Comments on: Oh, “Little Curies” Was Taken?

By: vivian

vivian — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 03:45:54 +0000

Umm, Little Einsteins is made by the Baby Einstein people – the folks who brought Mozart (et seq.) to the infant set. Little Einsteins is for when they grow up, and since the company is now part of Disney, you know the rest. Little Curies is a great idea though – see if they’ll buy it.

My son adored Dora from the moment his eyes would focus. So did all his male friends (and female ones) through age three or four. Irritated me no end that all Dora merchandise came in pink only—it could have been a great chance to publicly bust the stereotype of boys not watching girl shows, but no-o-o. (It also irritated me that I wanted more merchandising…) The same boys adored Shanna, Little Bill, Backyardigans and Lazytown.

A few years ago people were raving about Powerpuff girls and how it appealed to boys, and deconstructed the genre. So watch less Disney Channel and more Nick JR/Noggin (D’you get them in Singapore?)

By: Wendy

Wendy — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 21:15:12 +0000

Re gender equality:
Yesterday, my 3.5 year old son said “I want nail polish! Boy nail polish! With dinosaurs!”

He’s a big fan of Little Einsteins, too. Hmmmm.

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 18:42:48 +0000

Don’t forget Shanna’s Show.

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 07:08:26 +0000

Some friends of mine are very into gender equality, and have raised their two children under a pretty strict regimen of equal treatment. (He was concerned at one point about their son not developing language as quickly as his older sister had, for example, and dismissed as wildly implausible my suggestion that sex differences might have had something to do with it.)

Their principles extended to the choice of toys they gave their children. Believe me, you haven’t seen cute till you’ve seen a three-year-old boy running across a huge room, dragging a doll about two-thirds his size behind him by one leg, and pausing every now and then to pound the floor with its head.

By: Mark Schmitt

Mark Schmitt — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 05:25:20 +0000

You can always try my 60s-feminist mother’s counter-programming tactic, which was to casually walk into the room every so often while my brother and I were watching The Flintstones and point out that, “You know, not all families are like that.” Which was, like, duh—we were aware that dad does not drive his wooden car with his feet to work at Mr. Slate’s quarry, there’s no bird pecking out pictures in our camera, and we know that mom works instead of spending the day preparing brontosaurus burgers for her man. And as a result, my brother and I emerged fairly enlightened about gender roles.

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 02:36:40 +0000

Although I totally see Belle’s point, I don’t know how much damage it does—or it won’t so much to her girls. Schlock TV is only one kind of input. When I was a little kid, there weren’t all that many female characters to emulate. What—Sweet Polly Purebred? No thanks! I can only think of two of my TV role models that were women—Mrs. Peel and Catwoman. The cool cartoon and regular TV heroes were boys/men, but it didn’t stop me from identifying with them or imagining myself as the equally smart and macho, yet very 1960s sexy female partner.

By: joe o

joe o — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 01:06:40 +0000

In Power Rangers SPD , the black guy is the leader. The blue power ranger, a white guy, got pretty miffed when the black guy joined the team, got handed the red power ranger suit, and became the new leader.

By: tylerh

tylerh — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 23:11:06 +0000

Spot on, Joel Turnipseep,

Cultural jujitsu takes little energy, or even thought. Merely a general awareness of plot/character details. Here is my dated example:

My daughter had red-hair: Society pretty much forced her to strongly identify with Disney’s “Little Mermaid.” So of course I let her watch it. Then I asked her, “What was the point of the story,” knowing full well someone that young can’t really articulate a coherent response. After a kind pause, I said “it’s about learning your ABCs. If Ariel had done her work instead of swimming around, she could have written Prince Eric a letter and avoided all that bother.” She bought it.

But this episode had an even better consequence: after getting so much attention broadcasting to other adults what she “learned” from Little Mermaid my daughter became convinced that the correct way to view a Disney flick was to watch for protagonist dumbnesses (it’s a word, really). She showed up for kindergarten already a sharp critical viewer.

By: kharris

kharris — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 21:40:12 +0000

Black guy sacrifices himself to big bug carnivore? Isn’t that just tapping an Alien scene? Bad scifi tends to refer to better scifi, same as bad chopsaki refers to better, and so on. The thing in the Alien movie – a black guy leading a bunch of pathological killers who have found religion and hang on to it by a slender thread in a space prison and recognize that the presence of a woman is going to cause them to revert to type, who then sacrifices himself to the hungry bug? – now that is a stereotype problem, mostly because they are all piled up on top of each other.

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 21:38:20 +0000

(By “approximately every human society ever known” I mean that leadership roles have disproportionately gone to male members of the numerically dominant ethnic group, not that they went to white men.)

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 21:36:23 +0000

Perfect equality is barely [sic] acceptable—but in any situation where there’s going to be a deviation from perfect equality, like a group with one leader, the white guy still ends up in charge an awful lot.

And the world is a worse place because of this why? It's crystal clear why the world is a worse place as a result of female circumcision, stonings to death for adultery, the selling of teenaged girls as sex slaves in South East Asia. Cartoons reflecting, in their leadership roles, approximately every human society ever known, not so much.

By: ECW

ECW — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 21:14:53 +0000

Re names in post #20, you’re missing an option. My wife and I both kept our own names and made up a new last name for our child. So none of us have the same name. People often respond with utter confusion, which makes for nice opportunities for subtle consciousness raising.

By: Nada

Nada — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 20:15:26 +0000

OK - I can’t believe I’m the first one to ask this, but he wasn’t singing “John Henry”, was he? “Hammer be the death of me! Lord, lord – hammer be the death of me.” Heh heh.

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 19:01:12 +0000

This thread actually makes me HAPPY for a change that mine is a teenager now. I still shudder when I think of Barney… or more to the the point, his obnoxiously phony, mugging little sidekicks. My daughter owned very goddamn Barney video in print when she was little. Retro me Satanas!

By: BigMacAttack

BigMacAttack — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 18:06:49 +0000

The cynic in me says the lack of contrary views in this thread, proves that none of Belle’s readers cast for cartoons/kid shows, but everyone cleans.

I dunno

Backyardigans Hippo Penguin Moose
Dora Hispanic Girl
Lazytown Girl is real focus
Scooby Doo Velma
Little Bill Black
The Last Avatar Chinese and has a cool girl
(Not sure about Higglytown Hereos)
Mrs Spider some bugs not sure who leads
Tom and Jerry guys/cat/mouse
Dragon Tales older girl more in charge
Batman white guy and token girl partner
Little Einsteins Older brother more in charge
Thomas is a train helmet fest
Wonder Pets Hamster
Ben 10 Boy

I dunno seems like a pretty diverse group. Maybe a little boy slant.

Don’t watch a lot of kung fu stuff, I guess that would be more boy oriented, but that makes sense.