For my critical research i am going to conduct interviews with parents, i will ask them to view the various different texts of the stereotypes of children below. I will then show a clip of the simpsons and ask which character (out of Bart and Lisa) they think is a better reperesentation of what they precieve childhood to be.

Innocence=
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-487168/Children-robbed-innocence-guns-gangs-celebrities.html

Simpsons=Accedemic and bart as being bad

Yob=knife crime



Obese children=
http://www.saidaonline.com/en/newsgfx/obese%20child-saidaonline.jpg

Young sex=

Different child hood representations

Firstly their is the view of children being inocent, vunarable and kind of something that needs to be cherished 'childhood is being lost'

Next there is the increasingly popular view that children are Yobs and viloent hoodies.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1173948/Lord-Of-The-Flies-savages-Gang-children-tortured-teenager-dumping-shallow-grave.html - 04/05/09

The link above is good article that explores both these views. There is the youths who are potrayed as animals, as they carried out the attack on the teenager. The teenager is put across as being very vunarable, his mother even sdmits to 'wrapping him up in cotton wool' however this may have been because he had a mental problem.

Next there is the view of 'obese' children who will only eat junk food and watch to much television/ play computer games.

There are accedemic children who will do exactly what their parents tell them and do well at school.

Arthur

Arthur will be a good text to use because this is a programme actually aimed at children. The child representations in this are all quite similar, all the children are quite academic, they go to school, the like sport etc there kind of a stereotype of what children should be like. Then there is the stereotypical annoying little sister and the family who are almost perfect with not any worrys. The programme kind of sets a schema of what life should be like to little children.

Tv Programmes to look at representations of children in media

Firstly i would like to use The Simpsons. Mainly because there is Bart simpson who is supposed to represent a typical young boy of that age who is quite naughty. Then there is Lisa who is a typical stereotype of a girl here age who is doing well at school. The simpsons is also a good text to use as it is partly aimed at children and younger audiences as well as apeeling to older audiences and adults. Finally there is the representation of family and each episode always ending on a happy note with the family being united whatever happend.

Another programme I am going to look at is Eastenders because this is a soap operar that is supposed to in some way represent real life going ons. There are several different representations of different children in this for example there is Jay whos dad died and is portrayed as a typical YOB. He also made friends with another youth who happend to be a prostitute. Now the Programme represents the prostitue as a bas character in the eyes of the older generations below is a video of her not getting served in a shop because of her occupation. The video also shows that although Jay does have a Yobbish side he also has a caring side.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLeN6bHSLr4

Children and the media - your first ideas

I like the idea of exploring the representation of children but NOT whether they are "accurately" represented. All media is a representation made according to the choices/ideology of the representer, and the "real" is never present in that, so it is best to explore the range of representations without referring to how "accurate" they are. Apart from EastEnders what texts will you use? (Children's ads are good, for example). And what might you do for audience research? Do you have access to some children who you could ask about their views?
Sean