"Danny the Champion of the World"

     There are so many ways to look at children's media, media made for children and media made by children. You can look at children's media and how it relates to spirituality. You can examine the media, studying how it teaches and represents spiritual principles. You can also examine children's media under the light of adventure and how that relates to a child's everyday life. However, the category that is arguable the most important is that of the family.

     The reason the family is probably the most important section is because, ideally, all of the other sections would all occur in the family unit. The family should be the main source of media for children. Parents should be deciding what things their children should be consuming, not somebody else's parents or random people. Also, the family should be where children learn about diversity, imagination and experimentation.

     Also, it is from the family that a child derives his identity. He is someone's son or daughter, someone's sister or brother. The family is one of the most important things in a child's life. And this is clearly seen in Danny, the Champion of the World.

     Danny, the Champion of the World is a book written by Roald Dahl. It is about a young boy, named Danny, who lives with his father in a gypsy trailer. Danny and his father are best friends. His father is a mechanic and teaches Danny everything he knows. Then, one day, Danny finds out that his dad poaches pheasants. And this leads them on a whole new adventure.

     The whole book is essentially about the relationship Danny has with his father. There are other characters in the story, but they are all subsidiary; the focus is always on Danny and his father. They are always present in each other's lives. They are each other's world. Danny does not like inviting friends over to his home because he likes spending time with his dad. I am not saying that children should not have friends, but that their father should should have a strong relationship with their children. After his died, Danny's father vows to give up poaching in order to take care of Danny, even though it was his favorite thing in the world.

     Even the moral of the story is familial. Towards the end of the story, after a huge fiasco with one hundred and twenty pheasants, a local doctors says, referring to the birds: "It never pays to eat more than your fair share." Just kidding. The actual moral is for parents not to be stodgy, but rather sparky, because that is what every child deserves.

     Because, supposedly, parents are the most constant thing in a child's life, it is important for them to be "sparky" because that will always stay with them. Danny's father taught him how to fix a car and to hunt pheasants. And looking back, I do not recall a time when my father similarly taught me things. I am not saying I had a bad father or anything, he was great. We just never spent the time together like Danny and his father did. And it makes me want to make sure I am sparky when I have kids.

     Family is one of the most important things in a child's life. It is always there, it is a constant. And ideally, the family is the gateway. The gateway through which media for the child is chose. And the gateway through which the child learns about diversity, inquiry and morality.

"The Iron Giant"

     Politics and ideology is something that is incorporated into all aspects of our lives. And they are probably the most noticeable in our media. Sometimes these ideologies are purposefully ingrained into our books, movies and art. Movies like Fern Gully and art like Otto Dix's The Match Seller are blatant and obvious in their political and ideological ideas. However, sometimes movies and books are infused with ideological ideas inadvertently. Everyone has their own ideas and opinions and this forms a part of them, forms a base. And whether they mean it or not, this base can inform how a piece of art or media is created.

     And because everything in infused with ideologies, whether directly or indirectly, it is important that we are careful in choosing which media to consume; it is even more important when choosing media for our children. We need to be critical when doing this. There are two kinds of critique when it comes to media. One kind is when the media itself critiques popular ideologies and ideas. Most of Hayao Miyazaki films do this. The other kind is when the consumer critiques and scrutinizes the media he or she is participating in.

     The film The Iron Gian (1999) can be looked at in both lights. The Iron Giant is a film that takes place in the 1950s, during the Cold War. A giant robot crash lands in Maine and is discovered by a small boy named Hogarth. However, as other people learn about his existence, they become fearful and violent, especially as the military is involved.

     The main theme of The Iron Giant, and which it is critical of, is anti-gun and anti-war. The Giant is harmless, unless threatened with violence; then he retaliates in self-defense, much like Gort. However, because of the Cold War, everyone thinks he is a weapon and is out to destroy him. Hogarth repeatedly tells the Giant things like "It's bad to kill, but it's not bad to die" and "Guns kill".

     The movie repeated calls attention to violence and wartime mentality and their downfall. The movies makes clear that violence is not the answer. Even when confronted by a giant, weaponized metal alien, the first thing we do to it should not be attack it. Only the people who take the time to get to know it understand that it is a docile entity; one to be sympathized with, not shot at. The movie ends with the threat of total annihilation for all of the characters; only to be saved by the one they were trying to kill.

     The Iron Giant, while being critical of some ideologies, can also become criticized by the viewer. The unit-violencec/anti-gun theme of The Iron Giant is pretty obvious, which may cause some people to balk. They may see The Iron Giant as childlike is it's crusade against guns. The very first instance of anti-gunnery comes when some hunters shoot and kill a deer. There is nothing wrong with using guns to hunt. To attack people who do so is wrong. And here is an example to prove my point.

     However, while the film is clearly against violence, it does not vilify the army. The leader of the army does not want to send in troops unless there is proof of potential danger. Also, he only attacks the Giant under the impression that he had killed Hogarth. Once he realizes that Hogarth is alive, he tries to stop the attack on the Iron Giant. So, while it is strong in its ideologies, it does not really vilify the opposing side, like many other films do.

     The messages we get from consuming media are as different as the media we consume. Because of this, it is important to consume media that is critical of extremist ideas, critical of people who think everything is black and white; because the world we live in is not like that, it is shades of grey. And to determine which media we should consume, we should also be critical of it.

"Rabbit-Proof Fence"

     The world we are living in is becoming more and more diverse. And because of this, it is important that our media reflects this growing diversity, especially children's media because it is the children that will be growing up in this diverse place.

     There are two main ways to address diversity in the media. The first way is to simply show it. Movies like The Fast and the Furious franchise are diverse because they boast a multi-ethnic cast. Comic books can be diverse when they change the main character, such as having Miles Morales (half Black half Hispanic) replace Peter Parker as Spider-Man or by having a woman become Thor. By having characters that are minorities, diversity can be shown. This approach typically does not address political issues.

     The other way is to address political topics related to diversity, such as racism and bigotry. And because these topics are being covered, having a diverse cast is usually necessary. Books like Baseball Saved Us deals with what it was like being Japanese during WWII. The recent film Selma, is about the Civil Rights movements in the 60s. These texts examine at how dogmatism and prejudice affects those around us.

     Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) falls into the second category. This film is based on a true  story about three half caste (half Aborigine and half white) girls that were taken from their home because of the Half-Caste Act. They are placed into a camp where they destined to be assimilated into the white, European culture. However, these girls escape and try to return home.

     The act was passed, essentially, as a way to slowly absorb the Aborigines into the white culture. They want to get rid of diversity by eliminating the natives. In a chilling scene towards the beginning of the film, A. O. Neville, Chief Protector of Aborigines, explains how marrying half-castes to white people will eventually remove all trace of their ethnic heritage.

     People like Neville think they are helping the Aborigine people by re-educating and assimilating their children into the European culture. However, the only thing they are doing is harming families and reducing diversity.

     However, the film does not make everything black and white, instead there were shades of grey. There were white people who helped the three girls in their journey. Also, there were natives who lied to them and tried to help recapture them. Just as people are diverse in their skin colors, they are equally diverse in their intentions and character.

     As I was watching this film, it made me wonder how different the world would be if the Europeans were merely travelers and traders, instead of colonizers. How rich would the Aboriginal and Australian cultures be if they were never interfered with by people who thought it knew better? What would South America be like if the Spanish Conquerors had not actually conquered anything?

     Because of modern technology, our world is becoming more diverse, because we can more readily see and experience cultures not our own. At the same time, because we have all these different cultures at our fingertips, we are blending them together and creating one world-culture. Because of this, it is important to include diversity in our media. Having diverse media is important because it can help people better understand those of a different culture. Diverse media can also help maintain and prolong cultures that are in danger of being enveloped in the world-culture.

"The Bridge to Terabithia"

     Whenever someone mentions nostalgia, many people immediately think of their childhood. For a lot of people it was a time to be cherished; a time full of fun and adventure. Many people look back fondly on their childhood, remembering watching Saturday morning cartoons and playing pretend in the backyard.

     There is a lot of media and other things that can trigger these nostalgic feelings. Recently French Toast Crunch was rereleased with a box whose sole purpose was to trigger nostalgia towards the 90s. VH-1 ran several TV series 100% based on nostalgia, such as I Love the 90s and My Coolest Years.

     Bridge to Terabithia is a novel that stirs up nostalgic feelings, though it was not created to in the same way as I Love the 90s. The setting is contemporary to when it was written, but it deals with children and childhood. The book is about a young boy, named Jess, who befriends his new neighbor named Leslie. Together, they discover a hidden part of the forrest and create a whole, imaginary kingdom there. There is no real driving plot to the story; instead it focuses on what it was like to be a kid.

     I entire time I was reading Bridge to Terabithia, I kept having one of two thoughts. 1) I wish I was a child again. Or 2) I wish I had a child. I have not consumed media that made me long for my childhood as much as Terabithia. There were so many things that I directly related to that reading the book was a trip down memory lane.

     At the school where Jess goes to, the older boys (sixth and seventh graders) would play with the sporting equipment during, while the younger boys would race each other. The girls would play hopscotch and jump rope. The recess at my school was similarly segregated. One way was in basketball. The basket court was essentially saved for fifth and sixth graders. The fifth graders would play against the sixth graders. I was not very good at basketball so I did not play very often; but when I did, it was because I was one of the tallest kids in my grade.

     Our soccer field was also separated, though, in a slightly less politically correct way. There was no distinction between age groups or grades; instead it was the white kids against the Mexicans. The only white kid to play on the Mexican team was Spencer Sutherland. I do not know why, but he had a helluva kick.

     Another part of the story that reminded me of my childhood was Terabithia itself. Growing up, I did not have an entire made of world like Jess and Leslie did. But I did have a place, our treehouse on the other side of the pasture behind my grandma's house, that I would frequent. I would go out there and play GI Joes with my brother and cousins. We would find sticks and use them as guns. I even had a tree stump that doubled as a motorcycle. We would go back there and play all the time.

     But the part that made me reflect the most was when Christmas rolled around. There is this small passage about when Jess got a racing-car set from his dad. It was not working properly and he could tell that his father was not happy with it. Jess knew his dad spent more money on it than he should have so Jess desperately wanted it to work so his dad would be proud he got it.

     It made me reflect on all the times I had gotten something for Christmas that I did not particularly like/want but that I did not want to make my parents feel bad for getting it. And after thinking about receiving and giving presents for a while, it made me realize that I had been a ungrateful child. Without going into too much personal detail, those 13 lines made me reflect and rethink Christmas more than anything else ever had.

     Bridge to Terabithia brought childhood to life. Reading this book was pure nostalgia. Nothing I have read or seen before had made me wish I was a kid again so bad. I love the 90s is cool and all; but that is superficial and mostly explores pop culture items. Bridge to Terabithia, on the other hand, explores what it is actually like to be a kid.

Play and "Disney Infinity"

     Play is an important part of childhood. In fact, one could argue that most of childhood is spent playing. When we grow up, we play a lot less and usually as a release from work. As adults, play can become means to an end: relieve stress, add some fun to a routinely boring day, etc. But with children, play is an end in and of itself.

     While not always the case, a lot of times play involves a game of some sort. It was interesting to see the different types of board games. Before playing them in class, I had never given much thought about the different areas games challenge. Some games are just random luck, like Candy Land. Other games, such as Hungry, Hungry Hippos and Rock'em Sock'em Robots, are still mostly luck, but with some basic motor skills involved. More advanced motor skills are tested with games like Operation, Jenga and possibly Twister. Games like Clue and Battleship have been made into movies challenge critical thinking and do not require any physical skills.

     The skills tested usually, or at least try to, correlate to the age of the  target audience. Candy Land, made for small children, requires no skill and therefore can be enjoyed by even the youngest of children. If you have a small children play Jenga, she will just have fun knocking the blocks over and playing with them. Another small children would not even comprehend how to play Clue.

     That is one of the important things about play: it should correspond with the capacities of the player. If the games is too easy or too hard, whether physically or mentally, the player will not enjoy it. I have played video games, where the levels get progressively harder, where I just quit the game because it got too hard and I was no longer having fun.

     It is also important that the game not be too hard to learn. In class we played Disney Infinity which was the first time I had played it. I am also not a big gamer; I usually stick to games where an arrow directs to the next thing I need to shoot. But, at least in the Toy Box mode, there was nothing guiding me. I should have watched a tutorial, but I did not; so I was left to figure things out on my own. Which was kind of hard. I was not having fun at first because I did not know what to do. But, after I figured a few things out, it became more fun. It is always fun to play the game, but not so much in learning how to play.

     Play is an important part of life, whether you are a child or an adult. And in order for play to be effective, it needs to be within certain boundaries of difficulty. If it is too hard to learn, kids will not bother to learn how to play. Or, if it is too hard or too easy to play, children will either become frustrated or bored and will quit playing.

"The Catcher in the Rye"

     We like to believe that children have it easy: they get to play all day and do not have any responsibilities. However, that is not always the case. As much as we would not want to believe it, childhood is often full of trials and despair. And this is probably evident the most, of all of the sections we have discussed, in the documentation.

     These hardships can be seen in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. This novel is about 16 year old Holden Caulfield who is traveling home after being kicked out of school. The book is about Caulfield's troubles as he is coming home and him reminiscing about previous exploits.

     Life is not easy for Holden Caulfield. He has been kicked out of four different schools. He is worried about what his parents to going to do when they find out. Most of the people he knows annoy him in some way or another. And they are almost all phonies. He often gets roughed up. He accidentally breaks the record he bought as a present for his little sister. He accidentally offends this girl he really liked while on a date. Nothing ever goes right for Caulfield during the entire story. It is basically a book about how hard it can be being a 16 year old.

     The Catcher in the Rye is also told from Caulfield's perspective. Because of this, it is written in a conversational, casual tone. It is full of slang and digressions. Caulfield often digresses, for pages at a time, from what is happening at the moment. He will be in the middle of explaining what is happening to him as he goes home and will be reminded of someone or something from one of his previous schools, which he will talk about at some length before returning to the topic at hand.

     Because of this, The Catcher in the Rye is a documentation, a faux-autobiography. The story is told as the main character experienced it. He is recounting this experience for some unclear reason. He is documenting part of his life.

     I feel like the documentation section we have discussed kind of serves the same function as Holden Caulfield wants to as the catcher in the rye. He wants to stand at the edge of the cliff, waiting for children to come running by and catch them before they fall. He wants to protect them from the harshness of reality.

     Similarly, the documentation also wants to protect children. However, instead of catching them as they fall, it saves them in a different way. It wants to warn them of the despairs and hardships, warn them of the cliff, so they are better prepared to handle it. Documentation stories can help children transition into adulthood.

   Many people idealize childhood: children do not have to work and they do not have any responsibilities; they get to play all day and not worry about a thing. Unfortunately, childhood is not always that easy. Sometimes it can be full of grimness and adversity. Documentation stories, such as The Catcher in the Rye, seek to explore and expound on these situations. And because of this, they can be useful in helping children transition into adulthood without falling off the cliff.

"Sherlock, Jr"

     Experimentation seems, to me anyways, at the crossroads between inquiry and imagination. Being inquisitive leads people to figure things out and to learn. One way to satisfy the Spanish inquisition is through experimentation. Imagination leads people to create new and unique things. Experimenting with what is around can aid the imagination. Both experimentation and imagination help people see new things.

     Children are naturally imaginative and inquisitive;  and because of this, it is normal for them to want to try and experiment with things. Tommy may want to know what happens when he sticks a fork in an outlet. Kimberly might experiment with putting ketchup on her taco.

     In class, most of the examples of experimentation that we looked at involved  an artist experimenting with, or stretching the boundaries of, the medium in which he or she worked. B.J. Novak's The Book with No Pictures played around and experimented with font size and style and onomatopoeia. George Melies experimented with the medium of film, seeing what it was able to do. In a similar manner, Buster Keaton played with film in his movie Sherlock, Jr.

     In Sherlock, Jr, Buster Keaton plays a movie theater projectionist who wants to become a detective. The beginning of the film is straightforward and filmed in a traditional manner; however, it is when he falls asleep that the experimentation with the medium begins. Keaton falls asleep, only to have his sub-conscience leave his body in a dream like state. Keaton used a cross dissolve technique to overlay two separate images of himself on top of each other, one being his physical body and the other being his dream.

     In no other medium can this idea and experimentation be fully developed as it is here. The layering of images can be done with traditional still photography, but without the moving aspect, Keaton's journey away from his physical body does not resonate as much. And painting two Buster Keatons does not have the same affect as having two real images of him does; someone can paint whatever they want.

     The medium of film is further experimented with when Keaton first enters the movie. By taking careful calculations, the filmmakers were able to place Keaton in the same part of the frame in various locations. And when these parts were edited together, it looks like Keaton is magically transported from one location to another. This effect can only be done with the juxtaposition of moving images; making it unique to film.

     In Sherlock, Jr., we see Buster Keaton experimenting with film medium, in the very same way that George Melies did, in order to create a new and imaginative film. By exploiting the properties of film, Keaton was able to tell and expound on his story in ways not done before.

     Experimentation seems to appeal more to children than to adults. As people grow older, they get set in their ways and reject new things that are different. However, children are still learning and growing and still do not reject what is new. Because experimentation is closely related to imagination and inquiry, both of which are strong with children, it is naturally embraced by the same children.