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Posts from the ‘Reading Journal’ Category

Mar 9

Moral Lessons from Care Bears

 

Care Bears from canimation.wordpress.com

In the Care Bears episode “Care-a-Lot’s Birthday,” Noble-Heart and True-Heart give Brave-Heart and Tender-Heart the task of organizing the land of Care-a-Lot’s birthday party. As they start out the planning, Brave-Heart isn’t very cooperative with Tender-Heart and basically does all of the planning as he wants. Then, the baby bears, Tugs and Hugs try to help and mess up the party plans when they try to help and Brave-Heart yells at them for making a mess. As Tugs and Hugs walk off because they are upset, Mr. Beastly comes and kidnaps them to take to the evil No-Heart.  Eventually all of the bears in Care-a-Lot realize Tugs and Hugs have been kidnapped, so they all join together to go rescue them. In the end the Care Bears’ teamwork helps them rescue Hugs and Tugs and escape No-Heart. When all of the bears return to Care-a-Lot they realize that all of the birthday party must be planned in a short amount of time, but together they make it happen and it ends up being a great party.

After watching this episode, I do understand Cross’ argument that kids’ TV is separated from the real world. This is apparent with Care Bears because they live in clouds and have super powers. However, I disagree with Cross’ view that these PLCs don’t contain any value for children. In the episode of Care Bears that I watched, many themes popped up that I think are important lessons for children to learn. The whole episode seemed to be about working together. When Brave-Heart tried to plan the whole party his way and by himself he failed and ran into problems. When all of the Care Bears came together the party went well and they were able to rescue Hugs and Tugs. The lesson of cooperation is clearly shown in this episode even though it is shown through a fantasy world. I also think the whole Care Bears series does a good job of showing kids to care for one another and be nice. Overall, while Cross is right that shows like Care Bears are very separated from the real world, I think he is wrong that they do not have value to children. Moral values and lessons can be learned from these fantasy shows and be applied to real world situations.

 

Mar 9

GI Joe: A Real American Fantasy

For this post I watched the twenty-second episode from the first season of GI Joe: A Real American Hero, titled “The Funhouse.” In this episode, Cobra Commander has kidnapped a group of scientists and imprisoned them in his temple base in South America. Cobra imprisoned the scientists to try and draw the GI Joe team into an elaborate fun house of traps that he constructed inside the island base. At the end of the episode the team overcomes Cobra’s traps and rescues the group of scientists, all before the bomb planted by Cobra underneath the base explodes.

This episode of GI Joe relates well to Cross’ ideas that PLC’s in the 1980’s showed children a fantasy world that didn’t relate to the actual world around them. According to Cross, toys and t.v. characters of the 1980s’s,” fought in fantastic miniworlds of rocketry and lasers where the child could not fully identify with the creature or violent acts he performed” (Cross, 291). This idea ties in with the GI Joe series. In the episode both Cobra and the Joe team utilize weapons that fire lasers, and real bullets are never actually displayed. This allows the child watching the show to fantasize that no one is ever actually killed in conflict. The victims of laser wounds always get up later if they are an important character to the show. By idealizing combat in this way, the child is completely removed from the actual horrors of battle, and never has to rationalize the violence they are shown. The Cobra enemies presented are also made to look more like robot soldiers than actual people, which further removes children from reality, as countless waves of faceless Cobra soldiers are mowed down in the Joe assault on the base. In this way, television  producers in the 1980’s could show fantasy conflicts and weapons without having to worry about excessive backlash from concerned parents over the televised violence.

 

 

Mar 9

GI Joe: Can We Learn From It?

For this blog I watched episode two of a miniseries of GI Joe: A Real American Hero titled, “Slaves of the Cobra Master”.  In this episode it was found out that the terrorist organization Cobra has three elements that enable them to make a machine that can enslave anybody on earth, from the presidents of the world to the Russian army.  The GI Joe team has to try and find all of these elements in order to build their own machine.  In this episode they fight their way through robots, lasers, and radioactive gas in order to obtain one of the three elements.  While this is going on, one of their other team members, Duke, is in a cage death match at the Cobra headquarters, but gets help from a slave girl to escape.

 

To connect this PLC to the Cross reading, there were a few different aspects of the episode that stood out.  First, let me preface this by saying that in the 1960s, GI Joe was a show that glorified real war, but in the 1980s episodes enemies were, “not communist or capitalist, foreign or American, black or white.  They were other worldly or unreal” (Cross pg 291).  This shows that shows changed in the 1980s to more fantasy like shows that didn’t really portray the real aspects of life and this was Cross’ biggest fear.  He felt that in the past shows would teach kids about the past so they could learn a lesson for the future, but that in the PLCs of the 80s this was not the case as shows were in “perpetual” change with fantasy like plots.  In this particular episode, GI Joe wasn’t just one American hero, but a team of special forces that fought using lasers and futuristic trucks to defeat the Cobra terrorist organization that seemed like it was from another world as the leader talked and acted like a snake.  These weapons and vehicles are not real (unless our military looks like star wars) and this is the part of the show that backs up what Cross was saying that kids can’t learn from shows like this that don’t portray real life.

 

There was part of the show that could go against Cross’ idea, and this was the Cobra organization.  They are called a terrorist organization and this is something that we do deal with in real life.  And in one point in the show, the American delegate responding to Cobra says basically that ‘they will never give in to terrorists’s’.  So while it is different context, this is a lesson for kids who watch the show to always fight for freedom, but according to Cross, lessons couldn’t be learned from these fantasy PLCs.

Mar 8

Red Rocket

Gary Cross’ article, “Spinning out of Control,” states that “the old view that children should learn from the past and prepare for the future is inevitably subverted in a consumer culture where memory and hope get lost in the blur of perpetual change.” I would agree for the most part, that most children’s television shows are pointless and mindless entertainment. However some shows were able to capture young audiences as well as teach them valuable lessons.  G.I. Joe is a good example of a perfect balance between fantasy and (somewhat) reality.  The episode that I watched was entitled “Red Rocket’s Glare,” which was about Cobra Command trying to blow up the world (surprise, surprise ).  Cobra Command was able to buy out a lot of small locally owned businesses across the country and turn them into a series of fast food restaurants called, Red Rockets.  The Joe’s first discovered that something was a midst when they took a short leave of absence to visit one of their teammate’s Aunt’s newly owned Red Rocket restaurant.   There they discovered that a biker gang (with ray guns) was hired by Cobra Command to harass these restaurants so they could lose money and have to sell their business to evil conglomerate Extensive Enterprise, which (surprise, surprise ) is owned by Cobra.  The Joe’s are able to fend off the bikers but in turn trigger Cobra’s attack on the world by launching all of the rockets on top of the restaurants which turned out to be actual rockets and not just props (surprise, surprise ). But in the end, the Joe’s prevailed again through teamwork, intelligence, and some really good resources.

 

Mar 8

Strawberry Shortcake – “Big Country Fun”


In the episode of Strawberry Shortcake I watched, titled “Big Country Fun”, Strawberry Shortcake and her friend Angel Cake get a job at the “Fairy Prairie Dude Ranch” where they become the counselors of different bunkhouses. While there, their cabins compete against one another in a contest over who can make the best chili, decorate their horses the prettiest, and who is the best at trail riding. Throughout the episode, Angel Cake becomes very competitive and loses sight of the fun they’re supposed to be having at the ranch.

While the article titled “Strawberry Shortcake in the Big Apple City” argues that Gary Cross’ claims accurately describe the nature of the Strawberry Shortcake episodes, I don’t think I would fully agree with that. Admittedly, many things about the series are based off of a fantasy world. For instance, the fact that the trees are big lollipops and the mountains are large cupcakes of course does not correlate to the real world. However, I believe that the underlying themes to the episode I watched would have actually had an impact on the children watching the show. The main lesson the audience would have learned from the episode would have been that competition was created in order to have fun, and it is important to not lose sight of that when competing against other people. Throughout the competition, the characters also showed that it is okay for people to make mistakes and that teamwork is important when striving for a common goal.

No, this Strawberry Shortcake article does not fully prepare children for adulthood, but it DOES provide for a fun way for children to learn important lessons while watching something that appeals to their imagination. Furthermore, I believe it is extremely important for a child’s imagination to be triggered at a young age so they can grow up to become creative and imaginative human beings. Strawberry Shortcake does a spectacular job of combining creativity and important lessons that would be beneficial to young children at the time.

Mar 8

Strawberry Shortcake

Strawberry Shortcake

In Gary Cross’s article “Spinning Out of Control” he argues that “the old view that children should learn from the past and prepare for the future is inevitably subverted in a consumer culture where memory and hope get lost in the blur of perpetual change (290).” After reading this I watched an episode of Strawberry Shortcake because it is an example of a PLC (program length commercial) according to Cross (296). In this particular episode Strawberry Shortcake was a finalist in a baking competition where she had to travel to Big Apple city and participate in a bake off with the “villain” Purple Pie Man that will be on TV. In order to get to Big Apple City, Strawberry Shortcake has to travel on the back of a butterfly. Once she is there she makes tons of friends instantly, and they are all eager to help Strawberry Shortcake win. Throughout the whole episode Purple Pie Man is constantly trying to sabotage Strawberry Shortcake’s chances of winning, but always fails because Strawberry Shortcake’s new friends are there to help her out. Ironically at the end of the episode the announcer of the bake-off offers Strawberry Shortcake a television show, but she politely declines because she will miss her friends. The announcer then punishes Purple Pie Man by making him the new vice president of the television network. Strawberry Shortcake according to cross was the “girls’ version of Star Wars,” and I would completely have to agree  because it the whole show was not relatable to real life (299). The whole setting and plot was unrealistic and so was the process of making so many new friends. No where in this episode did I see any type of life lessons or preparing children to live in the real world. It was all about making new friends, so in my opinion Cross’s argument holds true for the episode I watched.

Mar 8

Care Bears: “The Camp-Out”

Similar to other program-length commercials (PLCs), the Care Bears began as characters on greeting cards in 1981. The Care Bears were depicted by plush animals in 1983, and ultimately landed their own television show by 1985. Examining an episode of the Care Bears television series entitled “The Camp-Out,” it is immediately obvious from the initial theme song that this series is a feel-good series intending to reach out to the imaginative child.

In this episode, a group of Care Bears go on a camping trip to a friendly looking forest. Care Bears Playful Heart and Funshine Bear call for help with the intention of tricking Brave Heart and the other adult-like Care Bears. After scolding Playful Heart and Funshine Bear about the consequences that could result from calling for help when they do not need it, Brave Heart proceeds to tell a scary story of the Swamp Monster. Playful Heart and Funshine Bear take this story as an invitation to scare the rest of the Care Bears by dressing up as the Swamp Monster later in the evening. Throughout the episode shadows of the real Swamp Monster are seen. The following morning Playful Heart and Funshine Bear again trick the other Care Bears by calling for help. The rest of the group does not find this very amusing. When Playful Heart and Funshine Bear are really in trouble and call for help, none of the others respond, aside from the two Care Bear cubs, Hugs and Tugs. When the Swamp Monster ends up being the series regular villain, Mr. Beastly, confusion about the real Swamp Monster breaks out amongst the adult Care Bears. Eventually the real Swamp Monster reveals himself to be a gentle and shy creature that cares and looks out for the forest and its inhabitants. The Swamp Monster rescues the cubs, Playful Heart and Funshine Bear. In the end, Playful Heart and Funshine Bear learn that playing tricks on their friends can end poorly, and their friends might not be there when they really need them.

The above summarized episode will act as an example of a typical Care Bears episode. Using this assumption, the Care Bears series abides by Cross’ idea of PLCs as “fantasy worlds.” However, the fantasy world created in the series does not perpetuate the fatalistic view that Cross would suggest. The Care Bears are living in a fantasy world, but the program attempts to teach lessons that are applicable to the real world of a child. For a child, learning the lesson of not calling out for help when you do not need it, and not playing tricks on your friends has a very real application. This lesson comes in a brief fifteen minute package that indulges the child in a fantasy world that is “free from adults” (290). It could be speculated that the child would actually respond better to an informal lesson from imaginary characters that it feels personally connected to, rather than in a formal lesson from an adult. The purposeful lessons in the Care Bears episodes serve as an antithesis for Cross’ idea that “the old view that children should learn from the past and prepare for the future” has disappeared into consumer culture (290). The Care Bears’ lessons serve to prepare children for the future. Fortunately for the child, preparation for the future does not come in a dry, dusty fashion, rather a colorful, indulgent fantasy world.

 

The video of “The Camp-Out” can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FKx0sIF8cw&feature=sh_e_se&list=SL

(embedding for this video was disabled.)

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