Posted on 03/10/2006 4:15:29 PM PST by Coleus
(AgapePress) - The director of research and publications for the Parents Television Council (PTC) says violence pervades children's programming -- and it's not the "cartoonish" kind of violence with which many adults are familiar from their own childhoods.
The PTC recently completed a study of television programming specifically created for young kids. The pro-family media watchdog group revealed its disturbing findings in a report called "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: A Content Analysis of Children's Television" (See related story).
According to the PTC's Melissa Caldwell, the not-so-surprising revelation of this study is that much of kid-targeted TV is not terribly child-friendly. In fact, she notes, the study found children's shows contain -- amid all kinds of offensive and troubling content -- twice the amount of violence to be found in adult primetime shows.
And when the researchers sifted out the "Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner-type of violence" Caldwell says, then the children's shows became very scary. "For example," she points out, "in one program that we looked at, a man was knocked out, and then his soul was removed from his body and placed in the body of the man who appears to have killed him."
That scene comes from the Fox Network cartoon Shaman King, which the PTC report noted as an example of the dangerous impact Japanese anime has had on many children's shows. These and other kids' programs feature "a very dark, sinister type violence," Caldwell says. "It's not innocent, fun, 'cartoony' stuff like we were used to growing up with."
"Wolves in Sheep's Clothing" reveals that Cartoon Network ranked worst among the networks analyzed with the most overall violence in kids' shows, in terms of sheer numbers of instances of violence. "But when we looked at a per episode or a per hour average," Caldwell notes, "ABC Family Channel actually had the most violence, and that was because of one cartoon series -- Power Rangers."
The PTC researcher says the Power Rangers cartoon, when it first came out, was actually very controversial. "A lot of parents were very concerned about the amount of violence in that program," she explains, "but as time has worn on, it's become less and less of an issue."
Caldwell says she does not know whether that has occurred because concerned viewers have gotten used to the violence on the series and "learned to accept it, or if other things have come onto our radar screen and displaced that."
Either way, the PTC's director of research and publications feels more adults need to pay attention to what their children are watching on TV, even during after-school and Saturday morning broadcast time supposedly dedicated to children's programming. She says many parents may be surprised to learn that much of kids' TV is really not so much for kids anymore.
Yeah, but it's ONLY a cartoon, right? /dripping sarc
Thanks for the post, AND the other relevant link.
I haven't had ANY TV (no cable in a pretty much cable only area) for 15 years. I had occasion, on a family vacation, to peruse some of the offerings of 'Cartoon Network' on our hotel room TV. When I was a kid, that kind of violence didn't appear in programming targeted at children,. In fact, the only 'cartoon' type place you could find it was in so-called 'comic' books like "Heavy Metal" and, of course, your parents would (rightfully) superheat your arse for bringing smut like that into the house.
http://www.heavymetalmagazinefanpage.com/history.html
Today, more than ever, parents must be gatekeepers of entry points that did not exist when they were growing up.
This point seems obvious, yet I am continually alarmed at the mass obliviousness to it that I find among parents.
Ummm..what time of day was this? You are aware they have "Adult Swim" late in the evenings, right?
Hmmmmm....Brothers Grimm? Mother Goose? Dark tales from medieval forests...
No wonder why I like their stuff so much, even the non Adult Swim offerings!
BTTT
Oooh. You mean there will be something on TV worth watching?
(Seriously, folks, I had to watch Sat kiddie TV from the (really) late 60s through the early 80s. It wasn't pretty.)
Or try a few Old Testament stories for some real old fashioned eye for an eye stuff.
L
Boy, this is a real non-starter for stirring up hatred of secular media.
Next!
Yeah, I have a book that contains their entire collection. Very dark, indeed. Hansel and Gretel, anyone?
Hansel and Gretel was probably the only childhood story that scared the Puck out of me when I was a kid. Very graphic. I see nothing these days that's any worse and most of it is better than that.
The reality in this country is nobody really cares about kids seeing graphic violence at all; 1/2 second of an exposed female nipple, though...a totally different story.
no child should be exposed to the horror of nipples!
Red flag - Power Rangers is not a cartoon. If you can't get the basic facts right, the rest of your argument goes out the window.
Especially 40 year old nipples... ;)
Don't matter, PTCultists take their beliefs of the content of shows from PTCentral.
PTC watching TV so you don't have to.
Try to find a decent cartoon on Saturday morning. Mostly they are anime-type characters who talk fast and are poorly drawn. Usually with shadowy themes such as dark magic and monsters. The other offerings are usually teenager sitcoms.
Real cartoons are dead.
LOL, I came from the same era. Roadrunner cartoons could only be watched so many times. Flipping channels a couple of weeks ago for some reason I stopped on a newer cartoon called Jimmy Neutron. Tame show but entertaining. What was funny was they had some dialogue in there that kids would never get. Clean jokes that were clearly aimed at adults (references to 50s, 60s, and 70s culture)
What frightened me was that I was watching Dexter's Laboratory last week with my son. We didn't watch them first run, but they aren't that old. Or are they??? They were running on Boomerang!
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