How Disney Channel Sold Patriotism To Kids After 9/11

[Nevilledog]

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Ashley Reese
@offbeatorbit
I wrote about Disney Channel’s post-9/11 PSAs and how, in retrospect, the network’s attempt to help kids parse through their trauma doubled as jingoism for beginners.

How Disney Channel Sold Patriotism To Kids After 9/11
Disney’s star-studded post-9/11 PSAs were intended to help kids process trauma. Twenty years later, they act as a mirror to a nation drunk on jingoism.
jezebel.com
9:10 AM · Sep 10, 2021

https://jezebel.com/how-disney-channel-sold-patriotism-to-kids-after-9-11-1847593222

Ilana Cruger-Zaken, a 34-year-old mom and graduate student at the New School, likes to compare generational notes with a friend who’s in her 20s.

“We often do what we call cultural exchanges,” Cruger-Zaken told me over the phone, her toddler crying in the background. “We talk about the difference between our ages, and she tells me things that I don’t understand about her generation. I was thinking about Disney Channel and 9/11 and then suddenly, out of a hole in my brain, I remember these videos and I was like, ‘was that real, or was I hallucinating?’”

It was no hallucination. In the early aughts, the Disney Channel aired a series called Express Yourself in between its regular programming, featuring Disney Channel stars like Hilary Duff and Shia LaBoeuf as well as other celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg chatting about their family, friends, hobbies, and music. The tone of the series shifted dramatically after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, veering into a kind of hyper-patriotic propaganda. Those post-9/11 videos are still burned in Cruger-Zaken’s brain.

“Just remembered these absolutely wild post 9/11 disney channel propaganda videos,” she tweeted in early August.

Disney’s post-9/11 content definitely seemed harmless and wholesome at the time; kids were traumatized and seeking comfort. But now, 20 years later, the clips eerily mirror a nation drunk on jingoism.

*snip*

[jimfields33]

1. We were attacked.

We needed the country to come together. It worked for awhile. Disney was fine for the time. Not everything is evil and bad. During those awful days, Disney was needed.