‘The media we use and the stories they tell help to make us who we are’.
- Mastronardi (89)
As the formative years of childhood lay the foundational stones of a kid’s future, the transformative energy of children’s literature is something that cannot be ignored. According to Perry Nodelman, literature for children is part of a colonization process that adults play on their own offspring in the same way the Western super powers controlled the Orient. They are spoken for, therefore silenced; their histories are written for them so that they might live accordingly. Didactic to the core, they contain the seeds of domination within, in order to secure the child who is outside the book. “In other words, we show children what we “know” about childhood in hopes that they will take our word for it and become like the fictional children we have invented – and therefore, less threatening to us” (Nodelman 32).
If the Puritans have started writing for children during the sixteenth century to teach them scriptures, so that they will be absolved from the sins they are born with, the focus has shifted now to a class and gender consciousness and giving an awareness of the power structures of the society they are to live. “Perhaps more than any other texts, they reflect society as it wishes to be, as it wishes to be seen, and as it unconsciously reveals itself to be” (Hunt 2). The stories they encounter in their earliest days provide them with caricatures, images and attitudes which in turn become a part of the adult identity they will carry and modify throughout their life.
The sector of children’s films too, like its mother genre, is not yet liberated from the politics of ideology. As entertainment industry is part of the consumerist world and i...
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...ertainment for the Young. London: BFI, 1995. Print.
Hunt, Peter. Ed. Children’s Literature: The Development of Criticism. London: Routledge, 1990. Print.
Huntemann, Nina and Michael Morgan. “Media and Identity Development.” Handbook of Children and the Media. Eds. Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2012. Print.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.
Mastronardi, M. “Adolescence and Media”. Journal of Language & Social Psychology 22.1 (2003): 83 – 93. SAGE. Web. 21 Mar. 2013.
Morpurgo, Michael. War Horse. London: Egmont, 2010. Print.
Nodelman, Perry. “The Other: Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children’s Literature”. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 17.1 (1992): 29 – 35. Project Muse.Web. 5 May 2013.
War Horse. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Screenplay by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis. Touchstone, 2011. Film.
In the late 1600’s, literature is dissimilar from today’s, such as focusing on being sent into the fiery pits of hell only because one hasn’t converted to Puritanism. There are also different types of writing to display the righteousness and positives of being a converted and loyal to the Puritan culture. Anne Bradstreet and Jonathan Edwards are two popular Puritan authors who project different messages and portray a varying energy through a slim number of their pieces. The poems, “To My Dear and Loving Husband” or “Upon the Burning of Our House” by Anne Bradstreet or “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards are fit examples of the Puritan age and what Puritans belive to be religiously
Coffey, J., Lim, P.C.H., (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Senick, Gerard J., and Hedblad, Alan. Children’s Literature Review: Excerpts from Reviews, and Commentary on Books for Children and Young People (Volumes 14, 34, 35). Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research, 1995..
Griffith, John, and Charles Frey. Classics of Children's Literature. 6th ed. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005. 21-29, 322-374. Print.
Whalley, J. (2009) ‘Texts and Pictures: A History’ in Montgomery H and Watson N (eds), Children’s Literature Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan in association with Open University, pp.299-310
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Media plays a bigger role in influencing children’s identity. The media plays an important role in constructing ideology. However, most of the time what is produced in the media is mirroring what is already happening in the society, in other words mirroring reality. When children tend to see the same image and representation happening on television over and over again, they will become familiar with that identity (USC Anneberg, 2013) and it will spark a stereotypical thinking in them. By examining the portrayal of identity in the princesses will enable us to see that the portrayal of identities are not natural.
... (eds), Children’s Literature Classic Text and Contemporary Trends, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan in association with Open University
A media panic or often referred to as a moral panic, is a term that describes how the media is formulating issues amongst our society. Over time, our culture has shifted and caused for many conclusions regarding media panics and the relationship between youth and the media culture. Based upon previous knowledge and course readings, I have drawn a very disturbing conclusion; this being that no matter what age, children are willing or non willingly now under surveillance to determine what kind of role media is playing in their lives. With what I have gathered from the readings and class lectures, most authors strongly believe that different forms of media directly influence children's thinking or perception. What authors and researchers continue to imply is that there is a direct correlation to what youth today see on different forms of media and their behaviours. However, it is important to remember that children are humans as well and do have a mind of their owns. Our society cannot assume that these media panics ultimately take away their ability to think on their own and develop into mature individuals. The first media panic I will discuses is how video games have developed a relationship with violence amongst our children. The second media panic is the sexual objectification of young women online.
Young people especially the teenagers are sensitive and receptive to learning new things. The media provides more than they can handle. Access to different programs, shows, and movies affect the manner that the teenagers behave. Today, it is unfortunate to say that the media is becoming more sexual and violent than the older days, resulting in similar behaviors among the teens (Craig, & Baucum, 2001). By watching programs intended for the adults, teenagers are drifting even further. They start behaving like adults without the prerequisites of becoming one. This means that they have contents that do not match with their ages. And then terrible things begin – increased college dropouts, teenage pregnancies, and increased cases of suicides. Some teenagers who had bright future ahead of them will
The construction of children’s literature was a gradual process. For a long period of time children’s books were frowned upon. The stories were said to be vulgar and frightening. Adults censored children’s ears to stories of daily life, tales with improbable endings were not to be heard. It was not until the mid 1800s that stories of fairies and princesses began to be recognized. Although children’s literature was accepted, the books were not available for all children. With limited access to education, few public libraries, and the books’ costs, these texts were only available to the middle and high- class. As public education and libraries grew so did the accessibility of books and their popularity. They no longer were considered offensive, but rather cherished and loved by many children. Children’s literature became orthodox and a revolution began, changing literature as it was known.
Mokeyane, K. Nola. "Media's Positive & Negative Influence on Teenagers." Everyday Life. Globalpost, Web. 21 Jan. 2010.
Violence, stereotyping, gender or sexual promiscuity, and even racism are shown to be negative effects of media outlets. With media being polarized, it becomes difficult to decipher what is the true influence that the media has. Media is currently known as a communication that has profound effects on the social identity of younglings. However, the effect media has on the identities of adolescents can go both ways of the spectrum when it comes to globalization. Globalization plays a big key role when it comes to technological advances such as media or communications; thus, shaping identity, a social concept, is being transformed or reformed in new and more global ways. With globalization rapidly growing in these past decades, communications and media have broken barriers in countries, letting ideas and thoughts emerge. By providing young people a way to communicate through communications and media, media provides a flow of information and adolescents take it in. Though, media and communications being one of the most significant moves of all time in technology or global advance, the ability for ideas to be enforced, to be corrupted by a false sense of security about what the world actually is on a adolescent, can become challenging. Although, knowing it can 't be reliable, it still acts in a sense to forms one identity. With media being one of the
..., DF (2010). Generation M2: Media in the lives of 8-18 year olds. Merlo Park CA: Henry J Kaiser Foundation