My Response to Giroux

Have you ever read something that both appalled you, causing you to reject many of the ideas presented to you, and provided you with new insight, causing you to wonder why you never thought of such ideas on your own?  Henry A. Giroux’s article, “The Disneyfication of Children’s Culture,” was that something for me.

For starters, I was annoyed by Giroux‘s fixation on performing critical analysis of Disney and its influences on children.  He claims that Disney spreads conservative and commercial values, while also affecting how America’s heritage is perceived.  Not only does Giroux repeat this notion throughout the entirety of the article, but he also suggested that “the shaping of children’s culture could be taken up as a matter of public policy” (75).  But how far would this public policy go?  Would it encroach on free speech?  If we were to create regulations for children’s films, it would stifle the creativity and dream-like quality of Disney movies.  Additionally, why is Giroux so quick to blame the corporations like Disney for children growing up with false ideals of the world?  It should be up to the parents or guardians to teach their children how they should act and what beliefs they should have, instead of relying on fictional stories to teach them.  The idea that children’s movies don’t “engender the critical analyses often rendered upon adult films” (68) bothers Giroux.  However, all of this analysis would ruin the fun and magic of Disney stories.  Since Disney’s main target market is young children, we should view the movies as children view them (not as adults view them), and take the stories for what they are at face-value.

However, the section of the article that bothered me the most was not even Giroux’s words, but Jon Weiner’s.  Weiner rejects Disney’s fictionalization of reality and points out that Disneyland’s Main Street portrays a world “without tenements or poverty or urban class conflict” (68).  Well Weiner, if you had your dream world, would you include poverty and conflict in it?  (I know I definitely wouldn’t!) Disneyland is supposed to be a magical place – an escape from the outside world.  I believe that it’s not Disney’s intention to portray the harsh realities.  In fact, the opposite is true: it’s Disney’s intention to portray the perfect, unrealistic dream world.

Despite my disagreements with some of Giroux’s ideas, he opened my eyes to the narrow gender roles and underlying racism depicted in Disney films.  I guess I was blinded by “Disney’s self-proclaimed innocence” (69) and failed to see the ugly truth behind the movies that embodied my childhood.  Keeping Giroux’s assertion that “all the female characters are ultimately subordinate to males” (71) in mind, I thought about the Disney princesses and realized that Giroux is right.  Each of the princesses rely on the prince to save them.  For example, Cinderella is not released from under her evil stepmother’s wing until Prince Charming falls in love with her and saves her.  Also, the underlying racism can be seen through the Disney movies that take place in areas with different cultures than in America, such as Aladdin.  In Aladdin, the protagonists are Americanized, in terms of their physical features and their accents, while the rest of the characters are more barbaric in their appearances and voices.  Therefore, although there are no direct racist remarks, “cultural differences that do not bear the imprint of white, middle-class ethnicity are [seen as] deviant, inferior, unintelligent, and threatening” (73).

However, the hopeful spirit in of me likes to think that Disney is as unflawed and innocent as it wants us to think it is.