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Posts from the ‘Archive of Childhood’ Category

Feb 27

Arthur

 

Growing up I had a lot of people around me, but not that many people my age to play with. As a result I spent many hours watching television. Looking back on all the hours of television that I watched, there was definitely one show that stood out as my favorite, Arthur.

Arthur tells the story of Arthur Read, an eight-year-old anthropomorphized aardvark, and his family as he grows up in Elwood City. The show is based  off of  the picture books created, written, and illustrated by Marc Brown. Arthur has been on the air since September 1996 and as one of the longest-running shows on PBS Kids (according to Wikipedia), has had the special task of remaining relevant to children during a particularly difficult time. Not only are there technological hurdles to compete with, but there are also other television shows.  I believe that even during my elementary/middle school days that Arthur was trying its best to appeal to children my age with issues that affected us. It had the approval of parents because it presented issues in an intelligent manner and maintained  a strong educational element.

I am happy that Arthur  has been on the air as long as it has, because it has tackled a variety of topics and even though it is a program on television, it even discusses the problems associated with watching television -overconsumption of the medium and desensitization for example. In an episode titled “Attack of the Turbo Tibbles” two friends of D.W., Tommy and Timmy Tibble emulate the violence portrayed in a show. Their emulation reaches a breaking point when their violence leads to D.W. getting injured. Similar to The Veldt, the Tibbles have a hard time separating what is real life and what is the life that they wish they had. Their inability to disassociate the violent cartoon show that they watch and the they real life that they are a part result in someone getting hurt.

The interesting parts (and those pertinent to the post are around 9:00 and 10:30. 

Feb 27

Wringer

The first book I remember reading cover to cover (without being required to), was Wringer by Jerry Spinelli, published by HarperCollins in 1997.  It tells the story of ten year old Palmer LaRue, who is faced with a moral dilemma.  In Palmer’s hometown, it is a tradition for all the boys who have turned ten to wring the necks of injured pigeons on Pigeon Day. Thousands of pigeons are released and shot as a way to raise money for the city park. This is considered an honor and a rite of passage for the boys. Everyone around seems to be looking forward to it, except Palmer. The idea of it tortures him; he is taunted by the thought.  He even ends up taking in a pet pigeon, who he names Nippy. The only person who knows about his new pet is Dorothy, his best friend, who is also against the festivities on Pigeon Day.

Palmer fakes enthusiasm to fit in with his guy friends so that he is considered “cool”. On Pigeon Day, Palmer finds out that Dorothy accidently let Nippy out of his cage near the area where pigeons are captured for the festival. Palmer rescues an injured Nippy from the shooting zone in front of the entire town. The story ends with a little boy, while watching Palmer, tell his father he wants a pet pigeon.

We have talked a lot in class about the gender roles in children’s toys and books. This book is the exact opposite of the gender focused books described by Elizabeth Segel. Palmer is not very adventurous and he relates more to his best friend Dorothy than the popular boys in his class, Mutto, Henry and Beans. There is definitely male focused comedy associated with these three boys, (bathroom jokes, etc). The combination of the soft thoughts of Palmer and the rowdy boys in his class allows for this book to be appreciated by both boys and girls.

I never understood until recently why this book meant so much to me. At the point when I was reading this I was eight years old, so I did not think much about it. Looking back today I realize it is because the story is about a boy who does not fit into his society’s idea of what a boy should be or act. I was a girl faking it with my friends and family, though I did not know why. Now I know why I felt so different, I am gay. Palmer’s story of fighting for how you feel inside, even though everyone around you may reject you, is something that sticks with me to this day. This book bends the gender roles we have established for our children. It says: be who you want to be, no matter what the world is telling you.

Feb 27

Coca-Cola Soccer Kit

The year was 2001, and I was 9 years old. My dad had come across a pair of tickets to a home game for Honduras’s national football team against Mexico, and asked me whether I wanted to come along with him. I’ve heard that every man at some point during his life takes, as a wife, one sport. While he may be unfaithful at times by engaging in other sports, it is to this sport to which he will be permanently bound for the remainder of his life. My father’s sport was baseball. That probably explains why, unlike every other child in Honduras, I lacked any sort of familiarity on football and did not partake in the religious fervor that its fans tend to engage. That all changed on a chilly October day in 2001. Out of pure curiosity for the event my school friends had been ranting about for the last month or so, I agreed to go with my dad (mostly because I wanted to know what made football more interesting than Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, which despite my high praise had somehow failed to elicit anything more than a “whatever” from my friends). Once at the stadium, a wave of excitement drifted over me and I ran ahead of my dad so that I could see where the deafening noise was coming from. Then I saw it. The green pitch, the chanting fans, the waving flags. They say when you meet the love of your life time stops, and that’s true. I felt like I stood there for an entire lifetime before my dad snapped me out of it and walked me to our seats. There isn’t enough space in this post to describe how I felt during that game, but suffice to say Honduras won by three goals, and I had fallen in love for the first time in my life.

Following the game, and to advertise Honduras’s campaign towards reaching the 2002 World Cup in Korea/Japan, Coca-Cola (the national team’s main sponsor) released a kit that included a soccer ball and the two small goals. You could not buy the ball in stores- it could only be purchased by redeeming 12 proof of purchase stamps from qualifying products. To promote the kit, Coca-Cola aired commercials showing the national team’s players doing tricks with the ball and scoring into the goals. The day after the game my friends (not a single one surprised at my overnight transition from indifferent to obsessed about football) and I consumed more Coca-Cola than should be humanly possible and redeemed our purchases to the nearest distribution center. Every week one of us would get to keep our new found treasure at their house, with possession changing hands on Fridays. Every Friday we would set up the goals on somebody’s street, place the ball in the center of our “field”, and a metamorphosis would occur. The walls around us turned to fans. The asphalt beneath us turned to beautiful grass. We were no longer children, but instead became our idols. Afterwards we refreshed ourselves with (big surprise!) ice-cold Coca-Colas.

Thinking back, this is a perfect illustration of the phenomena described by Howard Chudacoff in Children at Play:

Advertisers quickly learned that they could merge a “backstory” of fantasy with a product to create a meaningful relationship between product and child. The licensing from movies, television programs, and sports gave toys a very explicit significance… most children understood the product in a way that most adults did not. (Course Packet page 180)

In Honduras the vast majority of children (especially boys) loved Honduras’s national team, regardless of whether or not they liked football. It was a way we all bonded, came together, existed as one. There were no boys and girls, no kids and adults, no rich and poor. For 90 minutes, we were all just Honduran. Coca-Cola used that indescribable (at least to children) feeling of belonging, of unison, to advertise their product. By merging the national team and Coca-Cola products, the line between them became blurred. We saw Coca-Cola as the moment when a player made an extraordinary dribble, or as the feeling when all the crowd roared and danced when Honduras would score a goal. Coca-Cola became pure, unfiltered happiness. I saw anyone that chose Pepsi over Coca-Cola as hating the very core of being Honduran, of conspiring to deprive us all of the joy of qualifying for the World Cup. Many of my friends shared those sentiments. The kit Coca-Cola provided took it all a step further. After watching their commercials, we all wanted to use the same ball that the players used, and to score goals into the same posts that they did. We wanted to dribble the same, and shoot the same. We came to believe that the “magic” the players had was a product of the Coca-Cola ball itself. The ball and goals became mystical figures, items that when in our possession made our skill-set limitless. We were capable of any trick, could score any goal, and would eventually make our way into the national team to play alongside our idols. My parents and many adults did not and could not understand why we felt so strongly about these kits. How could they, after all? They were too old to play on the national team, so we figured they would never understand. Those days we existed for one ideal- “Joga Bonito”, play beautifully…

Coca-Cola Ball, courtesy of the Coca-Cola Store

Honduras National Team sponsored by, you guessed it, Coca-Cola. Courtesy of ElHeraldo.hn

Feb 27

Playmobil Empire

I blame the occasional lower back pain I experience today on the years I spent bent over on my bedroom floor playing with the toys that dominated my childhood, Playmobils. The plastic dolls and furniture produced by the Playmobil line provided me with countless hours of entertainment. For years, the carpet of my bedroom remained unseen, and in its place was the Playmobil empire I had constructed.

The Playmobil Company was founded by the Brandstätter Group, headquartered in Zirndorf, Germany. The Playmobil was first introduced at the International Toy Fair in Nuremburg in 1974, and in 1975 Playmobil went global. The first Playmobil sets offered revolved around the themes of: knights, construction, and Indians. Once Playmobils hit the market, they were an instant success amongst children, and continue to maintain their popularity today.

Playmobil produces a variety of thoroughly detailed and realistic-looking toys, ranging from plastic dolls to plastic mansions furnished with plastic Playmobil furniture. The dolls, male or female/ adult or child, all have big smiles, no noses, and all sport different outfits, hairstyles, skin color, and more. Playmobil also provides children with lavish furniture to decorate your Playmobil home with. Playmobil products are typically sold in sets, so the price ranges based on the Playmobil item or set that you purchase. Typically, Playmobil dolls cost around $3.00 sans any additionally accessories, and sold sets can cost anywhere between $10.00-$100.00. The lucky children who somehow manage to persuade their parents into buying them a three-story house or castle pay as much as $160.00.

Playmobil creates hundreds of different play sets based around various themes, and one might conclude that some sets are designed with the intentions of being geared towards a certain gender. Howard P. Chudacoff mentions in his work, “The Commercialization and Co-optation of Children’s Play, 1950 to the Present”, that some theorize boys and girls to have different play habits and interests. Chudacoff states: “Boys were said to desire power and thus needed to be represented as playing with action toys that emphasized success…by contrast, consultants assumed that girls craved glamour and were more likely than boys to sit indoors where they quietly played with dolls and games” (180). Playmobil offers children a variety of sets based around differing themes. One such set is pirate themed, and comes equipped with a ship and dolls accessorized in pirate gear. Another set offered by Playmobil is a nursery set, which comes with a crib, rocking chair, baby doll, and more. Chudacoff mentions that boys are more prone to play with action toys, whereas girls prefer “glamour” and quieter activities. If these assumptions are correct, then in order for Playmobil to market to both genders they need to create action and adventure orientated toys as well as ones that “glamour” and nurturing themed, hence the pirate ship set and the nursery set.

Chudacoff also includes an argument made by Susan Linn pertaining to the idea that toys today no longer encourage creativity. Linn believes that: “Traditional construction toys such as Legos and Lincoln Logs no longer come boxed as collections of materials that would encourage a child to use them freely. Rather, she observes, they are packaged in “kits,” complete with explicit instructions…for putting the blocks together” (“The Commercialization and Co-optation of Children’s Play, 1950 to the Present”, 185). In contrast to Linn’s argument, I believe that Playmobils prompt children to use their imagination, whether it be freely choosing how to decorate a room with Playmobil furniture, or imaging that your bedroom floor is the ocean that your Playmobil pirate ship rides on. Playmobil simply provides children with realistic-looking toys, and the rest of the play is up to the child. As a kid, playing with my Playmobils meant entering an imaginative world, a world in which these plastic toys allowed me to construct a town, zoo, or any other setting that I could imagine.

Playmobil kitchen and dining set sold at Toys R Us for $29.99.

Feb 27

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.

Feb 27

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.

 

Feb 27

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

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