The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence - Hardcover

Henry Giroux has led the way in contemporary cultural studies in insisting on the need to address the critical question of the effects on children of cultural production and representation. Giroux links the cultural messages promoted by Disney Inc. to the corporate economy, exploitative, and exclusionary practices it at once represents and pushes. In doing so, he faces squarely and analyzes uncompromisingly the implication for democratic politics of culture and desire, education and entertainment, representation and responsibility that most critics fail to register, let alone face.--David Theo Goldberg, Director, Humanities Research Institute, University of California, Irvine

How are children - and their parents - affected by the world's most influential corporation? Henry A. Giroux explores the surprisingly diverse ways in which Disney, while hiding behind a cloak of innocence and entertainment, strives to dominate global media and shape the desires, needs, and futures of today's children. Giroux takes the reader inside the company's vision of the full range of its media - its films, television, famous characters, and spin-off products, as well as its special school, Celebration. He reveals how Disney idealizes and implements its goal of building a world culture - based on innocence and morals, but insidious in its consumerist exploits.