This expanded and revised edition explores and updates the cultural politics of the Walt Disney Company and how its ever-expanding list of products, services, and media function as teaching machines that shape children's culture into a largely commercial endeavor. The Disney conglomerate remains an important case study for understanding both the widening influence of free-market fundamentalism in the new millennium and the ways in which messages of powerful corporations have been appropriated and increasingly resisted in global contexts. New in this edition is a discussion of Disney's shift in its marketing strategies towards targeting tweens and teens, as Disney promises to provide (via participation in consumer culture) the tools through which young people construct and support their identities, values, and knowledge of the world. The updated chapters from the highly acclaimed first edition are complimented with two new chapters, 'Globalizing the Disney Empire' and 'Disney, Militarization, and the National Security State After 9/11,' which extend the analysis of Disney's effects on young people to a consideration of the political and economic dimensions of Disney as a U.S.-based megacorporation, linking the importance of critical reception on an individual scale to a broader conception of democratic global community.

"Giroux is an author of many books and articles on education, politics, and corporate influence. This highly critical examination of the Disney corporation explores the scope of influence that Disney has over the developing minds (and bodies) of children as it uses the facade of innocence and nostalgia marketing to promote consumerism over values such as reading and creative play, which are known to stimulate intelligence and social interaction better than the passive viewing of television and movies. Giroux asks us to reevaluate the seemingly innocuous animated Disney productions and theme parks, which focus on a safe, sanitized, middle-class white depiction of the American ideal, while promoting racial and sexual stereotypes in films such as Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. He points out the hypocrisy (or is it irony?) of the feature WALL-E, which depicts Earth as a desolate wasteland despoiled by rampant consumerism and an overreaching mega-corporation, while at the same time promoting WALL-E robots, action figures, playsets, apparel, stationery, and other 'collectibles' in the real world. This updated and expanded edition (with the help of coauthor Pollock) includes a discussion on Disney’s focus on marketing toward the lucrative 'tween' segment, as well as two new chapters, 'Globalizing the Disney Empire' and 'Disney, Militarization, and the National Security State after 9/11.' Well researched and well written, despite the academic jargon." - Booklist, Starred Review, May 2010

"Henry Giroux and Grace Pollock survey this theme with abundant brilliance." - Dissident Voice, May, 2010