Disney Shaping the World
...igate Disney with the intent to find out what they believe Disney is teaching us as citizens and consumers. The Disney corporation undoubtedly has a large consumer base. Disney consumers are reached daily through television, radio, and through movies as well. Children are mainly targeted through cartoons and animated Disney films, while adults are targeted through vacation getaways and escapes from reality into the infamous dream world Disney has created over the last eighty years. In Giroux’s introduction one of the first things he brought forth was the fact that Disney practically uses any situation in order to advertise to the typical American consumers. Mark McGwire hit his sixty-second home run breaking Roger Maris’s record and Disney created an ad showing McGwire picking up his son in triumph and when asked: “What are you going to do now?” McGwire replied, “I am going to take my son to Disneyland.” Disney used one of baseball’s historical moments in order to advertise to the thousands of consumers they knew would be watching and interested in McGwire’s success. Disney has a great impact on America’s popular culture and as one could see it clearly takes advantage of every innate opportunity to advertise. Giroux’s book, “focuses on the role that the Disney corporation in particular plays as an educational force in shaping American popular culture, it also makes clear that the production of meaning, social practices, and desires—or what can be called public pedagogy—must be addressed as both an educational issues and a matter of politics and institutional power” (5). Giroux is saying that one should certainly scratch beneath Disney’s surface because it indeed has more power than the average citizen or consumer might think. Disney has the power to educate we Americans as citizens and as well as consumers through movies and commercials. Giroux believes an individual inquiry is necessary because as citizens and consumers we should be edu...