Hill 1

Forrest Hill Dr. Jordan ENGL 1101 LCR 10/16/13 Essay 1

A school bus slows to a stop in front of a neighborhood as children pour out onto the street. Excitement follows the scampering children down the street as they bolt into their homes, anticipating the start of their favorite cartoons. These cartoons are specifically placed by network executives in these timeslots to target these specific kids. Shows like Jessie and Liv and Maddie target blossoming young girls while Teen Titans, Mad, and Adventure Time target budding young boys.(Most) parents take great care in what these sprouting sponges soak up, so they watch their childrens favorite shows with a hawk eye; however, the gaps in between the show fall through the cracks of inspection. When the scope of your interest are widened, curious motifs appear in these children commercials. Although gender roles are promoted in most girl commercials, telling them to aspire to be wives, mothers, and homemakers, what is more disturbing is the constant theme of violence in commercials targeted towards boys aged 5-15.take for instance the Blasterpro commercial, like most Supersoaker commercials that plague cartoon network, is more similar to a scene from Bourne Identity than a toy commercial. It is a barrage of cut scenes showing kids getting blasted off their feet while metal guitar solos are going off in the background. While older adult commercials (especially during a football game or UFC event) can be violent, it is the frequency at which they happen on kids cannels, that raises concern. These commercials beg important questions about why this is the chosen strategy towards young boys. What are the adverse effects of violent marketing on young minds? How can we get mad at others for not walking on water when we were the ones helping submerge them in violence as children?

Hill 2 The violent nature of commercials targeting boys aged 5-15 suggests that boys are naturally violent. Toy commercials, by asserting this belief, force children into gender roles. Take for instance two recent Lego commercials. One commercial, Lego Friends,opens with two young girls playing with Lego versions of themselves that enjoy shopping, homemaking, and cooking. The girls drive the Jeep all the way to the salon where they and their cute puppy receive their new hairdos. Next they travel to the party where all their friends decorate the Lego Friends Home. Its frightening that no one appears to care that Lego made just another toy enforcing the status quo that girls should be Susy Homemakers. However, what is more frightening is the Lego commercials targeting boys. LegosNinjago starts with a snake sneaking up on a ninja. The snake attacks as the ninja counters with its ninjitsu. The battle continues for a few seconds before the ninja pulls out his swords and slices through the evil snake. Countless commercials targeted toward boys contain similar acts of violence such as Lego Star Wars, Ninjago, Batman, Ect. A motif the destruction and smashing of logos appears in the previously mentioned Lego commercials, whereas in the Friends commercial there was only building and construction of houses and salons. While not solely enforcing gender roles companies like Lego have aided in telling children what is appropriate of a boy and woman and should be held accountable for telling some children to be violent instead of telling all children to be peaceful. Arguably the biggest change in twenty first century daily life as compared to the previous century is the emergence and saturation of mass media. With this growing environment television is gaining a central role in our daily lives. Being submerged in the lonely environment of mass media has had great influence on the psyches of some individuals so much so that when a shooting happens by a youth one of the first questions raised is what where his media influences? Notice I said his thats because in the last 20 years 62 mass murders have happened and only one has been perpetrated by a female. So why, in an age where killing a human being is as easy as squeezing a trigger, are the gender ratio of mass murders so skewed? Because, like an archaic warrior society, from birth males are being

Hill 3 told violence is ok and natural while females are being shielded from it. The violent nature of commercials targeting young males is helping promote an ideal which suggests that violence is condonable in the psyches of harmless children who then mature into dangerous adults. Now in no way am I saying that these commercials are the sole reason for the aurora theater shooting or sandy hill shooting, but they where a common influence in the young lives of these future pseudocommandos. In 1967 Bonny and Clide premiered and was met with a polarizing crowd. Many loved it and that can be seen by the fact that its still considered an American classic; however, the film stirred up controversy for being far too violent. When directors such as Tarinteno release gore films like Django and Kill Bill, which makes Bonney and Clide look like a romantic comedy, they are met with praise and talks of an Oscar. Thats insane how quickly a progressive nation devolved culturally in under half a century. Like most cultural changes, this devolution is due to many sources one of which is television commercials. The violent nature of commercials targeting boys aged 5-15 suggests that corporations are willing to expose children to acts of violence to increase sales. This is important because it suggest that corporations are partially responsible for the increasingly violent mainstream culture thats arisen in the last 40 years. Basic economics teaches that in the free market items dont sell without a demand for them and I believe by targeting boys with progressively more violent ads corporations have created a demand for violence in the mainstream American culture. Take for instance video games. The first mass selling games where puzzle games and where advertised as such. The next games to sell extremely well was slightly more violent games like Mario, which its first ad depicted the user jumping on a few Goombas and complete a level. Finally today you have games like Battlefield 4 where the ads are of kids killing other users and then trash talking them. Most advertisements and the companies that produce them are simply attempting to increase sales and in a Machiavellian fashion they will do so by any means. Even if those means are by forcing

Hill 4 kids into gender roles, submerging selected kids in violent advertisement with disregard to future effects, and manipulating the cultural demands to produce an environment more prone to cause sells. So in the future when your child burst into your home to watch TV be wary of what shows they watch and what ads come in between those shows.