Public Pedagogy and Rodent Politics: Cultural Studies and the Challenge of Disney

Public Pedagogy and Rodent Politics: Cultural Studies and the Challenge of Disney Henry A. Giroux Penn State University The Disney stores promote the consumer products, which promote the theme parks, which promote the TV shows. The TV shows promote the company. Roger Rabbit promotes Christmas at Disneyland. — Michael Eisner, Chairman, CEO and President of Walt Disney Company1 There is nothing innocuous left. The little pleasures, expressions of life that seemed exempt from the responsibility of thought, not only have an element of deviant silliness, of callous refusal to see, but directly setve their diametrical opposite. — Theodor Adorno2 Adorno's insights seem particularly appropriate at a time when multinational corporations have become the driving force behind media culture, making it increasingly difficult to maintain what has always been a problematic position—that the entertainment industry provides people with the moments of pleasure and escape they request. That corporate culture is rewriting the nature of children's culture becomes clear as the boundaries once maintained between spheres of formal education and that of entertainment collapse into each other. To be convinced of this one only has to consider a few telling events from the growing corporate interest in schools as profit-making ventures, the production of curricular materials by toy companies, or the increasing use of school space for advertising consumer goods. The organization and regulation of cultute by large corporations such as Disney profoundly influence children's culture and their everyday life. The concentration of control over the means of producing, circulating , and exchanging information has been matched by the emergence of new technologies which have transformed culture, especially popular culture, into the primary educational site in which youth learn about themselves, their relationship to others, and the larger world. The 254 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Hollywood film industry, television, satellite broadcasting technologies, the internet, posters, magazines, billboards, newspapers, videos, and other media forms and technologies have transformed culture into a pivotal force in "shaping human meaning and behavior and regulat[ing] our social practices at every turn" (Hall 232). Although the endlessly proliferating sites of media production promise unlimited access to vast stores of information, such sites are increasingly controlled by a handful of multinationals . Consider the Disney cotporation's share of the communication industry. Disney's numerous holdings include: a controlling interest in 20 television stations that reach 25 percent of all U.S. households; ownership of over 21 radio stations and the largest radio network in the United States—serving 3400 stations and covering 24 percent of all households in the country. In addition, Disney owns three music studios, ABC primetime Network News, and five motion picture studios. Other holdings include, but are not limited to, television and cable channels, book publishing, sports teams, theme parks, insurance companies, magazines, and multimedia productions ("The National Entertainment State Media Map" 23-26). Mass produced images fill our daily lives and condition our most intimate perceptions and desires. At issue for parents, educators , and others is how cultute, particularly media culture, has become a substantive, if not the primary, educational force in regulating the meanings , values, and tastes that set the norms and conventions that offer up and legitimate particular subject positions—what it means to claim an identity as a male, female, white, black, citizen, or non-citizen as well as to define the meaning of childhood, the national past, beauty, truth, and social agency.3 The scope and impact of new electronic technologies as teaching machines can be seen in some rather astounding statistics. It is estimated that "the average American spends more than four hours a day watching television. Four hours a day, 28 hours a week, 1456 hours a year" (Hazen and Winokur 6A). The American Medical Association reports that the "number of hours spent in front of a television or video screen is the single biggest chunk of time in the waking life of an American child" (Hazen and Winokur 64). Such statistics warrant grave concern given that the pedagogical messages often provided through such programming are shaped largely by a 130 billion dollar a year advertising industry, which not only sells its products but also values, images, and identities that are largely aimed...