I'm pretty sure my childhood is ruined...

"Unlearning the Myths that bind us" -Christensen

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When I first began reading "Unlearning the Myths that bind us" by Linda Christensen, I thought it was super boring. Then I realized it was just the introduction to the article, and I started to really enjoy reading it. This article focuses on how my childhood was nothing but a lie that shaped me into becoming the person that I am today... Within each cartoon, there underlies many hidden messages that are not known right away but if you dig really deep into it-you see how awful these cartoons are. 

The first article that I read was similar to some of the examples that Linda Christensen had from her students… It was analyzing very popular children’s cartoons and showing you the hidden message that lies within.

“CRACKED” talks about six cartoons in particular (three of them which I have never heard of, but needless to say I didn’t watch television a lot when I was younger). The three I heard of were probably watched by my fellow classmates. These cartoons include Dora the Explorer, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Doug. Within this article, it says how Dora the Explorer does indeed feature a bilingual child. Yet, it promotes the idea of talking to strangers or asking strangers for help. I have never really thought of it this way. Throughout every episode, she always used to ask me (the viewer) where she should go next or what she should do. Regardless, she never did what I said, but she was still looking to me for help. In a weird way, it kind of promotes children to talk to strangers which is the complete opposite of what we should do. I don’t want to ruin the entire article, so feel free to read about the other cartoons that are telling young children bad messages. :)

The second article I was reading was called “Effects of Cartoons on Children”. The first two sections of this article were relative to the article we had to read for this week’s blog post. When I was reading Christensen’s article, it kept mentioning how cartoons are bad and how they teach us things at a young age. When I was reading this article, it talks about how watching television affects young children. C.J. Choma, the person who wrote “Effects of Cartoons on Children” made many valid points. He said that watching television “has become a problem because too many children are watching too much television and the shows that they are watching (even if they are cartoons) have become violent and addictive.  The marketing of cartoons has become overpowering in the United States and so has the subliminal messaging […] Children watch the cartoons on the television and they see material that is not appropriate for their age group”. I thought this was really interesting because it says that cartoons (or T.V. in general) have such a great influence on children that it’s making them become violent. If this is true, and what Christensen said about all of these other bad topics that are in cartoons, what is this doing to children? It obviously is harming them since it persuades them into thinking one way or another. It’s remarkable.

The last article I read talks about Disney itself. It was called the “Top 10 Ways Disney Corrupts Children”. Some of the things that this article includes is the way that Disney promotes being small or a “size 0” which was also mentioned in Christensen’s article. The importance of social class was also included, showing Cinderella. Once again, this was in Christensen’s article. Children and their parents may think of it as a fairytale or just another “princess movie” but in reality it shows how marrying a wealthy man made her escape her bad life and make her happy. Since when is life about being happy because you have money? If you want to see more ways of how Disney corrupts your life, I would suggest looking at the other 8 ways :)

All in all, I'm pretty upset. This weeks blog really affects me and my former love for Disney.