellion in Disney is often 'constrained', and even a rewriting of history. In Good Morning Vietnam, for instance, rebellion is defined by the music people like. Perhaps your memory of the Vietnam era contained some other forms of rebellion - but the marches and the protests have been airbrushed from history. And just right, too - given we are all now so ashamed at how badly we treated 'our boys' who were off sunning themselves for democracy in foreign climes while tapping their feet to some really great songs. This book seeks to be much more even-handed about Disney than I have been here. It has much praise for a lot of Disney product. However, the main point of this book is that while it is fine to switch off your brain while you are watching some Disney film, and even to enjoy the spectacle of it all - it really isn't okay to never turn your brain back on again. Cultural products create the mental environment we live in, they create our truth and our common sense. They give us tools to think with and they give us ways of seeing the world that, if left unchallenged, become our straitjackets. This book helps us to learn how to think critically, even when we are presented with 'just another kids film'.