Cartoons: A New Age Babysitter
It seems that every year children spend more and more time watching television. Some parents will even use the television as a "babysitter" to have some time for themselves, or maybe add a little peacefulness to their day. One of the most popular type of shows with children today are cartoons. Nearly all cartoons show an array of prosocial acts, but also depict some violent and aggressive acts. Violence is discouraging whether it is physically or mentally harmful. Other things these programs might contain are gender and racial stereotyping. In order to determine how often many of these acts occur I watched a variety of cartoons including Recess, which airs on Saturdays from 9 to 10 AM on ABC's "Disney's One Saturday Morning", along with Rugrats, CatDog, Rocket Power, and Pinky and the Brain that are all part of the Nickelodeon family, and air Monday through Friday between 2 and 8 PM. Also, these programs are shown numerous times throughout the weekend on the same channel. While watching these cartoons, I correspondingly noticed the commercials and how they related to gender. I tended to find that there were just about an equal amount of prosocial acts and aggressive acts in four of the shows that I watched, with the e
In conclusion, there is a combination of positive and negative factors in the cartoons children watch today. In my day we used to spend most of our time outside, or inside engaged in an imaginary journey. Kids today spend much more time sitting on their butts than we did twenty years ago. Yet, we didn't have VCR's, many channels to choose from, or remote controls. Also, to no fault of their own, more parents are working, which gives them less time with their children. Then time they get home and make dinner they are too tired to do anything but watch the television also. All the while the children are in front of the "babysitter" so dinner can be made without interruptions. In all of these programs you will find various gender stereotyping. The boys do their thing, and the girls the same. One example of a typical girl is Angelica in Rugrats. She is daddy's little girl that with a smile and sympathetic voice always gets her way with him. In all the cartoons I choose to watch, every boy was a typical male with no signs of femininity. They played, thought, and acted like their own species. In one case though, in Recess, there is a girl, Spinelli, that engages in a stereotypical male role. She's a rough and tough tomboy that nobody wants to mess with, although she has a heart of gold. Spinelli also plays all sports, and is not afraid to get dirty. xception of Pinky and the Brain, which was more aggressive. I was pleased to find many examples of prosocial acts while I was viewing the other four shows. One example came from the cartoon Recess, where a character named T.J., a fourth grader, was captured by the kindergartners and forced into a five year-old's lifestyle. His friends see that he is in trouble and try everything they can think of to help get him released. In a different episode of Recess, the gang finds a one hundred dollar bill on the ground. They decide to go around and ask if anyone was missing money. When they came up short for answers, they went to the house of the richest
Some common words found in the essay are:
Pinky Brain, Chunky Cheese's, Rocket Power, , Angelica Rugrats, Brain Nickelodeon, prosocial acts, aggressive acts, pinky brain, violent aggressive acts, violent aggressive, wrong message children, physically mentally harmful, rocket power, racial stereotyping, physically mentally, mentally harmful, wrong message, episode recess,
Approximate Word count = 1376
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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