Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today's Youth by Henry A. Giroux epub fb2 djvu

Kate Moss wears an invitingly sexual pout in a Calvin Klein ad. The urban teens in Larry Clark's acclaimed film "Kids" have unsafe sex, use illegal drugs and steal from their parents. "Dangerous Minds", tells us that South LA students of colour can only be saved by an angelic, blow dried Michelle Pheiffer. 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 this text, cultural theorist Henry Giroux turns his gaze to this barrage of media images and interprets the message, a message that sells children short by damning them to the preconceived role of alienated outcast. Surfing from one channel of communication to the next, Giroux builds up a complex web of associations between characters in films, tarnished real life teen idols, and sexualized presentations of nubile young clothing models to show us the dark vision of children that rides the airwaves and inhabits the print media.