Blame it on Rio and other G-rated Films

One of the more insidious things media does is to condition children to see life through the limited constructs of reality that adults believe in. Cartoons and animated films routinely expose kids to negative-energy and/or adult concepts such as sexual innuendo, humiliation as humor, gender stereotypes, and irritation-emotions. It’s not necessarily done purposely to train the next generation, per se, but the end result is that kids learn what they are exposed to and taught, and ultimately they turn into adults who are vastly influenced by the ‘realities’ of life they were shown growing up.

It’s nothing new that G-rated cartoons and animated movies are written by adults who write to make the content funny to adults as well as kids.  And since cartoons are a powerful way to express political (or other) beliefs, often the scripts have overtones of social commentary pertinent to adults of the modern day, which is part of creating art and not necessarily a conspiracy to indoctrinate young minds.  And surely one could argue that easing kids into the hard-realities about life is a good thing anyway and cartoons are a gentle way to start introducing the facts of life to young people.  Perhaps.

But here’s the problem: Kids have very open minds – open to discovery, new ideas, and all possibilities – and they are not yet biased or jaded; they are optimistic, joyful and hopeful. They see the good in everything and they look for the good in everything. But media is written and produced by adults who apparently think that reflecting human behavior of age-old negative schemas and archetypes of human folly and character back to us is what people want to see or should see.  So kids are exposed to all kinds of biases they may not have thought about before.

I have recently seen three different movies that got me upset about what’s being shown to kids.  I saw movie trailers for the G-rated animated movies “Tangled” and “Rio,” and I saw the PG-rated film “Just Go with It” in a theater that was packed with kids under the age of 12.  The trailer for ‘Tangled’ was mind-blowing. Every line and every scene showed the male lead character being negative, judgmental, unpleasant and sarcastic.  He referred to the Rapunzel character as “Blondie,” and said things like “Ok, here’s the smoldering look,” as part of revealing to the audience that he knows he has to do these ‘pretend behaviors’ to get his way with the “blonde chick.”

The movie ‘Just Go with It’ featured a daddy going to work as a doctor (he’s a plastic surgeon), and then shows us a scene of ‘a day at the office’ where a lady with one enormous breast and one flattened breast comes in to get her popped implant fixed.  The doctor proceeds to do an examination of her breasts, where he has the woman sit before him topless.  Her breasts are not shown, but the scene is shot so that it is obvious the woman is not wearing any top.

My guess is there were kids in that audience who had no idea that when doctors go to work everyday there are ladies that come in and show their boobs.  Also, the whole concept of one enormous boob and one popped boob is a pretty frightening concept to show kids.  After the initial exam, the doctor has the lady lie back and his assistant says, “Ok now we are going to rub some numbing cream on your nipples.”

At this point I looked down the row of seats I was seated in and could clearly see the faces of several young boys, whose eyes were literally wide as saucers watching this scene.

In the preview for the movie ‘Rio’, an animated parrot is seen being hurled through the air all rolled up in a ball, then it rebounds off a net and flies through the air to boink a volley-ball-playing bikini-babe on the butt-cheek.  The animation has the girl’s butt-cheek wiggle and jiggle exaggeratedly in response to the impact of the bird on her ass, which will no doubt be a big laugh with the kids in the theater.

Kids see all the commercials on TV too.  It is common for chicken fast-food restaurants to tout their “all-white breast meat,” and the fast-food restaurant Arby’s uses an icon that looks like a penis hovering over people’s heads to represent urges for food.  Marketers are hopeful to link impulse-thoughts of sex with impulse-thoughts for food.  I just wanted to tack this onto the issue of how media programs people with cartoons, because it is kind of a similar process of conditioning – using G-rated content and supposed 'family values' to condition people to what and how they are supposed to think about common human life-experiences.

The end result is media keeps teaching kids the stereotype gender-defined ways of looking at men and women, and it’s kind of curious as to what their motivation is to do so. Perhaps it’s as simple as the men who create the media just think this stuff is funny, so they continue to produce it.  Personally, I wouldn’t take any kids to go see ‘Rio’ or ‘Tangled,’ just based on what I saw in the trailers alone. And ‘Just Go with It” is not suitable for kids either.