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. 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 our children that rides the airwaves and inhabits the print media. Channel Surfing, Henry Giroux’s most fascinating and intriguing book yet, is sure to create controversy and debate at the same time that it calls for a more ethical attitude towards the prospect of our children’s future.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The two sections of Channel Surfing, dealing respectively with youth culture and racial politics, may not appear to have much in common with each other at first. But Henry A. Giroux has an underlying class critique that binds them together. Young people are being barraged, he argues, by consumer culture messages that consistently identify them as alienated outcasts. They are also being assaulted by racial messages "targeting black youth as criminals while convincing working-class white youth that blacks and immigrants are responsible for the poverty, despair, and violence that have become a growing part of everyday life in American society." Although the balance between academic jargon and pop culture is somewhat precarious, Giroux's thesis is packed with the consideration of detail that marks useful cultural criticism.
Review
"Giroux deserves high marks for presenting all sides of the issues." --Rapport
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A terrific analysis of the impact of culture on youth,
By A Customer
This review is from: Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today's Youth (Hardcover)
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.
4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ground-breaking philosophy of the war against youth,
By
This review is from: Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today's Youth (Paperback)
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.
6 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
giroux needs to try something new,
By A Customer
This review is from: Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today's Youth (Hardcover)
while the topics are compelling, giroux has written too many collections with essays that contain secondary sources and materials. one gets the feeling he watches a film once or reads one article and then pontificates a frankfurt school-based rant.
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Inside This Book
(learn more)
First Sentence:
American youth face a world of increasing poverty and unemployment and diminished social opportunities. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
new black intellectuals, black public intellectuals, other cultural workers, sixties activism, resurgent racism, democratic public life, representational politics, black public sphere, old racism, race talk, dominant media, black jury Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The Bell Curve, United States, Dangerous Minds, Calvin Klein, African Americans, Bob Dole, Cornel West, Larry Clark, Newt Gingrich, Toni Morrison, Charles Murray, Boston Globe, Dinesh D'Souza, Martin Luther King, New York City, Rodney King, Adolph Reed, Bob Grant, Harlem Diary, Head Start, Howard Winant, Mark Fuhrman, Michael Eric Dyson, Million Man March, Rush Limbaugh New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
American youth face a world of increasing poverty and unemployment and diminished social opportunities. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
new black intellectuals, black public intellectuals, other cultural workers, sixties activism, resurgent racism, democratic public life, representational politics, black public sphere, old racism, race talk, dominant media, black jury Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The Bell Curve, United States, Dangerous Minds, Calvin Klein, African Americans, Bob Dole, Cornel West, Larry Clark, Newt Gingrich, Toni Morrison, Charles Murray, Boston Globe, Dinesh D'Souza, Martin Luther King, New York City, Rodney King, Adolph Reed, Bob Grant, Harlem Diary, Head Start, Howard Winant, Mark Fuhrman, Michael Eric Dyson, Million Man March, Rush Limbaugh New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
See all 100 books this book cites
- Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence, and Youth by Henry A. Giroux on 8 pages
- Dangerous Minds: They Were Problem Kids With One Last Chance . . . Her by LouAnne Johnson on 4 pages
- Disturbing Pleasures: Learning Popular Culture by Henry A. Giroux on 4 pages
- To Renew America by Newt Gingrich on page 76, page 195, and Back Matter
- Teenage Lust (Japanese Version) by Larry Clark on page 56, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 100 books this book cites
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