The Mouse Haunts (The Mouse That Roared #2)

But I still love it.

Growing Up with Disney, and the Trouble That Comes With It

Growing up with Disney VHS tapes, like many American kids in the ’90s, I have what Henry Giroux calls the nostalgia gene. In The Mouse That Roars, Giroux argues that the Disney Renaissance of the late 1980s and ’90s was less a burst of innovation and more a calculated reboot of Disney’s 1950s–60s cultural influence, polished for the post–Cold War consumer child.

The parallels are striking. The Wonderful World of Disney returned to Sunday nights, reviving Cold War television rituals in a post-Soviet key. Theme park expansions, EPCOT, MGM Studios (now Hollywood Studios), Animal Kingdom, and California Adventure, mirrored the growing animatronic dreamscape of mid-century Tomorrowland, now supercharged by Reaganomics and Imagineering. And of course, the animated films weren’t just cultural events. They became IP farms: sequels, spin-offs, merchandise, and an army of costumed characters marching down Main Street USA.

Disney in the 1990s was a soft reboot of mid-century Americana, with better optics, more diversity, and just enough cynicism to pass as updated. But Giroux offers another view, one I don’t always agree with, but that feels disturbingly accurate the more you look.