Christensen- Extended Comments Post

For my blog this week I decided to do an extended comments piece on Dennis’ Blog. While looking through others’ blogs I noticed that Dennis’ argument post had a lot of points that I agreed with and wanted to include in my own post.

In his first paragraph, Dennis explains what he believes Christensen’s argument is: “Christensen's argument is that we should really be aware of what stereotypes are being portrayed in children s media and what they read and watch will influence them about people, races, and other things even before they are exposed to it themselves” I completely agree with this argument. I think that Christensen really was trying to open up the readers eyes to the stereotypes that are introduced to children at such young ages through the various types of media. For example, Christensen mentions that people of color were portrayed as being of lesser intelligence usually and overweight people in movies and books and other medias acted jolly and funny. These were stereotypes that were features in multiple books movies and television shows that children saw daily. 

In his second paragraph, Dennis states “cartoons, movies and books…are the main things that adults use to teach children morals, lessons, behavior, and even simple things like words but all of those things may be well and good but it is the subliminal pictures and messages that the kids really see instead of the main story…but what is in the story besides the words but more the underlying content is what we as a society are learning from.” Once again I completely agree with Dennis’ argument. These media objects are all mass produced and seen things that children are seeing at a young age. When these stereotypes are features in these books movies and shows they only help to keep the stereotypes going. This argument fits perfectly with the student named Omar on the first page who said “’When we read children’s books, we aren’t just reading cutie little stories, we are discovering the tools with which a young society is manipulated.’” It’s clear the these stereotypes being shown in this “secret education” can be harmful to young people and its important that we acknowledge that they are there and that they exist and that we realize that they are only stereotypes and not reality.

Although these stereotypes are not only in Disney productions, they certainly seem to get the most attention for it. For my link this week I decided to include a video that breaks down the stereotypes commonly found in Disney features.