Channel Surfing: Racism, the Media, and the Destruction of Today's Youth

by Henry A. Giroux and E.X. Giroux

Book Overview

Kate Moss wears a sexual pout in a Calvin Klein ad. Kurt Cobain's suicide is held aloft as the archetypal example of teen alienation. What truth, if any, is contained in these depictions of today's youth? What message about our children is being transmitted? In Channel Surfing , Henry Giroux turns his gaze to this barrage of media images and sees a message that sells our children short by damning them to the preconceived role of alienated outcast...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312214448
• ISBN13: 9780312214449
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Ground-breaking philosophy of the war against youth

A lot more people should be buying Giroux's cogent attack on the Left-Right-Center war against adolescents and his articulation of a new imagery of millennial youth.

A terrific analysis of the impact of culture on youth

Henry A. Giroux has written a compelling series of essays on the effects of culture on how our society imagines youth. By tracing how our media culture portrays issues of race, Giroux clearly illuminates how entertainment is much more than a diversion for the masses. He argues forcefully and convincingly that our media culture is a powerful teaching technology that affects how society views issues related to race, gender, and youth. Rejecting the notion that media culture can be "read" in an endless variety of ways, Giroux points out how economic and political forces emphasize and promote one "reading" over another and how these limited readings of our media culture have come to influence our perceptions and behavior toward people of color, women, and youth. Focusing on both the "politics of representation" and the "pedagogy of the popular," these essays confront the empty rhetoric of the right (espousing family values while simultaneously cutting social programs) and suggest many helpful strategies and tactics for overcoming the malaise and cynicism that seem to be endemic to our society. Imbued with a vital sense of social justice and dedicated to creating a culture of hope, _Channel Surfing_ is a book that demands attention.