"Drinking the Disney Kool-aid?"

 What is your relationship to Disney culture? How does Christensen validate or challenge your views?

As a female child born in 1990 I would imagine it to be an almost impossible task not to have Disney influence any part of my childhood.  In talking with my parents, my mom specifically remembers paying $50 for The Little Mermaid right before I was born because of The Disney Vault.

I remember dressing up for halloween as a princess and almost breaking an ankle on those awful plastic heels with the clear jelly strap over the top of your foot. (Currently looking for a picture of me in said halloween costume and I will update if I find it but a picture of the shoes like those I'm referring to below for now)

While the Disney brand specific merchandise didn't come out until after I was out of my princess phase, Disney does still make appearances in my life even now as an adult and I am sure will continue to as my kids grow.

- having a subscription to Disney+

- watching Marvel movies in theaters

- dressing up as characters for halloween at school (Inside Out, Halloween 2019)

While I have known of "the secret education" of Disney for awhile, it admittedly stopped at very surface level issues like "women needing a man to save them".  Christensen does push my thinking on how deep and widespread these varying stereotypes truly are and I can see a connection to S.C.H.W.A.A.P where Christensen says " and often the world depicts the domination of one sex, one race, one class, or one country over a weaker counterpart" (p175). Men are the "saviors", white people are the main characters, the rich "save" the poor, etc. 

The terrifying truth is that it isn't just Disney pushing a certain narrative but all for-profit companies. Every single person is a consumer and the marketing departments in all companies will do anything to keep getting business or "save face" to not let things affect their bottom line.

I do agree with Christensen that we need to look at our world with a critical lens and question the motive behind certain media. (Which connects to a point that Mike Wesch was making where true learning isn't about the content that can be "dumped" in students' brains but the questions we leave with). All of the information we gather and retain affect how we interact with the world around us and understanding the motives behind the sources of the information help us identify biases from the source or maybe even unknown biases we may have.  A quote that really stuck out to me was that of one Christensen's students that said "True death equals a generation living by rules and attitudes they never questioned and producing more children who do the same" (178). It's not enough just to identify the biases. Other than educating our children about these biases and teaching them how to think critically, what can we do in order to make real change? Is there any way to stop media from including biases or is this always going to be a continuous loop of being a critical consumer just with different hidden messages?

I don't know, more questions with no answers for now.