Matching Tracksuits

It was a gradual change, so gradual that we really only noticed it when it became a frequent-enough occurrence to get K and me talking about how much time the Girl had been spending in time out.

“Where did she get that?” we asked each other after the Girl had mouthed of again after just coming out of time out. It was a sassy, arrogant, and cruel tone of voice.

“No one talks to her that way here,” I said, “so there’s only one place she could have learned it: television.”

For years, whenever I was walking in some department store and a voice from a little kiosk beckoned me over to look at all the advantages of Direct TV, I could stop the conversation immediately by stating semi-truthfully, “We don’t have a television.” It wasn’t the whole truth: we had Nana’s and Papa’s old television in the computer room hooked up to a buggy DVD player, but “We don’t have a television” was more convenient (and close enough to the truth) than “We have a television, but it’s only hooked up to a DVD player; we have no cable service, and we’re not interested in it.” Somewhat reluctantly, though, we bought a small home theater system a year or so ago, and now that it’s wirelessly hooked up to our Netflix account, we can sort of watch television like “normal” people. It led the Girl into whole new realms of cartoon viewing.

Ay, there’s the rub.

“Where could she have gotten it” was only a rhetorical question because we both knew that she had spent time only with family and one close friend — not enough to explain the attitude, the sass, the trying to act like a grownup in five-year-old shorts. We sat and discussed the situation, narrowing it down quickly to two cartoons in particular: Horseland and the newest incarnation of My Little Pony that includes the deceptive subtitle, “Friendship is Magic.”

I thought back to all the snippets of these shows I’d watched — and a couple of episodes I’d watched almost entirely — and realized that both shows have characters that behave in just this sassy, nasty manner. “Well fine. I never liked it in the first place!” Things like that. Sure, by the end of the episode, all has worked out (after all, “Friendship is Magic”), but the behavioral model was still there, and the Girl had picked up on it.

We sat down with the Girl and talked about what was going on. Informed of our decision to eliminate Horseland and My Little Pony as well as to curtail general television watching, the Girl sniffled a little, but seemed fine.

A couple of weeks passed. I’d even forgotten about the two offending shows. Then: “Have you noticed how much L has changed in the last two weeks? The snotty, sassy little brat has disappeared and our sweet girl has returned.”

This brings up the obvious question: what affect do media have on children’s behavior? In many ways, it’s certainly a chicken/egg mystery: culture influences what is acceptable in the arts (and I use that term loosely with most television programming), and the arts in turn teach members of society (often unawares) what acceptable society members find interesting and amusing. I know for certain, though, that the behavior modeled in the cartoons showed up in our daughter. This might be a function of age: younger children are less critical of the influences that affect them. Yet once a model, always a model: it seems that the longer one watches television uncritically, the more of an unconscious influence it exerts. Certainly that’s what advertisers count on, to some degree.

But was it always like this? Were cartoons always issues of concern with parents? I certainly remember comments from my parents about how violent some cartoons are. Episodes of Tom and Jerry, Roadrunner, and many others always involve seemingly countless instances of extreme violence, acts which children are supposed to laugh at — and do laugh at. Yet it seems more likely that a child will take on the sarcastic, disrespectful tone of voice she hears in an episode of Horseland than, say, she will drop an anvil on a friend’s head. Then again, tone down the severity of the violence to a slap and I suppose they’re equally likely. Still, tone of voice is something that is not even necessarily regulated automatically in children, so it seems more influential. To see the changes since I was watching cartoons, though, one only has to look in an average classroom to see that the uptick in general disrespect is significant, whereas there was never a real corresponding increase in violence (though there has been a significant increase).

The change is most noticeable when comparing today’s cartoons to some created in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Still more noticeable are the differences compared to cartoons from that era that rely totally on visuals. I’m thinking here of two shows in particular.

Koziołek Matołek

Originally a comic from the 1930’s, Koziołek Matołek (“Matołek the Goat”) follows the adventures of Matołek as he searches out a mythical city were goat shoes are made. Matołek is goofy, clumsy, and a bit silly, but always naive and pure.

Krtecek (“Krecik” in Polish)

An import from Czechoslovakia, Krecik was the product of the 1950’s, and it shows. The first episode shows a certain kind of self-reliance common to the times but strangely foreign to most of us today, and it certainly illustrates a kind of innocence lacking in many of the cartoons the Girl is drawn to.

Further Information

• Koziołek Matołek
• Krecik