Disney and its Influence on Young Children

In a recent article, Henry Giroux, the cultural and literary critic, takes Disney to task for purposefully "infiltrat[ing] the most intimate spaces of children and family life. All the better to colonize and commodify the netherworld of childhood, their fears, aspirations and their future." Below you'll find some excerpts from the article. How do you find yourself responding to this commentary and the article in the New York Times, entitled "Disney Expert Uses Science to Draw Boy Viewers," that spurred this reaction?

Here are some excerpts from Giroux's insightful article:

The potential for lucrative profits to be made off the spending habits and economic influence of kids has certainly not been lost on Disney and a number of other mega corporations, which under the deregulated, privatized, no-holds-barred world of the free market have set out to embed the dynamics of commerce, exchange value and commercial transactions into every aspect of personal and daily life. If Disney had its way, kids' culture would become not merely a new market for the accumulation of capital but a petri dish for producing new commodified subjects. As a group, young people are vulnerable to corporate giants such as Disney, who make every effort "to expand inwardly into the psyche and emotional life of the individual in order to utilize human potential" in the service of a market society.[4] Since children's identities have to be actively directed toward the role of consumers, knowledge, information, entertainment and cultural pedagogy become central in shaping and influencing every waking moment of children's daily lives. In this instance, Disney, with its legion of media holdings, armies of marketers and omnipresent advertisers, set out not to just exploit young boys and other youth for profit; they are actually constructing them as commodities and promoting the concept of childhood as a saleable commodity.

What is particularly disturbing in this scenario is that Disney and a growing number of marketers and advertisers now work with child psychologists and other experts who study young people in order to better understand children's culture so as to develop marketing methods that are more camouflaged, seductive and successful.[5] For example, Disney's recent attempts to "figure out the boys' entertainment market," includes the services of Kelly Pena, described as "the kid whisperer," who in an attempt to understand what makes young boys tick, uses her anthropological skills to convince young boys and their parents to allow her to look into the kids' closets, go shopping with young boys and pay them $75 to be interviewed. Ms. Pena, with no irony intended, prides herself on the fact that "Children ... open up to her."[6]

Disingenuously wrapping itself in the discourse of innocence and family-oriented amusement in order to camouflage the mechanisms and deployment of corporate power, Disney's use of its various entertainment platforms, which cuts across all forms of traditional and new media, is relentless in its search for younger customers and its bombarding of young people incessantly with the pedagogy of commerce.[7] Under the tutelage of Disney and other mega corporations, children have become a captive audience to traditional forms of media, such as television and print, and, even more so, to new media such as mobile phones, MP3 players, the Internet, computers, and other forms of electronic culture that now seem to provide the latest products at the speed of light. Kids can download enormous amounts of media in seconds and carry around such information, images and videos in a device the size of a thin cigarette lighter. Moreover, "[media] technologies themselves are morphing and merging, forming an ever-expanding presence throughout our daily environment."[8] Mobile phones alone have grown "to include video game platforms, e-mail devices, digital cameras, and Internet connections," making it easier for marketers and advertisers to reach young people.[9] Kids of all ages now find themselves in what the Berkeley Media Studies Group and the Center for Digital Democracy call "a new 'marketing ecosystem' that encompasses cell phones, mobile music devices, broadband video, instant messaging, video games, and virtual three-dimensional worlds," all of which provide the knowledge and information that young people use to navigate the consumer society.[10] Disney along with its researchers, marketing departments and purveyors of commerce largely control and services this massive virtual entertainment complex, spending vast amounts of time trying to understand the needs, desires, tastes, preferences, social relations and networks that define youth as a potential market. Disney's recent attempt to corner the young male market through the use of sophisticated research models, ethnographic tools and the expertise of academics to win over the hearts and minds of young people so as to develop strategies to deliver them to the market as both loyal consumers and commodities indicates the degree to which the language of the market has disengaged itself from either moral considerations or the social good. Disney claims this kind of intensive research pays off in lucrative dividends and reinforces the Disney motto that in order to be a successful company "You have to start with the kids themselves."[11]