The myths that bind us

SO, this reading , to me was about class,

• gender roles
• stereotypes
• male representation
• female representation
• Poor representation
• representations of people of color
• Culture
• upbringing

All of these things to me are included in Linda Christensen article are written about. Her article that tells us about how our upbringing on many of the cartoons and movies of our childhood have influenced us into things certain ways and also things of others in predetermined ways.

This article starts of by telling us about how many different media types we receive our information from. They include TV, Magazines, and Comic Strips. These medias are all crucial to us in child hood and into adult life. However, movies and television are so important as children we are influenced, no matter what. The major contributors to this spread of stereotypes is Disney and other animated cartoons according to Christensen. Disney and its perpetuates the cycle of making sure, every one feels they must loom perfect as the article writes, in the Tinkerbell example, perpetuates the cycle, rather disturbingly. One thing i did remember about this, and i do not know if it is mentioned, in the article, is the "Ugly Stepsisters" in Cinderella, were ugly and i believe at least one was large. This perpetuates the cycle that the older you get the more bitter you become, also said by Christensen in the example about Ursala.

When cartoons, especially older ones, are shown they portray other races, not always in a good light. The example in the text, was Popeye, and the story "Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves". The article tells us that the 40 thieves all had the same face, and later in the story began to steal everything, perpetuating a ideas that all people of Middle Easter decent steal and look alike. Even in other cartoons, there are very very rare instances of minorities in the cartoon, and if they do that are defiantly not always in the best light or very stereotypical, there is one cartoon i am thing of...but i cant remember its name...frustrating...anyway.

I have always felt cartoons are not politicaly correct, and i feel for the most part cartoons are not supposed to be, look at family guy for instance, not at all correct, but still funny, and can defiantly give children the wrong impression about many things. However cartoons are an important part of growing up, and i feel it is our job to teach children the correct way of listing, seeing and accepting others and to take stereotypes out of our lives as best we can.