Jonathan Zaun in Two Perceptive and Provocative Thesis

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Jonathan Zaun

In two perceptive and provocative essays, authors Ann duCille and Henry Giroux examine toys, movies and media and examine ways in which the modern commercial culture directs the development of a child's psychology. Ann duCille's thoughtful essay, Dyes and Dolls: Multicultural Barbie and the Merchandising of Difference, provides an insightful analysis of the ubiquitous Barbie doll and the role this icon of Americana plays in molding the maturation of entire generations of young girls. With his expansive and detailed Children's Culture and Disney's Animated Films, essayist Henry A. Giroux investigates the Disney empire and its vast influence on today's youth, exercised through their domination of the children's media market. Both of these works provide readers with empirical evidence supporting their separate, yet inherently intertwined, suppositions that media manipulation targeting children for the pursuit of capitalistic gains invariably causes lasting unintended consequences. Whether through the rebranding of a centuries old plaything, the girl's doll, into the corporate creation Barbie, or through the perception altering fantasy worlds created by Disney films, commercial interests have clearly hijacked the shaping of our children's psyches in the name of pursuing profits. One of the most damaging effects of this corporatization of adolescence is the undeniable affect that toys and movies have on a child's delicately evolving conception of racial identity and cultural . The subtle messages imbued by Barbie dolls and Disney films, both practically standard tools in modern American childrearing, clearly exhibit a direct impact on the formation of a child's eventual worldview.

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Throughout Dyes and Dolls, Ann duCille establishes Barbie's dubious status as "at once a symbol and a symptom of what multiculturalism has become at the hands of contemporary commodity culture" (465). The contention that Barbie dolls instruct a young girl's vision of her own her culture in comparison to others is confirmed throughout the essay through the sheer weight of statistical evidence presented. When duCille observes that "Barbie enjoys 100% brand name recognition among girls age three to ten" while "ninety-six percent … own at least one doll" (462), she is identifying the omnipresence of Barbie dolls throughout the span of a girl's adolescence. This startling revelation supports claims that the innumerable, unavoidable quality of the Barbie brand has transformed a simple doll into an instrument of social adaptation. The utter variety of modern Barbie dolls, which today comprise "a virtual rainbow coalition of colors, races, ethnicities and nationalities" (duCille 465), can be viewed as both a product of the world's increasingly globalized nature and as a precursor to the accelerated globalization of an entire generation of young girls.

The phenomenon of globalization has been the proverbial engine driving a wave of commercial expansion which spans national borders and cultural lines. Perhaps no company has recognized the significance of the link between global interconnection and media delivery more rapidly, while utilizing it so efficiently, as the Walt Disney Company. Henry A. Giroux's essay on the ever expanding Disney line….....

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