Children's Media

Abstract

At first glance, the study or teaching of children's media from a TV studies perspective can feel like an epistemological nightmare. This is in part because it requires a blending of two seemingly incompatible frameworks: quantitative, social science approaches, such as those from the fields of psychology, mass communications, law, public policy, and education, and the qualitative, interdisciplinary approaches favored by the humanities. Much foundational work on children's media emerges from the former category, which gives it the appearance of posing or answering questions that are either unfamiliar or not germane to the latter category. The challenge in explaining the relationship between children and media from a feminist perspective is to find ways to make these frameworks speak to each other in more productive, transformative ways. Because I teach a social science general education course called “Children's Television” but am not a social scientist by training, I usually begin the semester with the story of Mike Teavee, the television-obsessed child from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory .1 After watching Mike both at home in his natural element (shooting at the TV with his cap gun while his mother brags, “We serve all his TV dinners right here. He's never even been to the table”) and at the chocolate factory (hijacking the technology of Wonkavision), I ask students, “What's wrong with Mike?” Their answers frequently follow the film's Oompa Loompan line of …