Winnie the Pooh

My husband and I watched a Winnie the Pooh episode this morning and it made me think about the influence that this particular show had on my childhood. We didn't really have tv growing up, so we watched a lot of Pooh Bear instead of things like Power Rangers. My mom has always said that's why we have such large vocabularies, and with phrases such as "a wedged bear in a great tightness", I'm not refuting her theory. Even now I love the way things are phrased; it's just put together in a very clever way and I approve of it being children's media. Not to mention the amount of pro-social acts demonstrated. Classic and classy show.

Musical Identity

According to the lecture in my media development class, music is the most powerful medium for managing mood and expressing identity. I didn’t think much of this, as I am no longer a teenager trying to establish an identity, but had an experience this week that made me realize just how true this statement is. A coworker created a new Pandora station with Lonestar as the category, and suddenly all of the songs I had memorized and loved when I was growing up, driving in my mom’s van, were taking me back. I realized that these songs were the ones that I had incorporated into my identity creation as I grew up, and even when I hear them now, 15 years later, it still makes me consider who I am, based on what they used to mean to me. 

Books - the overlooked transmitter

We discussed books as media in my media class this week. What struck me particularly was that books can get away with what movie media cannot without being giving warning ratings, including dropping a massive amount of swear words and having really steamy content. Those have ruined many a book for me that seemed innocent and intriguing at the onset.

We also discussed aggression found in books and how there is above and beyond far more relational aggression than any other form. Lately I've taken to re-reading several of my favorite books from childhood and after this discussion I was alerted to just how accurate that is. Who would have thought that two cats that are best friends and eat spaghetti and meatballs could be so mean? I just found this interesting because we encourage children to read like their lives depend on it, but unlike movies where we are clearly warned of potentially objectionable material, we don't realize just how much books have in them. This is not to say that books are evil and we shouldn't encourage reading, reading is wonderful and amazing and everyone should do it more often. It's just interesting what we can overlook.

Prosocial Aggression

As we discussed in my media class this week, children can learn from television, anything from  vocabulary words to prosocial behavior to aggression. A meta-analysis of prosocial behavior in media revealed that aggressive prosocial behavior, such as the hero beating up bad guys to save the world, was the worst influence on children, as it related more to aggression than prosocial behavior.

A show that me and my husband really like (his favorite in fact) is Avatar the Last Airbender. We've started re-watching the series again recently, and as I was watching last night after having this discussion in my class, I realized that children could learn some very prosocial behavior such as helping others, getting along, etc., but there were negative things I hadn't noticed before.

I saw how aggressive prosocial behavior is related to plain aggression as I watched the good characters in the show beat up the bad guys that were after them, steal something from people who stole it in the first place, and destroy innocent bystander's goods for their own purposes without retribution. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great show and we love it, but the discussion on aggressive prosocial behavior opened my eyes to what is really in the shows children are watching.