Bryn Kressin

During the 2009 spring semester I chose to study abroad in Amsterdam, where I lived for duration of four months. During this time I took classes focusing on communication within and between cultures, studied and became accustomed to the social policies of the Netherlands, and traveled through out Europe. Life experience and interactions with others have always been just as important to my education as material learned in classrooms. Augustine once wrote, "The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." My education would be incomplete with out my encounters abroad. Therefore, I created the slide show below in order to better demonstrate the experience and knowledge I have gained by exploring the world on my own. Studying in classes comprised of different nationalities and living in the international and multicultural city of Amsterdam was the perfect progression towards a fuller understanding of human nature, which is critical to understand when working in entertainment. Because of the innocence of children, a simplified and unpolluted understanding of humanity is vital to create compelling and praise worthy youth entertainment. The differences and similarities between individuals and societies can both help to create and stifle entertainment. Because entertainment takes on the form of mass media a career path in the industry would be global, and, consequently, the ability to communicate with people from other countries and cultures is essential. My capability to recognize how and why intercultural communication either fails or succeeds in various circumstances is an invaluable asset I have taken away from my time abroad. Most importantly, living in a foreign country taught me the value of seizing the moment. I came extremely close to not even applying to go to Amsterdam because of doubts I had about myself, which I discovered by living abroad were all falsehoods. Choosing to spend the semester away from USC and outside of my comfort zone was on of the best decisions I have made so far in my short life. I gained a global perspective of the world and human relations which I believe helps to set me apart from others. Living in Amsterdam was a once in a lifetime opportunity, which I am so happy that I was fortunate enough to take advantage of. The slide show and external link can be found below. slide show.

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss children's costumes and the obvious influence of popular TV shows and films. It is not a new complaint that girls' costumes for Halloween have become increasingly sexualized and age inappropriate over the past couple of years. This trend can best be described in a scene from the popular 2004 film Mean Girls. The main character Cady has just moved back to the US after living abroad in Africa for the majority of her childhood. Cady becomes embarrassed at a Halloween party she attends when she arrives dressed as a zombie bride leaving her to discover that, "In the regular world Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In girl world Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it. The hardcore girls just wear lingerie and some form of animal ears." (see the picture to the left). If Halloween costumes have not always been so provocative, then when did the holiday turn from an innocent night of children trick or treating to a pageantry of sexy and revealing clothing; and more importantly, why has this phenomenon developed? After taking a close look at the popular costumes for this year, it seems that young girls Halloween costumes have become immodest largely due to the hyper-sexualization of women in entertainment targeted toward children.

While browsing the Web to get an idea for what costumes we can expect to see young girls wearing this year, I found on every site that there are a significant number of costumes modeled after specific characters seen in popular films and television series. For example, on Party City the top fourteen best selling costumes are all characters from youth oriented shows like Hannah Montana, High School Musical, and Wizards of Waverly Place. Out of all one hundred and seventeen new costumes for the year 2009 sixty of these costumes (51%) are modeled after prominent figures seen in children's entertainment. Of course not all of these costumes are inherently inappropriate, but costumes like the one pictured to the right should hopefully make a parent think twice before sending out their little girl to trick or treat. In a 2008 study conducted by Professor Stacy Smith here at the University of Southern California, her team performed a content analysis of the four hundred top grossing box office films from the years 1990 to 2006. Within the top one hundred of these four hundred films Smith found that there were only eighteen female driven stories with a teenage and above protagonist. The findings of her research concluded, "more than three-fourths of live and animated females are depicted in sexually revealing attire. Thus, the beauty ideal reinforced many of the films is an unattainable standard of sexiness and perfection." Perhaps even more shocking is her discovery that the percentage of sexually revealing clothing on females is the same for both R-rated and G-rated films, leading girls to learn at a young age to dress provocatively.

Last night's episode of Gossip Girl is an example of just this. While I certainly hope that girls who have not yet reached high school watch Gossip Girl, the Halloween special showed a group of three trick-or-treaters, two boys and a little girl, that could not have be over the age of seven. The two boys were dressed as a policeman and a fireman. However, the young girl was dressed as the popular singer Lady Gaga (pictured to the left), who is well known for sexually explicit lyrics and equally provocative costumes. The thought of a child around the age of six listening to Lady Gaga's music is rather frightening. Her debut single "Just Dance" is not about enjoying dancing, but rather being so black out drunk at a party that she can not remember where she is. Teen Vogue conducted a pole online for their readers to vote for their favorite Halloween costumes for this year and Lady Gaga came out as the favorite celebrity costume. I find it especially disheartening that the little girl in Gossip Girl has to be dressed up as a singer with lyrics, "I wanna take a ride on your disco stick", while the two boys she is trick-or-treating with are dressed as respected members of society who deserve to be emulated.

Of course it should not come as too much of a surprise that young girls choose Halloween costumes of popular icons. Little girls idolize and play with toys centered around their favorite TV shows and movies all year round, so why would Halloween be any different? I am by no means trying to say that girls should not be allowed to dress as their favorite characters, but rather that television networks and production companies need to be more mindful of the clothing their characters wear. However, is it fair to expect corporations to take such measures? After all, they produce entertainment for business purposes not to educate young teen girls. Should the government then regulate the content production companies place in their youth entertainment? I am afraid that, to do that would in a way be an infringement on the freedoms of free speech. Nor do I think that it is a topic of great concern among politicians. If there is no practical solution to censor adolescent clothing in the media, then once again it becomes the parents responsibility to decide how to dress their children.

A major topic of concern with in the field of youth marketing and entertainment is the behaviors and stereotypes the media teaches our younger generations. Such topics include gender roles, body image, self-esteem, sexuality, and violence. According to the national organization True Child, "by the time they graduate high school, children will have spent more time watching TV than in the class room or talking with their parents." Therefore, mass media has become a major resource for youth to develop "appropriate" conduct in social settings. Mass media researchers and theorists have devoted entire studies to the effects content seen on television and films has on children's behaviors. For example studies have shown that the top 10% of girls watching explicit entertainment "are twice as likely to get pregnant as those in the bottom 10%". Clearly, as I have established in previous posts and given this evidence, entertainment and media have a significant part in shaping youth. But what are parents and educators supposed to do about it? In my post concerning Disney's Princess and the Frog, I briefly discussed what I feel we should expect from the media to enforce positive images to the youth, but shied away from what actions parents can take when the media fails to produce constructive content.

As I searched the web this week I came upon a post from the blog Shaping Youth about a new book coming out titled, Packaging Boyhood (pictured to the right). The book is aimed to offer advice to parents on how to "help boys resist negative stereotypes from marketers and the media". Each chapter covers a different topic such as: what boys wear, what boys watch, what boys read, what boys listen to, and what boys do. Basically, it discusses all aspects of being a boy. I was so excited to see a discussion revolving around negative media impacts on young boys that I took the liberty to comment on Shaping Youth's post to commend them for drawing attention to such an important topic and ask why we do not see more attention garnered to media influences on boys. Below is the text to the comment I left on Shaping Youth as well as a link to my external comment on the original blog post.

Comment:

I truly enjoyed this post, as I strongly believe that effect media has on young men is a critical topic. While I do not mean to lessen the importance of the impressionability of young women and the negative stereo types being slung at them, you bring up an excellent point that boys are receiving "cues that they should be 'into' this jolly good fun" which I think is the much scarier concern. You provide such a wide array of examples of marketing towards men that I was appalled to see just how frequently products construct these negative cues. The most surprising to me was Klondike's digital man cave. Since when is an ice cream bar a men's product? No where in the Klondike website is there a pitch for why women should eat Klondikes. When You click on the fish tank in the "man cave" the caption reads, "fish are beautiful and soothing: but you're really just waiting for them to eat each other." Not only do I find it impossible to draw the connection of watching fish eat each other to ice cream, this also suggests that men cannot appreciate beauty. What an outrage! It was truly a treat to read what the authors of Packaging Boyhood had to say about the website. I am looking forward to reading your upcoming chats with the authors over this topic.

Lastly, research shows that boys view more television content than girls at a younger age. Why then do you think media and marketing influence on young boys is so grossly over looked? Why is it that so much attention is directed to the effects on girls? Is it perhaps due to the notion that women are more open to sharing emotions, or are masculinity stereotypes so deeply ingrained in our society that they go unnoticed? With in the last century the role of women in the world has drastically changed with the feminist movement, forcing us to critically think about the way women are seen and contribute to society. Sure feminism has forced the discussion of how men ought to treat women in this newly reformed social order, but not many have discussed the negative stereotypes surrounding men because there has not been a large movement challenging these stereotypes. For this reason I am so happy to see books like Packaging Boyhood published because they are greatly needed.

This week I decided to search the Web for the best of the best internet sites relating to youth and entertainment. It is no secret that the Web can become an overwhelming maze of information. In order to avoid this phenomenon I employed various search engines such as Google Reader, KartOO, and Metacrawler to aid my hunt. However, it was not simply enough just to find websites related to my field. I wanted to find sites that held up to the standards of the Webby Awards and blogs that held up to the 21st Century Information Fluency criteria. The Webby Awards evaluates sites on their content, structure and navigation, visual design, functionality, interactivity, and overall experience. The picture to the right is a screen shot of Millenial Marketing's blog within their site, which meets all criterion for the Webby Awards. For blogs the 21st Century Information Fluency appreciates aesthetics, but places most emphasis on the content of the blog and the author. While not all of my recommended sites are easily navigated I believe that the content of the sites and blogs out weigh such criterion. All of the sites I found can be accessed in the "Recommended Sites" side bar to the right.

Almost a month ago Disney announced plans to buy Marvel Entertainment Inc. for a cool $4 billion. While it is impossible to predict the outcome of any business deal, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company Robert A. Iger believes, "Disney is the perfect home for Marvel's fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses" with hopes that, "this is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney's tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world." The merger of the two companies gives Disney acquisition of all 5,000 plus Marvel characters including "Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor". However, a major wrench has been thrown into the midst of any plans Disney or Marvel might have had for any of their characters last week. Notices terminating copyrights for Captain America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, The Avengers, Iron Man, Hulk, The Silver Surfer and Thor were sent by the estate of Jack Kirby, the co-creator of these characters, to Disney and Marvel. If these notices are to be held up in court, it would cause a halt of all production of any movies or television shows featuring Kirby's characters.

This week I chose to explore the blogosphere in hopes of finding the opinions of others interested in this topic. In doing so, I came across Dvorak Uncensored. In the post Dvorak claims Disney's deal with Marvel as a dud because the super hero genre is dying out. Although I do agree that the deal struck between Marvel and Disney might not have been the smartest business move, I do not believe it is because the super hero genre is fading. Below is a copy of the comment I left on Dvorak Uncensored. Unfortunately, the web site thought my post might be spam, so I am currently awaiting the approval of my comment. I will post a direct link to my external comment as soon as it becomes available.

Comment:

Your post on Disney's take over of Marvel offers an intriguing argument. I especially liked your analogy to eBay that, "despite spending billions, eBay bought nothing. It merely licensed the right to use Skype's technology." I actually cannot think of a better way to explain the take over myself, particularly because of the new developments involving Jack Kirby's estate. Why Disney would want to buy the rights to characters that have already been made into franchises through other studios does not make much sense, unless of course they had planned to produce future movies themselves, such as Captain America, The Avengers, and Thor.

You point out that "in about ten years Disney would be set to go on its own". However, the notices of copy right termination from Jack Kirby's camp will become effective as soon as 2014 (http://www.bleedingcool.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6068). The validity of the copy right termination of characters co-created by Jack Kirby would not only cause inconvenience for Disney and Marvel but also any film studio that has made movies using Kirby's characters. Production for The Avengers, Captain America, Thor and Iron Man 3 would have to come to an end. No doubt, Kirby's heirs are most likely put out about missing out on a piece of the $4 billion Disney paid Marvel, especially since Kirby's characters are by far the most popular.

You bring up valid points about superhero movies being geared towards adults, but I have to disagree with you that the super hero genre is dying out. True, it is possible that "in ten, twenty years no one is going to give a rip about Spider-Man", but that is why remakes and reinventions of old characters can generate so much success. Take the newly franchised Batman as an example. The first Batman was released in 1989 and there is still as much, if not more, buzz and excitement about the Batman Begins series as there was ten years ago for the original film. For the time being it certainly seems that Marvel has become a trophy for Disney to put on the shelf, but as time progresses it could very well find a niche in the Disney brand if approached correctly.

For those interested in the happenings of children's entertainment, they are almost certainly aware of Disney's highly anticipated feature film The Princess and the Frog due in theaters everywhere December 11, 2009. The motion picture will end the company's five-year hiatus from hand drawn animation, which they abandoned in 2004 due to the unpopularity of other films such as Home on the Range, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Treasure Planet. It seemed that audiences preferred the new medium of computer animation seen in the wildly popular Toy Story and Finding Nemo. However, Disney's return to its famed tradition of musical animation is not the topic garnering the most attention. The film's protagonist, Tiana, is the first black Disney princess (pictured to the right), and also the first princess in over a decade. In addition, Tiana is the most modern Disney princess to date as the film is set in 1920's New Orleans. Considering past criticism that Disney characters reinforce and perpetuate racial stereotypes, it is not hard to understand how important the implications of the first black Disney princess will play out in the media. The emergence of Tiana could not come at a better time. Milestones such as the emergence of Michelle Obama as the first lady and Barbie's premier of their first line of black dolls,"So in Style", will, in addition to The Princess and the Frog, help shape a new imagery of black women for today's youth. However, it is unfair to expect Disney to spear head a social revolution. Even though the film has received problematic criticism, The Princess and the Frog should be applauded for its effort to create a positive image for young girls because even if Disney does not get it right this time, they are beginning an evolution towards racial sensitivity in children's entertainment.

Whether or not Disney is responsible for reinforcing racial stereotypes, I fear, is an extremely difficult question to answer. What I believe to be a more pertinent question is why there is so much importance placed on a children's cartoon. Does it really even matter what kids watch at such a young age? Do they fully understand the content that they are exposed to? Yes, it matters. Between the ages of six and eight is when children first begin to think critically about their environment and learn the difference between right and wrong. From the time they are born until they are about six years old, children watch on average about two hours of television every day, which increases, as they get older. Most importantly, content that children watch needs to be selective because studies show the mass media has the most heightened effects on individuals when first, the individual lacks direct experience with the portrayed group and second, the media acts as a way of informing or instructing. Therefore, for children who have not grown up in racially diverse communities Disney's representation of different races and ethnicities is extremely influential on racial schemas children develop. Thus, scholars, parents and critics should all take interest in the premier of Disney's first black princess.

Originally the film was titled "The Frog Princess" because in the plot Tiana turns into a frog. However, some chose to interpret the title as suggesting black women are frogs or ugly. Skepticism has also arisen over the fact that Tiana spends the majority of the movie as a frog. How are little girls supposed to walk away with the vision of black women being just as graceful and elegant as any other Disney princess if she is in the form of a frog for the majority of the movie? And on that note, if little girls are finally being given a black princess to identify with should not little boys have a hero to identify with too? While the prince in the film has a darker skin tone, he is not black which the evil villain is (pictured to the left). In essence, the lighter skinned male must save the black female from the black male. One could argue that portraying a biracial relationship on screen is a good thing, but then why did the villain have to be black? Furthermore, Tiana was to be named "Maddy" and worked as a maid, but when this information leaked to the general public Disney received harsh backlash. "Maddy" sounded too similar to a slave name especially when paired with the profession of a maid. Disney agreed and decided on Tiana, a much more fitting name for a princess, and changed her profession to a waitress. Finally, the last major piece of criticism surrounding The Princess and the Frog is the portrayal of voodoo. Voodoo has had a long-standing tradition of negative portrayal in fictional films. Many people equate Voodoo with evil magic, witchcraft, and superstition with out realizing it is in fact a religion practiced by many people.

Of course, one could argue criticisms of The Princess and the Frog are too trifling and are only being made because of the sensitive topic of race connected to the film. There is no doubt that audiences and viewers alike need to remain critical when considering complaints made about the film. There is a fine line between offensive implications and innocent misunderstandings. For those who argue that critics are being hypersensitive, it is important to point out that The Princess and the Frog is not the first Disney film to receive scrutiny, nor do I think it will be the last. Other films with white princesses were criticized for portraying unrealistic body images of the princesses or for being sexist. For example, The Little Mermaid received disapproval for having Ariel sacrifice her voice to be with the prince Eric. There have also been other race related issues in other Disney classics as well. Aladdin portrayed its protagonist as rather European looking, while the villain Jafar had a darker skin tone and more prominent Middle Eastern facial features. Clearly, insensitivity seen in The Princess and the Frog are not new to Disney films, nor in most programming for children. Hopefully, Disney can learn from past mistakes and through criticism they receive produce more socially progressive material in the future.

If kids are constantly exposed to ethnic misrepresentations, how are they supposed to develop accurate views of diversity? Ideally a child's parents would discuss issues of race and ethnicity with them, but most likely their parents are either unaware of the content their children are viewing or are oblivious themselves of the same misrepresentations. For now, unveiling the first black Disney princess is the first step towards developing more culturally aware programming for children. For example, the popular show "Dora the Explorer" was one of the first to integrate Spanish words and Hispanic culture in its content. Because of Dora's popularity, another series was created which follows her cousin Diego, providing a positive role model for boys. Although The Princess and the Frog is problematic, I hope it will have the same effect as Dora the Explorer and create more opportunities for black women to be portrayed in the entertainment industry.