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Christmas: Capitalism At Its Best

Christmas shopping for most Americans

Growing up, I remember Christmas being the most exciting time of the year. As I’ve gotten older and have become responsible for purchasing gifts for other people myself, I have come to associate the holiday with frenzy and anxiety. Thorstein Veblen was undoubtedly correct to refer to Christmas as a time of vicarious consumption. Christmas is literally referred to as “the season of giving” and if you are not giving you may be seen as cheap or a scrooge. As we have learned in our readings, one of parents’ biggest fears is having bored children. Parents also want to ensure their children do not feel left out or disappointed. With the growing emphasis on the importance of material items in the U.S., parents feel obligated to stretch their wallets  at this time of year to ensure their children aren’t left out. This is because we have been socialized to believe that when you wake up on  Christmas morning, there should be a towering mountain of gifts under the tree with your name on them. The main goal for many children is bragging rights. They want to be able to go to school the next day and compare who got the better presents.

“When compared to the average family budget, the Christmas gift budget makes up 1.3% of all average family spending. It is more than what the average family will spend on reading materials ($110/year) and alcoholic beverages ($435/year) put together.”

In the article “Modern Childhood, Modern Toys”, Gary Cross says, “But in the nineteenth century these celebrations of indulgence were increasingly focused on the family, in parents pampering children. The shower of gifts became a way of demonstrating personal affluence” (59). Essentially, families are going out of their way to buy their children’s happiness. The blame can in many instances be placed on advertising. Companies make it a point, especially at this time of year, to advertise their most expensive, sought after products while basically telling viewers how much they need it. Children see their friends playing with the best new toy and many advertisements lead them to feel like they aren’t “cool” if they don’t have that great toy too. Advertisements only solidify parents’ fear that they will disappoint their children.

Television, The Third Parent?

“Imagine if there was an extra adult in your home parenting your child. Every day from dawn to dusk, this person would give your kids information on everything from school work to more personal issues, like dating and relationships. And you have no say what they told your child.”

Angela Ardolino creates this image to explain the role, that she believes, television has taken on in the home. In her article, “Embracing media influence on Children,” Ardolino is arguing that parents do not understand how big of an influence the media has on a child. At the time of adolescence, she states, children form a separation from their parents and look to the media for guidance. What these children see on television and in ads tends to form their values and interests. She argues that this influence is mostly negative. Ardolino ends by giving media tips to help parents and encouraging them to help their children choose positive media role models.

Angela Ardolino is the editor of Tampa Bay Parenting Magazine, Founder of Miami Children’s Theater, and an expert in honest parenting. While she does not have children herself, she has so much experience with children and with the study of children and parenting. From her articles on her webpage, she allows the reader to get a sense of what kind of person she is and what her beliefs are. She writes about popular media influences on children today and her responses to these influences range from mildly liberal to mildly conservative. She reaches out to all parents with varying parenting skills.

This critique of the effect of television on children is similar to Ray Bradbury’s critique in “the Veldt.” In his story, Bradbury creates an image of the nursery taking on the role of the parents and all of the children’s behaviors come from what they create in the nursery. Both Ardolino and Bradbury have the same critique of television acting as a parent for children and they both portray this media influence as negative by showing the parents being killed in the end of “The Veldt” and by explaining that children who see tobaocco ads are more likely to take on the habit of tobacco. However, Bradbury explains the nursery more as a baby sitter, whereas, Ardolino portrays the television as an actual guardian that effects all aspects of the child’s life. I think that Ardolino’s critique stems from the greater variety of TV shows, today, than were available in the 1950’s when “The Veldt” was produced. The wide variety of what is shown on TV today makes way for more influences in every part of the children’s lives.

Whether the TV is acting as a babysitter or a role model for children, many critics argue that the media is becoming a problem. As seen in Adolino’s articles as well as in Bradbury’s story, the TV is showing a negative influence on children. Their interests, hobbies, and values are all being formed by what they see while they are left in front of the television. By presenting their arguments, Adolino and Bradbury leave the idea of whether or not there needs to be an intervention in what today’s children are watching up to the parents.

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

The Mystery Inc. Gang, Babble.com, SUNNYCHANEL

When I was a child I would watch Scooby-Doo religiously. Every Saturday I would sit down with my brother and sister and we would watch them. This happened for years. Scooby Doo is a children’s cartoon show that stars a group of friends: Freddy, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and their dog Scooby Doo. These friends would get together and solve mysteries in their town. The group called themselves the Mystery Inc and would always find out who the mysterious criminal was behind all of the “supernatural” crimes.

The show originally started in 1969 as Scooby Doo, Where Are You! for Hanna-Barbera Productions. It would come on Saturday mornings and had the same cast as it does today. Hanna-Barbera’s successor, Warner Bros, continued the show until 1976. In 1976 the show moved over to ABC and aired until they cancelled it in 1986. They show has had many spin offs since then as well, such as A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo’s Great Mysteries, etc. The show currently running on air is Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, which premiered on cartoon network in July 2010. The show has won many awards and has been made into movies and comic books.

However, the success of the show has much to do with the viewers (children). In class we have talked a lot about children’s television shows and negative adult reactions towards them. The creation of Scooby Doo was actually a side effect of the parent-run organization Action for Children’s Television. This organization was complaining about there being too much violence in the Saturday morning cartoons and pressured Hanna-Barbera to create a new show that was more appropriate. And, through lots of hard work and ideas, Scooby Doo, Where Are You! was finally aired in 1969.

Parents have a large effect over the children’s television and movie industries. Without the parents support, these industries would fail because their target audience does not have the capabilities to go see movies, pay for tickets, pay for cable, etc… without their parents help. Therefore these some of the people in these industries, the successful people, sell to the parents just as much as they sell to the children.

Lou Vs. the Lorax

Lou Dobbs Attacks Dr. Suess For ‘Indoctrinating’ Children
 


In this recent installment of the popular Fox News segment “The Unmentionables”, pundit Lou Dobbs attempts to convince viewers that Hollywood-produced children’s movies of recent times, specifically The Secret World of Arietty (based on the British, mid-century children’s novel The Borrowers by Mary Norton)and The Lorax (based on the picture book by Dr. Seuss), are rife with “liberal media bias”. Dobbs makes the argument that The Secret World of Arietty, whose story revolves around a miniature family scavenging the leftovers of full-sized “human beans” to create and sustain a secret world within our world, implicitly supports a sort of communistic mentality of involuntary wealth redistribution. He even draws a direct correlation between the animated film and the Occupy Wall Street movement, which he seems to view as an insidious coalition, though the protests associated with Occupy have largely pushed broader contemporary issues of governmental corruption in lieu of any well-defined agenda. Dobbs goes on to criticize the second children’s film, The Lorax, for extolling the virtues of environmental awareness in the attitude that this message is anti-business and thus counter-conservative.
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Baking is for Girls

Easy-Bake Oven in the 90's from Website Children of the 90's

One of my most prized possessions throughout my childhood was my Easy-Bake Oven. I loved to spend all my time baking things and pretending I was a real chef. Easy-Bake Ovens were first came out in 1963 and are now manufactured by Hasbro. They first used a lightbulb to cook the products and now use an actual heating element to bake. The Easy-Bake Oven is created for girls to mix and bake cookies and cakes to decorate and eat. It is a small version of a real oven and is safe and easy to use for kids. There have been many different versions throughout the decades that it has been around and is still sold today. When you bought the oven it came with a few mixes and the result would be a very small cake, cookie, or brownie that you would eat. The price for an Easy-Bake Oven now can be anywhere from $40-15. In 2007 Hasbro had to recall over 900,000 Easy-Bake Ovens because kids could get their fingers caught and potentially burn their hands.

As a kid I never realized the implications this toy had for gender roles. It was a baking kit made for girls. Looking at this now it is funny to see how stereotypical this product is for women and their domestic role. In class we discussed the different ways toys and television shows can effect children and the Easy-Bake Oven is a good example of how girls might think it is their job to be the domestic one in the family. They later came out with a boy version in the early 2000’s but it focused on making gross looking food like mud cakes. This toy is promoting a clear separation of what girls and boys roles should be as kids. When I used this toy almost every weekend in the first grade I didn’t realize that it could have lasting impacts on my model of what a woman should do. Considering that I still love to bake now it could have had an impact on my life, but I don’t think it had any serious affects relating to my role as a woman.

 

The Sedentary Life

An article from Time by staff writer Alice Park focuses on the physical health effects of kids’ television viewing. The article summarizes the findings of researchers from the US and Spain who studied inactivity in 111 children ranging from 3 to 8 years old. The researchers found that of television, Internet and video games, television is the worst for kids. They found that kids who watch excessive television are more likely to have higher blood pressure, even if they’re at a healthy weight.

Kid watching TV on the couch, eating potato chips (click for source)

What makes television worse than other sedentary activities? The findings suggest that kids watching television are likely to be eating unhealthy snacks, which could explain the rise in blood pressure. They also note that watching television right before bed stimulates kids’ minds and keeps them up. This lack of sleep affects metabolism and can cause weight gain.

While the main concerns of parents about television in the 1950s was the morality and emotional effects of television, rather than its physical effects. Family values were also central to television rhetoric. “In advice literature of the period, mass media became a central focus of concern as experts told parents how to control and regulate media in ways that promoted family values,” writes Spigel in “Seducing the Innocent.” Spigel and modern parents have similar concerns, however, when it comes to turning off the tube. Concern for kids with the “telebugeye” came about along with concerns for kids “habits of hygiene, nutrition and decorum” (p. 147). Parents have feared the effects on kids’ television-viewing habits since television’s invention, but now they have there is evidence of how detrimental “vegging out” in front of the TV can be.

For a post on the same article, please see Mira’s blog post.

Recess!

Recess! was an animated television series that told the stories of the lives of six elementary school children as they interacted with other children, teachers, and parents. TJ, Vince, Ashley, Gus, Gretchen, and Mikey, the six best friends that made up the base of the show, represented a wide variety of stereotypes. TJ was the typical All-American boy, Vince was the stereotyped super athletic African American kid, Ashley represented the punk look, Gus was the nerdy smart friend, Gretchen was the awkward gangly girl, and Mikey was the overweight but lovable funny kid. The show portrays the strict hierarchy and social order that exists in the whole 4th grade, including one child being “King Bob” and the stereotypical popular girls, “The Ashleys”. The first episode was aired in 1997 on ABC, and continued until 2001. After, reruns were played on the Disney Channel. I remember as an 8 year old waking up on Saturday mornings and hoping I wasn’t too late to watch my favorite Saturday morning cartoon, as we didn’t have cable and therefore didn’t have the Disney Channel to watch reruns on. In our course packet, Segel talks about the gender issues in childhood reading (67-78). Certain books are deemed “boy books” and others “girls books”. The same issue arises when children’s cartoons and TV shows lean too far towards one gender or the other. Kim Possible is a girl hero, so boys can’t like her! Recess mixed in an equal amount of gender roles into their show, making it a gender neutral production and good for acceptable sexes to like. However, it went further than that. Because the six main characters represented six vastly different stereotypes, a lot of kids could see themselves being like one of the main group (besides the gender differences). Usually a show wouldn’t focus around a normal African American boy who was really good at sports, but Recess had Vince in there to let to athletic kids feel a connection. The same stands for the rest of the characters. Recess didn’t show kids who had crazy superpowers or children who dealt with evil witches, it just had a group of normal fourth graders that every child could relate to. I believe it was so popular because every viewer could relate to their favorite character and the problems the group faced.

Recess Kids from Google Images