I watched a short episode of the 80s cartoon Care Bears, this particular episode was called “The Night the Stars Went Out.” It was about a villain riding around in a cloud stealing stars from the sky so he could have light to see his music when he was playing his violin. The Care Bears find out who is behind the star stealing and they take him down and get back the stars. In the end Funshine Bear gives the villain some of her sunlight so he can read his music without stealing stars for light. The problem is solved and everybody goes off happily.
This PLC definitely portrays Cross’s fears that shows are no longer teaching kids how to deal with real life events. This show is purely fantasy, it takes place on a cloud and they take down the villain by throwing lightning bolts at him and by shooting him the Care Bear Stare. This show might not teach boys how to shoot a gun or fight in war and teach girls how to raise kids, cook, and clean, but it still emphasizes the importance of teamwork and friendship. Care Bears and other PLCs are not necessarily very educational but I do not see the harm in them. Fantasy genre shows I believe spark the imagination and I think that is a very good thing for kids to have. Cross believed that “the plaything as a tool to reenact the past or prepare for the future had largely disappeared.” He also believed that when PLCs and “toys lost their connection to the experience and expectations of parents, they entered a realm of ever-changing fantasy (309).” This is what ultimately scared Cross. When he was growing up boys and girls were expected to become certain things as they got older. The toys kids played with and the shows kids watched back before the 70s and 80s highlighted the gender roles that men and women were supposed to take. Nowadays these roles are becoming blurred and things are changing all time and toys and shows for kids are trying to keep up with the changing times.
I did an investigation into Gary Cross’ claims against the “program- length- commercials” of the 80’s. Cross argues that the shows had nothing to teach children, and that they had no content relevant to helping children understand the “real world.” I watched an episode of Transformers from the 1980’s on YouTube. I could not find the exact date it aired, but did find that it was the 27th episode from the second season, titled “Golden Lagoon.” The way the show is formatted, a child has to follow the show almost religiously to stay on top of what is happening. Having jumped straight into the 27th episode, I found myself in the middle of a battle, not knowing who was good, and who was bad. The Autobots and Decepticons (I hope I’m spelling that right), are in the middle of battle, when one of them finds a pond full of a gold liquid called electrum that makes makes the Transformers invincible. The Decepticons get to the pond first, and have the upper hand, until the Autobots stealthily get to the pond as the electrum is wearing off for the Decepticons. The Autobots win the battle, and they celebrate in a destroyed forest as a result of the battle. There was no big mention of teamwork, or protecting the environment, or anything that could be remotely beneficial to a child’s learning experience while watching television. The only possibility would be that, if the Autobots are the “good guys,” that good always prevails, but that’s a stretch. From the episode I saw, Cross was correct in his criticism.
The “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is a TV series/brand that has its beginning origins in the late 1980’s. The TV series circulates around four crime-fighting turtles and their martial-arts master, Splinter, who happens to be rat. In the episode I watched, titled “Once Upon a Time Machine”, the turtles start off sitting in a room watching TV, eating pizza, and neglecting their martial arts training. Splinter warns them of the dangers of excess calories and of how TV “shrivels your brain.” He then relays the message, “To be sharp tomorrow, one must hone his skills today.” From this message the episode moved forward with the plot of the antagonist “Shredder” wanting to take a time machine into the future, with the hopes that the Ninja Turtles would be extinct and no longer able to foil his evil misdeeds. However, the time portal Shredder uses has been left open and the Turtles follow him into the future. They see their future selves and it is obvious they did not heed Master Splinters advice for all the “future” turtles are more glutton, weak, and can not think effectively enough to fight crime. The “past” turtles vow to heed to their training and be good citizens. Then the turtles proceed to defeat Shredder before taking the time portal back to the present day.
After watching the aforementioned episode of “Ninja Turtles”, I disagree with Gary Cross when he writes in reference to 1980’s toys, “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 a blur of perpetual change” (packet page 290). The problem with this statement is, Gary Cross is viewing the phenomenon, of fantasy toys, in a vacuum, and not taking into affect that the entire culture children are engulfed in shapes their imaginations, not just fantasy television shows. (Also, these two cultures can be separated from each other into distinct entities. Consumer culture and learning about the past). A child will learn about the past from a history teacher in school, and will be prepared for the future from their role inside the household such as doing their chores, attaining quality grades, and participating in sports. A child is to exercise their imagination, and escape from the realities of life while playing with their toys. Even though, the media has created “miniworlds of fantasy play” (pg.297) with toys that parallel the media’s story, children will still play with toys with their own creative elaborations. The toys might not “invite girls to be “little mommies”” (pg. 301) but, this does not mean that girls will not act out the role of “little mommy” with her barbie or other toy because she is witness to “being a mommy” everyday and this is apart of her imagination. To conclude, while the “Ninja Turtles” do not “indoctrinate children with political ideology” (pg. 298) and is a “simple vision of “good” vs. “evil” in a fantasy world where violence was a constant” (pg. 298), there are real world lessons of character intertwined throughout the entire episode. Some examples, from the episode, include eating your broccoli, eating excess calories make you fat, you will ruin your eyes reading in dull light, defacing monuments is a severe crime with harsh punishment, good citizens join the clean up the city campaign, and you must practice everyday if you want to be good at something. The point is, children are going to learn about the past from somewhere and are going to be prepared for the future from somewhere. These lessons of the past and future are distinct entities that can be extracted and learned separate from consumer culture. (Even though consumer culture is apart of our past, present, and future).
In the “Strawberry Shortcake in the Big Apple City” episode (part 2, part 3), Strawberry Shortcake travels to New York to compete in a baking contest with her nemesis, the Peculiar Purple Pie Man. He sets many obstacles for her so that she can not make it to the competition or beat him. Luckily, Strawberry Shortcake meets a gang of friends along the way that help her overcome these setbacks, making her trip end on a happy note when she beats the Purple Pie Man in the competition!
This episode does go along with many of Cross’ arguments because the towns and buildings are that of a fantasy world, often made out of common desserts. Snail mail in this world is literally delivered by a snail, and airplanes are simply butterflies. This is a world in which the sun talks and when bad things are thrown in Strawberry’s way, such as the Purple Man catching her airplane (or butterfly) with a butterfly net, happy thoughts can save the day. Many things such as this, obvious signs of “moral tags” (296), are evident in the episode. These moral tags were meant to justify the PLC’s and make them seem better for children. Other examples include quotes such as “Never say never” and “Be good losers. Victory lies in the struggle, not in the prize.” The various friends made by Strawberry in the episode affirm the idea that “friendship” toys for girls were being made instead of home-making or mothering toys.
While many of Cross’ points and arguments were shown through the Strawberry Shortcake episode, there were also a few references to the real world. The Big Apple in the title refers to New York City and the bake-off is held in Times Square. One of the friends Strawberry makes is even from London. Some things from the real world stay the same, such as video cameras and tv’s. The Strawberry Shortcake world is not entirely fantasy. One part of the episode that somewhat defies one of Cross’ arguments is the lack of gender roles in toys. A friend made in “Spinach” (aka Greenwich) Village, Lemon Meringue, is a model and is constantly primping and saying how pretty she is. However, this is the only clear gender role shown in the episode.
Overall, the episode seems to reflect many of Gary Cross’ arguments and doesn’t necessarily negate many of them. While I definitely thought it had no educational value, due to the moral tags, it could be said to have some kind of merit. However, I believe that this PLC, although not necessarily all PLC’s, was mainly for the purpose of consumerism. Viewing this one episode, I agree with Gary Cross, although after viewing more of this show, or perhaps some other PLC’s, it’s possible I could change my mind. I sincerely hope all PLC’s were not as horrible as this episode of a girl named Strawberry Shortcake.
uploaded to youtube by whitemagicofdoom on june 9, 2011
A Very Pony Place- Shine On Part 1, with the subtitle Come Back, Lily Lightly was a Program Length Commerical that aired in 1985. This episode takes place in Unicornia, which is a fantasyland where brightly colored unicorns live and play. The story begins with a group of unicorns stringing lights throughout the town in preparation for the “Rainbow Lights Party.” A neon pink pony named Lily is named the “Princess of Lightly.” Overjoyed with this title, Lily laughs, which causes her horn to light up. Embarrassed, she runs away.
As the story progresses, the rest of the unicorns sing a song about “getting the giggles” and they show how “work” can be fun. In the meantime, Lily meets a firefly who tells her that it is ok to be different. He convinces Lily that it is great fun to “shine” and that everything will turn out ok if she will only be herself. This story is very similar to Rudolph the red-nosed Reindeer, a beloved Christmas tale, which has been told to countless American children for generations.
In Spinning Out of Control, Gary Cross states that, “the toys derived from these stories were abstracted from the real world of family care and future roles.” (281) I disagree with his opinion. This Little Pony episode dealt with several “real world” issues. Friendship, acceptance, and laughter are all importance issues in the real world. “Be yourself and others will like you just the way you are,” and “laughter will enrich your life” are both values that benefit family care and future roles.
The setting and the animated ponies were fantasy, but this did not distract from the lessons present in the script. I feel the “make-believe” aspects of the show are what captivates the young audience and keeps their attention for 30 minutes. As a parent, I feel that this particular episode would teach my children some wisdom in an entertaining way.
While many parents and child-experts agree that television poses several potentially harmful effects, one economist refuses to buy into the argument. Moreover, this is not just any economist, but rather, it is the highly acclaimed, former economic policy advisor of President Obama, Austan Goolsbee.
In a 2006 article published in Slate Magazine, Goolsbee argues that the studies on the impact of television on children are “seriously flawed”, due to their failure to account for more significant social, economic, and environmental variables. Goolsbee claims that because “kids who watch minimal TV, as a group are from much wealthier families than those who watch hours and hours…the less-TV kids have all sorts of things going for them that have nothing to do with the impact of television.” In defense of this claim, Goolsbee cites the research of his colleagues, Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro, who, upon evaluating the 1966 Coleman Report, were unable to find any correlation between poor test-scores and television viewership. In fact, the research suggests that if anything, there was “a small positive uptick in test scores for kids who got to watch more television when they were young.”
This article comes in stark contrast to the opinions that have been voiced throughout television’s history, which although recognizing the potentially beneficial effects of TV, have been largely negative. As Lynn Spigel states in her book Welcome to the Dreamhouse, one of the greatest concerns regarding television was “its dissemination of debased knowledge and its related encouragement of passive minds and bodies” (147)—an argument Goolsbee would dismiss as entirely subjective.
The increasing debates in society today about the failures of our public educational system, as well as socioeconomic factors such as the dramatic increase in single parent families, have also become a large part of the conversation regarding the intellectual development of children, showing that TV is far from the only talking point concerning the welfare of children. In addition, new technologies which have created much more of a reliance on electronic communication have also broadened the discussion beyond the effects of TV to the overall effects of a media and technologically driven society.
As a child, I spent a lot of my time watching television. It was kind of a baby sitter because my mother was really sick when I was growing up. My twin sister and I used to look forward to shows like Sesame Street or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles . We used our time watching television as a way to just stay out of trouble, and out of our parents hair, God knows they had more important things to deal with. In Lynn Spigel’s, Welcome to the Dreamhouse, she quotes one of the first and most influential book-length studies of the affects of television and children, which reported “that by 1961 sixth graders spent almost as much time watching television as they did in school.” These numbers seem staggering, since parents now a days talk about how they used to spend all their time outside, and come down on kids these days because all they want to do is watch television or play video games. In my opinion, kids now a days spend WAY too much time watching television or on the computer. Kids are suppose to be outside running around, getting into trouble, and staying active. According to kidshealth.org, kids and teens 8 to 18 years spend nearly 4 hours a day in front of a TV screen and almost 2 additional hours on the computer (outside of schoolwork) and playing video games. This is most likely contributing to the fact that childhood obesity has tripled in the last 30 years, according to the Center of Disease Control.
The most important thing to remember is that it is the parents responsibility to limit the time kids spend watching television, and to dictate what their child is doing on a day to day basis. If you’re kid isn’t active enough, take them outside and kick a soccer ball with them, or take them to the park. When did it become not fun to go to the park? When I was a kid I always missed out on that kind of stuff.
