Review of Giroux's, "How Disney Magic and the Corporate Media Shape Youth Identity in the Digital Age"

Giroux's second article, How Disney Magic and the Corporate Media Shape Youth Identity in the Digital Age, brought his ideas to a more respectable level. The publication of Giroux's first article was in 1994 and his most recent one was published in 2011, which is significantly more relevant to the "modern" Disney era. Although the context is more recent, Giroux still finds a way to make his pessimistic opinions about the Disney name known. The article focuses more on Disney as a corporation and how it influences children into being high end consumers of today's society. Large companies are able to have such control over cognition by way of technological advances, and now, as Giroux would say, Disney is able to insert product advertisement into "every waking moment of children's daily lives." Giroux still argues that Disney has this power because nobody is willing to stand up and criticize their facade of innocence/joy. He even goes on to say how the company is broadening the spectrum of ages that its products are marketed to. For instance, he mentions the Hannah Montana series which has a focus on tweens and young adults rather than toddlers.

There were many aspects of Giroux's article that I wholly disagreed with, but surprisingly there were also points that I commended. In my opinion, the document itself was difficult to get through. The beginning was filled with information that about Disney and was filled with factual evidence, but towards the end I felt like Giroux was just spewing off the most amount of facts he could in order to make his point (mind you including evidence to support his claims was an immense step up from his last piece). It began to get old and I was fed up with the constant negativity that he was portraying. I also had an issue with many of the claims that he made. He harps on ideas of how Disney uses "digital media" to reach children in efficient ways, marketing to different demographics, hiring psychologists to make their products better, and making children the biggest consumers of today. All of these different points can be made for all different companies. I believe Giroux forgets that Disney is a company that is trying to make profit like every other corporation, and I believe that Disney is good at what they do; therefore, they are at the top of the "animation food chain." One more thing I think is worthwhile to add is how Giroux seems to get carried away and over react in his writings. For instance, he includes phrases to describe Disney using "corporate assault" or "cutthroat commercial ethos," and he seems to forget that he is talking about a corporation that makes animated films for children...not one that is selling them weapons.

One aspect that I did commend Giroux for was his use of factual evidence. In his previous article he did not have much concrete support for his ideas, which made it even harder for a Disney lover like me to empathize with/understand. In his more recent article, the factual evidence gave a more confident tone to the claims, and it also allowed for the reader to understand that what he was saying was actually happening. The facts made it real.