Writing the Child in Media Theory

Pg 136 – “Buckingham’s research claims that children sometimes seek out disturbing programmes or videos, such as horror films, in order to test their own maturity at coping with troubling emotions. This coping, he argues, is achieved partly by gaining the understanding of modality which will allow them to repudiate and manage these emotions with respect to particular genres and forms, and the awareness of modality is itself a characteristic of ‘adult’ relationships with media texts.”

~ So children sometimes seek to find cognitive dissonance on their own to develop their own maturity level. In this way they express their own identity and develop it. Very interesting.

Pg 136-137 – “For children’s media culture is produced not by children, but for them, and thus encodes the pressures and contradictions evident in adult culture.”

~ So we learn about identity through people who have already developed their identity. What sort of effects does this have on the development scale? Does our development rely on the level of development of those we are learning from? I think so. I think you can only jump to the next level through dissonance which can only come from someone more advanced than yourself.

Pg 137 – “For Fleming, the objects, products, and practices within children’s media culture ‘belong in a system of meanings with the potential to tell stories which transcend that bleakness, while nevertheless recognizing it. Such recognition is vital to the effective object relations that play depends on if it is to be an antidote to bewilderment’ (p. 147). The uneasy negotiations of difference in children’s media are explored in some detail by Fleming in relation to Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers (shown in Britain from I 994), for example (pp. I9-28). In this series, American teenagers put aside their identities to become part of a team of galactic superheroes, the Power Rangers, and in turn put aside their individuality as specific rangers to operate huge combat machines (Zords). The Zords then combine together into a single Megazord in the continuing battle against the Rangers’ alien foes. Differences between teen identities become merged in the Ranger team, and in their absorption into technologies. While the Rangers are relatively powerless as high-school students (tyrannized by their high-school Principal), in their Ranger and Zord incarnations they defeat the ‘adult’ alien monsters who seek to tyrannize and dominate the universe. The hopelessness of individual action, the uncertainties of social role, and the ever-present threats of violence and environmental degradation which form some of the dominant understandings of contemporary society are present in Power Rangers in a coded form. These problems are granted spectacular power as threats, but also symbolically tamed both within the story (where the Rangers always win) and by the narrative structure of the programmes themselves, where repeated tropes of martial…” {Identity Change}

~ Does a show with identity change lead children to believe that they can change themselves? I wonder what the cause of media is in having people believe that they can change the parts of them or the outside forces that do things to them. Is this one of the things that form dissonance? Is media just a tool in development or can it actually develop people?

Pg 139 – “Media theory addressing the child audience, and film, television, and video watched by children links work on representations, modes of social and cultural identity, and questions of politics and the regulation of production and consumption. At the centre of these concerns is the question of what the child is and means. Since the child is defined negatively and retrospectively as a being who is not yet an adult, the issues of how identities are discriminated, represented, and how they may be modified, necessarily arise.”

~ Identities are discriminated, represented, and modified. I like the idea of representing and modifying identity, because that, in essence, is what my basic theory is about. How you cannot fully represent an identity without somehow modifying it. If you were to define even the majority of an identity you would be oppressing the identities of those who do not fall into the main category and they, in turn, would modify some part of their identity to either join with the rest of the group, or start their own other group. Modes of social and cultural identity are the representations that do this.

Pg 139 – “The root of this anxiety about the child’s media interaction is the assumption that the child is determinant of the adult, and this legitimates a discourse about how media may produce a socially undesirable child who in turn becomes a socially undesirable adult. It is important to recognize how close the links are between debates about the regulation of children’s media and the heritage of regulation of the working class, or of’the masses’.”

~The child being the determinant of the adult deals with personal history. If you do not have a personal history long enough then you do not have enough identity to develop into an adult. It kind of makes me wish there would be an adult or group of adults around without a childhood just to study them and see what they’re identity would be like. It’s totally unethical, but interesting. But does the child really determine the adult? Or can you separate a part of your identity that is undesirable on a sliding scale of expression and oppression. Like if you oppress the undesirable part to express a more desirable identity. Does the undesirable really go away, or does it just kind of stay there in limbo waiting to see if the scale slides back to express it more and oppress the desirable portion?

Bignell, J. (2002). Writing the child in media theory. The Yearbook of English Studies, 32. Retrieved November 9, 2008, from JSTOR database.

Writing the Child in Media Theory

Pg 127 – “Contemporary mass media are perceived by programme-makers, politicians, and the public to have a particularly crucial role in childhood culture, development, and behaviour.”

~ Kind of like the idea that television influences identity, it starts at a young age.

Pg 127 – “Therefore, the primary task in discussing children and media is to determine the ways in which the figure of the child, and the functions, effects, and cultural meaning of the media, are posed as discursive objects.”

~ Good quote.

Pg 128 – “Models of what childhood is, and the models of how the media relate to this in terms of positive or negative effects and affects, have changed historically in an uneven relationship with changes in media culture. In this sense the relationship between childhood and media is a particular form of the relationship between media and culture in general, but is particularly interesting because of the continuing force of cultural concerns around childhood.”

~ I think this also deals with the concept of how media affects identity. It influences our culture, which influences our personal identity. In some senses media expresses our cultures, in other sense in oppresses our culture. So, in turn, when parts of our identity feel oppressed it leads to a dissonance that causes changes in our identity.

Pg 130 – “The logical steps in this argument are that television addresses and represents society; society consists of families; families are defined as child-rearing institutions; television must be suitable for children.”

~ This makes me think of something else actually. That “television addresses and represents society,” therefore, if television represents society and society is made up various cultures, which are made up of various people with many identities and personal histories all intermixing, then television should technically represent people’s many identities and personal histories. But, usually, this does not happen because it would make for too long of a story. So characters on television do not express the character’s entire self, only a part. So, if individuals watch this and relate to the character they begin to understand that only a piece of one’s identity can be expressed at a time and the other portions must be oppressed.

Pg 131 – “The suggestibility of children has been a persistent concern throughout the history of the mass media.”

~ Very true.

Pg 133 – “The most celebrated case in recent British culture of this phenomenon was the James Bulger case, in which two boys were tried and convicted of the murder of the eponymous two-year-old. Two ten-year-old boys, playing truant from school, led James out of a shopping centre in Bootle, near Liverpool, and walked two miles with him before killing him on a railway line, apparently by throwing bricks and other objects at him. After the two boys’ arrest, the Prime Minister and Home Secretary claimed that violence on television must be contributory to violence of this kind and should be curbed, and the British Board of Film Classification investigated young offenders’ film and television viewing. In particular, violence in rental videos was cited as a possible cause for the crime, though no evidence to support this was brought forward in the trial.”

~ Whoa. Definitely the two ten-year-olds were expressing a part of their identity by doing this. But that part should be oppressed. Does the media make us, or help us to understand what part of our identity to express or oppress? Or would the boys have done this no matter what. I wonder what part of themselves the boys lost after this and what they gained.

Bignell, J. (2002). Writing the child in media theory. The Yearbook of English Studies, 32. Retrieved November 9, 2008, from JSTOR database.