Mickey Mouse is a Pimp: The Commercialization of Childhood
If you were starving and I offered you a choice between rotted meat and moldy bread and you took the moldy bread, then I guess I could say that I just gave you what you wanted.
We make a similar assumption about popular media.
When art and information are left to profit-driven big business conglomerates, our cultural values and democratic processes are marginalized as box office receipts, product tie-ins, and advertising revenues become more important than the common good.
I want to understand the problem of celebrity obsession and the danger posed by values that come from an entertainment industry controlled by a few hands.
Corporate media show us what they want to us see and then claim that they are giving us what we want. We could turn it off, or switch to another channel (that they or one of their partners own) as a solution, but that is no choice at all. Yet it appears there is a wide array of choices; however, they all come from the same source.
Although children and parents alike love Disney films and products, the five entertainment companies that dominate the world market are bad for children’s development, detrimental to democratic processes, and disastrous for the future of our world.
Global corporate media conglomerates have a monopolistic hold on the world of ideas, and they are motivated not for the common good, but for short term profit at the expense of human self-concept and environmental stability.
The cynical sexual practices of Snookie and the Kardashians (whom we must keep up with) become a training manual for illiterate young people. I am not claiming that they can’t read, I am claiming that they don’t.
Lizzie McGuire and Hanna Montana both spun-off from a TV show into a movie, CDs, toys, candy, clothes, dolls, and books. Hanna Montana products are produced through cooperation between Wal-Mart and Disney. The company that sells us our art and information also sells our potato chips and toilet paper.
The emotional and physical damage of celebrity role models on young girls was researched in Fiji when parts of the island got TV for the first time in 1995. Before TV only 3% of girls had ever thrown-up as a way to control their weight. After 3 years of television, however, 15 percent of those teenage girls were clinically bulimic.
This finding supports the way media socializes its audience in an exploitative sexual manner. Young girls were trying to compete with celebrity images in a way that damaged their health and well-being. The profits generated through an expanded TV market were the goal, regardless of the impact on human self-worth.
One penny.
That is where it starts. A one penny property tax saves a homeowner $10 on a $100,000 home, but across the state it takes millions out of an already failing school system. Parents may save $10 but then have to pay $100 in fees for school programs like arts and athletics that were once paid for, which is enough to cause some children to be ineligible for those programs, intensifying an ambivalence toward school that can have long term consequences beginning with more time-consuming mass media.
This allows some to make the case that our schools are not meeting the needs of our students and we should go to a private system that only the most affluent can afford. People are easily convinced that these public systems (schools, police, roads, healthcare) are failures that could be better run by the free market and get excited about throwing people onto the street, because those who deserve a bed will go earn one. People are convinced of these corporate policies by the corporate media.
The idea that popular media such as television and magazines give the people what they want is often the response when people complain about the gratuitous sex and violence in popular culture. In what is called the free market system, these stations and publications must compete against each other for viewers and advertisers; hence the best shows would have the biggest audience because viewers can always turn to another channel and watch something else. By this logic it is not the media firms which are flawed or deficient, but the viewers themselves.
The values of Lil Wayne and the Pussycat Dolls may not be in the best interest of children, parents, or society but when that is what is offered, that is what is bought, and so ‘they must like it.’ Any attempt to regulate or control content is then seen as interference with people’s freedom of choice. This argument makes it seem as if people really are in charge because they vote with their remote control and their pocket books. This is a flawed theory.
Corporations value profit and so we are spoon-fed materialistic aspirations until we can no longer envision any other alternative. Imagination and critical thinking are not exercised on a daily basis the way our debit cards are.
Media corporations are in the business of making money not presenting great art or ideas, and so they gravitate to the tried-and-true formulas of sex, violence, vulgarity and repetitive plots. People will go see Iron Man 2 by the millions, not because it is any good, but because it is one of a handful of new movies playing at a chain theater owned by the same corporation that made the movie. No one demanded a sequel, but the supply of one creates a demand.
If one movie about a superhero is successful, then you can bet there will be more the next summer as the repetition makes it more familiar. Sequels, prequels, remakes, and product lines. Coca-Cola and Paramount have the same ownership and so there will be t-shirts, soda cans, and a variety of cheap and efficient promotional tie-ins that generate revenue while dominating and stagnating the imagination of a generation.
A group of friends in a basement can create the greatest music of all time, but if it is not promoted on corporately owned radio and television it may never find an audience. Jay Leno doesn’t have Maroon 5 on his show because he likes them, but because they are owned by the same company and the show itself is a commercial.
The Internet is currently wide open, but it is also the next battle ground in the realm of ideas. I do not have as many lawyers as Viacom. In previously contemplating the concept of corporate personhood and its consequences, I realized there is no quick fix.
Commercialism cannot be used to defeat commercialism. Once an idea becomes a commodity, it loses its potency as an insight and simply becomes another product.
Advertising is not necessary, the satellites were put into space and maintained by tax dollars, the fiber optic cable which can hold hundreds of channels in a single strand was laid with tax dollars, yet profits are not shared with the public. TV could be commercial free and this would not only make it less annoying to watch, but it would also allow the content to change to what is actually wanted by citizens.
We do not need CEOs like Michael Eisner of Disney to draw a cartoon or run a newsroom. In fact, that management system has been detrimental to arts, entertainment, information, analysis, and the health of our planet and our people.
Does your daughter really need Hannah Montana bed sheets made in China in order to be happy or self-actualize? I would argue no, she does not. In fact such hyper-commercialism and materialistic sources of esteem do damage to a person’s self-image, their imagination, and their meaningful contribution to the world. We do not need to define ourselves by the stuff we buy.
Miley Cirus is a prostitute and Mickey Mouse is her pimp. This young girl is sexualized and sold to the public, and other girls want to be just like her. This sexualization of children has become so normalized that consumers don’t even notice it as sexual anymore, but there wouldn’t be rules against spaghetti strap tops in middle school if this wasn’t a problem.
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“What do you want in life?” I asked the class.
The room was silent for a moment, until one kid said, “22-inch rims.”
He planned on playing professional football someday, though he wasn’t on the high school team because of his poor grades and bad behavior. If that didn’t work out, he had a back-up plan to be a rapper. He is currently in jail earning the cred to make his first single. God bless America.
This is why people can talk about Lindsey Lohan and Lil Wayne, but not know that name of a single Supreme Court justice, or have an understanding of what they do, how it affects us, or why it matters.