This week we’re dealing with a delicate subject in the Magazine de cervantes 24 “Childhood”, the children, our children (if you have them), or our nephews ... you know, those little and defenseless little people that swarm around us and who don’t have a very well formed personality yet. In this article I will make a comparative analysis between how I lived my audiovisual childhood and how my two daughters of 7 and 4 years are living it.
Join me and comment freely, being a personal experience, this can lead to debates about different perspectives or points of view.
Cinema evolves with society, or so we think, many will say that society evolves according to what we are told is fashionable in film and television, but that is another debate ... let's say that the audiovisual world adapts to the social changes and under that premise, I will make a comparative study between the experience of a subject and that of his daughters.
Subjects of study: @ivan-perez-anies (37 years)
- Girl A (7 years)
- Girl B (4 years)
I was born in 1980, in the north of a Spain, which was recently incorporated into the club of the democratic countries of Europe. Franco had not yet been eaten by the worms of the Valley of the Fallen. In my first years of life we didn’t have a television, then we had a black and white tv that broadcasted Spanish television. The nearest AM stations, were wonderful!
The radio frequency spectrum of television was occupied by only two channels, 1 and 2 from RTVE. This meant that the shows devoted to childhood were very few, but that didn’t mean they had poor quality. In those years we could enjoy programs that today, in Spain, would be judged at the National Court, yes, I am referring to La Bola de Cristal presented by the great Alaska (Maria Olvido Gara Jova).
We were living an era of openness to freedoms and "political correctness," and the habit of denouncing everything that offends someone was not yet in fashion.
There were some cartoons of Spanish production that we all saw, given the low demand and that they were very careful, although seen today, surely someone could find something about them to complain about. I especially remember the cartoons of "Don Quijote", "Dartacán", and #La Vuelta al Mundo De Willy Fog ".
Another show I liked a lot and if i remember correctly was produced in France, "Once Upon A Time" series ... Very didactic and curious.
We had little offer, of acceptable average quality and a lot of time to play on the street without focusing on spending too much watching that silly box. That has been changing little by little in these years since I was a child and until now.
Now we can find several channels dedicated to children, which have content intended for consumption 24 hours a day, but beware! That doesn’t mean they are appropriate for all children. Because they are thematic channels, many parents believe that if their child is watching Disney all day, it will not hurt. I don’t think that’s right and it can be a very big mistake, or don’t you know Hannah Montana !? That girl was on Disney, working all day on that Macro Coop. and look how that turned out, hahaha.
The ways of spending free time have also changed, I rarely see my daughters watching traditional TV, they don’t accept that "they throw at them" whatever the channel wants to broadcast every hour as we did, now they want to consume what they want and when they want it, through Apps or Youtube on a tablet. There are programs and tutorials very necessary for parents that help them "limit" the access to inappropriate content, we all know that on YouTube you can find anything, from the latest news of "Pin y Pon" to some Isis slaughter …
This current world opens a range of enormous possibilities for the formation of childhood, but as always, that depends on the use and knowledge of the parents in order to sort the appropriate and valid content for different ages.
Ultimately, the responsibility of proper use is ALWAYS for the parents or guardians, the children, if you leave them totally free, will not find a limit neither in schedules nor in content, and then, the problems and the crying begins.
The subject @ ivan-perez-anies is what he is because he grew up surrounded by diverse contents that gave him different values. His parents didn’t have to worry too much about what he saw on TV, or movies, the options were scarce.
Girls A and B are forming their personality according to the values that they gather from the lessons that we give them between teachers, television, youtube, their mother and me, they can not play like we did on the street; cities have become hostile environments because of traffic and overprotection is now the norm. If I leave my daughters playing alone for a few minutes in the park, I'm sure social services will take them away for bad parenting. My mother must has been bad when I was little, because in the village we opened the door of our house and went out to play without saying where!
The offer available to children today is immense, but in my opinion, not diverse. Governments are striving lately to raise awareness among the population about the importance of gender equality, the wage gap, gender violence, etc. But at the same time, they allow different television channels, including children's ones, to perpetuate the stereotypes that are being fought so hard to destroy today.
Except for a few exceptions, I usually feel nauseous when I see certain content for children, those shows that feature princesses worlds at all hours, those make me sick directly. If that were not enough, when the programs end and the commercial announcements begin, what I suffer can only be described as several strokes, when i see them from a vision of female childhood. Girls are prepared for the only thing they should do, become mothers, basically. I get the impression that children are given too much trivialization of violence, I imagine it will be to prepare for them for their future: being soldiers, hahahaha.
I‘m being extreme, I know, it's to be a little polemic, but I’m not exaggerating too much, believe that ;)
In this article I have focused mostly on television, film and childhood is another field that I think has gotten worse in recent years, since the rise of digital infographics and 3D, the imagination of the kids has disappeared and has been replaced by the imagination of the creatives and screenwriters. Everything imaginable can be virtually "constructed" and make it seem as is exists for real, including fully believable animals that speak, dance and look more like humans than humans themselves!
Children's cinema is virtually monopolized by Disney, DreamWorks and some independent productions ... and above all, superheroes, that is the lesson we are giving to children, you will never be anything in life because you don’t have superpowers! It is rumored that this is a preliminary phase to raise awareness about the benefits of Eugenics, but that is to be confirmed, time will tell us ;)
The audiovisual world is a great weapon of acculturation if it is used well, but it can also be a weapon of manipulation if one is not careful ... let's all take that into account and enjoy ;)
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