Pondering about society's effect on children's tv...

Structuralism

This idea suggests that words have no real existence of their own, but only gather meaning and significance when compared to things around them called a different word. Language is not natural; it is a human creation. Therefore an object we refer to by a certain name has no natural links to that certain name - it is society and culture which have associated that word with that object. For example, a table could be referred to as any word; as long as the word for chair for example was different. There is a popular analogy to help understand this - The Chess Analogy - you could use a matchbox in place of a knight in a game of chess, as long as it is different from the other pieces. What is important is the way that it moves and the rules it follows rather than the way it looks.

Saussure said that language is in fact a system of signs; what matters is not the items themselves but the differences between them - therefore a system of differences.

So.. how is this relevant to mine and Joe's piece?

WELL... I have previously said logo and 'brand recognition' is crucial for a children's show and for sales of any ancillary products they wish to sell. The logo for a successfully recognised children's show should contain the main characters, fonts and colours used throughout the show (this will all help towards brand recognition). However as long as the logo is associated with the show, it doesn't really in theory matter what is in fact depicted on the logo; does it? If what Saussure and other structuralists say is true about language being a system of differences between signs (better known now as 'semiotics') then as long as the logo is different to all others around it then there should be no problems with brand recognition

Logos analysis

I have come to conclusion that the best logos to help children recognise the show by it's logo is to depict the main character(s) and to be constructed of colours/patterns relavant to the show.

Representations of women

"One might simplify this by saying men look at women, and women watch themselves being looked at." This is a bold quote from Ways of seeing - John Berger. This does indeed seem to be the most stereotypical way, however is it the only way?

Laura Mulvey's 'Visual pleasure and narrative cinema' (1975) covers my next topic nicely.

"There are circumstances in which looking is a source of pleasure" but also "there is pleasure in being looked at". Some of the general ideas about female representations are based upon active male and passive female - the male is the one doing the looking and the female is the one being looked at.

Mulvey takes a lot of her ideas from Sigmund Freud. She found that he associated scopophillia (the pleasure in looking) as objectifying other people. At an extreme, this can produce voyeurs and 'peeping Toms' who's only sexual satisfaction can come from watching an objectified other in an controlling sense. She says that the cinema is the prime place to allow the active man to do this (by way of observing the beautiful on screen women). She also says that the male spectator and male protagonist are united - they become one man looking at woman.

In a later article, Mulvey said that woman can either identify with the woman on screen; admitting defeat that it's okay to be objectified by male in such a way OR identify with with the male spectator and allow herself to appreciate and look at the beauty of on-screen woman. 

Trying to relate this to my piece was rather difficult. The 'male gaze' is something that tends not to be featured in children's animations as children do not yet have that level of sexual maturity. However, some children's programmes are very obvious with their gender choices e.g. Bob the builder is very stereotypically male - it would seem all his basic traits are stereotypically male: he is a builder, his clothes, his name, his voice etc etc. where as Fizz from the Tweenies appears to be very stereotypically female: pink clothes, dress with flowers on, long hair, high voice etc etc. However I seem to find that when the character isn't human, the gender lines can become slightly blurred. Programmes with animalistic or alien characters can often not be so obvious with gender of their characters. For example... 

The octonauts - these characters are a near equal split of each gender. I guessed which ones female and got it wrong! There aren't really any stereotypical traits of their gender obvious about them, more their traits as an animal.

Also, the fimbles. The two fimbles in the foreground are female, however both inclue a colour which is stereotypically male.

Rowland Barthes - Striptease

In this article (from his book 'Mythologies') Barthes says that striptease is based on a contradiction; that "woman is desexualised at the very moment when she is stripped naked", it is indeed the time taken to shed her clothes, which makes it something people desire. Because of this, layer upon layer of coverings and props will be placed upon the woman, to draw out the desirable process. The end of the striptease will now signify that nakedness is the natural vesture of woman and amounts as the perfectly chaste state of flesh. In essence, what I think Barthes is saying, is that it's not always the actual 'thing', but everything that surrounds it. So we need to sometimes remove ourself from a situation to not be drawn in by all the fancy surroundings of it.

Aggression in children's media

Children learn from observing others; this is a well respected behavourist viewpoint, so therefore when making a media text for a child audience, you must take into consideration everything that happens in your narrative and what your character represents, to ensure that they are not displaying any negative behaviours that the child could be affected by.

If you consider some of the theories I have previously looked at (see post "Some definitions") then here are some possible examples of how agressove/violent acts could affect a child viewer.


- Hyperdermic syringe: The child will view the piece and not question anything about it, presuming life is like this.

- Cultivation theory: Child sees a violent act commited on television by a bald headed man and then assumes all bald headed men will be violent.

- Desensitisation: Child sees violence in a media text and assumes it's normal becomes desensitised to the shock of violence.

- Copycat theory: Child sees aggressive behaviour and copys it themself.

- Reception theory: One child viewer could be scared by a certain character and their actions, yet another child could view the same text and could take a liking to this certain character.

- Ethnography: You have to try and grasp/remember what is scary for a child that age, because to us as young adults most things aren't scary, however a child of a TA age rang (1-4) could be easily scared by something we view as totally normal/fine.


I will now give some examples of cases where children have been affected by violence and aggression in media texts.

The Academy of Pediatrics says “More than one thousand scientific studies and reviews conclude that significant exposure to media violence increases the risk of aggressive behavior in certain children, desensitizes them to violence and makes them believe that the world is a ‘meaner and scarier’ place than it is.” Many psychologists believe that childre have a 'critical period' for learning, and in this time they are most impressionable - think of the child as a sponge during this time; they are likely to soak up most academic knowledge and general life skills/behaviours in this time period compared to any other time period in their life. If during this time children begin to think that this type of violence is normal behavior these thoughts are often difficult to change later on in life. (This is supported by studies into children who have experienced/witnessed domestic violence often becoming offenders of victims themselves because they believe violence is the 'norm'.)

Psychology also makes us aware to the types of 'conditioning' that are happening to these child viewers. Classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social learning theory.

Classical conditioning: Think of this as forcing an association between one thing and something else. (Everybody knows the experiment about Pavlov ringing a bell when he fed his dogs to make them salivate; he carried on doing this until he could ring the bell, but produce no food, and they would still salivate.) Putting it into context for children's media would be they see a conflict happen and it always gets resovled with violence. The child would then associate the recognition of conflict with the aggressive/violent act and maybe apply this to any conflict they had in life.

Operant conditioning: If a child for example swore, some people would react by telling them off - this being a negative consequence of the action of swearing and the child would be less likely to do it again (as they wouldn't want to recieve the negative consequence again). However some people may laugh if the child swore. Now, to a child, making people laugh is a reward so the child would be more likely to repeat the swearing action to gain the positive response of laughter. Applying this to children's media; if a child saw this scenario happening on television, they would maybe immitate it to try and gain the positive reaction.

Social Learning Theory: This says that children learn from their interactions with others. So a child may view another person on television being violent/aggressive and learn from that and repeat the action themself.


One, terrible event which brought about this massive concern of violence in children's media was the Columbine incident. The two boys (both of whom played hours of violent video games) had secure and supportive home lives, yet still were influenced enough by the media to commit such a hideous act of violence. There was also a similar case in Kentucky where a young boy, Micheal Carneal entered his school and shot and killed some of his classmates. He shot 9 bullets in a 10second period. 8 of those shots were hits, with 3 being head shots and 3 being neck. This accuracy and precision of shot is WAY above the standard of the US army expert marksmen. This child had never fired a pistol in all his life, but becuase of the hours he spent on violent video games, he became an expert at it. I mean, you can't really blame the poor lad, when on these games you get rewarded with more points for 'head shots'.

If parents/guargians are worried about their child experience violent media and copying from it, then there are certain steps they should take, such as helping them chose age appropriate programmes to watch and watching programmes with them incase any issues do arise you will be able to talk abou them.