The questions of race and ethnicity have been very popular in the world for decades. The process of globalization has launched a much wider range of interactions between people of different cultures. The interest in traveling rose, huge waves of immigration started all over the world. Most of the countries nowadays have very diverse societies, including multiple ethnical groups and representatives of many cultures.
Even though the question of racism in the modern world is not as big as it used to be, even though the modern society has reached certain progress moving towards complete racial equality, there are still several issues that create a lot of discomfort for the people of different ethnicities.
For our society to develop and for future improvement in this area, modern people need to pay a lot of attention to the children’s education in the field of ethical and racial diversity. Television plays an enormous role in the process of forming people’s opinions; it creates a serious impact on the way we percept the world around, different events, different individuals, and situations. Television has been proved to influence children’s minds immensely.
This is why these days a lot of attention is being paid to what kind of information the children can access on TV, what kind of movies, shows and cartoons they watch and what kind of impact they may create on the children’s ways of thinking and mentality.
Lustig and Koester explore the question of impersonal communication across cultures of the world. One of the most important issues highlighted in their work called “Intercultural Competence” is the question of the way the mass media programs reflect cultures and their members (Lustig & Koester, 2009).
To find out what kind of influences and ideas the mass media may create on the minds of adolescents and children, I have viewed several cartoons made in different countries, but aired in English and explored the attitude towards race and ethnicity in the storylines of these cartoons.
For this work, I have selected three different shows, they are “A. T. O. M.: Alpha Teens on Machines”, “What’s with Andy?” and “Hey, Arnold.” All of these cartoons are relatively not new; they were produced and aired in the mid-nineties – early two thousand.
Their original channels are Jetix, Nickelodeon, Teletoon, and Disney XD. Watching the cartoons, I have noticed that the number of characters representing various ethnicities in them is mainly very small. Among the groups of main characters that appear in every episode, there are only a few people of color. “What’s with Andy” has only one Afro-American character.
The situation is the same in “Hey, Arnold.” As for “A.T.O. M.”, this show has successfully introduced characters of several different ethnicities to the group of main heroes; people of African, Asian and Latin origin are portrayed in the series.
None of the cartoons I have watched for this work feature a person of ethnical minority as the main character. In all of the cartoons, the characters of African, Asian, or Latin origin are secondary. In “What’s with Andy?” an African-American boy, Danny Pickett, is Andy’s best friend, but practically he is only needed to bring out Andy’s personality and provide someone for Andy to discuss his plans with.
In “Hey, Arnold,” the situation is the same, Gerald the African-American boy is Arnold’s best friend. This show also includes characters of Jewish, Japanese, and Hispanic origins. It is noticeable that the creators of “Hey, Arnold” attempted to show the modern society in its diversity, they featured characters coming from different parts of America, different health and psychological conditions, various types of looks and personalities.
Arnold is the kind of character any parent would want their child to be friends with (Hey, Arnold, 2014). “A.T.O.M.” also has heroes of different ethnicities, yet all of the representatives of racial minorities are secondary characters.
The people of color in all of these shows do not tend to act in very distinct stereotypical ways, but there are personality traits that can be counted as prejudices about people of these races.
For example, African-Americans are mostly portrayed as sporty, athletic or muscular guys, Hispanics are seen as early maturing, and emotional people and Asian characters mostly are depicted as smart and good at learning, computer geniuses. All of the ethnical minorities are portrayed positively.
Overall, to my mind, the cartoons I have watched for this paper attempt to reflect the diversity of the society we live in, yet they do unconsciously communicate some of the stereotypes about racial minorities. These stereotypes are mostly positive, yet they might create a generalizing pattern in the minds of the children, who watch many cartoons and will notice the same information being presented to them on the unconscious level.
It is highly important that the creators of cartoons for children try their best to reflect the diversity of the modern world in their shows, because, as Woods explains, we start noticing things when we focus our attention on them (2004). When children watch cartoons, their attention is narrowed down to the story developed in the episode, to the plot and the characters that are used to bring up certain conflicts and explain certain things.
This kind of communication between the children’s minds and the meaning of the cartoons can happen unconsciously; this is why it is so important that the reality of the cartoons is as close to the actual reality of the world children live in. Besides, the child’s self-perception happens partly through the way this child is seen by the people around, especially their peers (Woods, 2004).
Children of various ethnicities watch the same cartoons on television every day, so the ideas and opinions communicated to them in the movies and shows are extremely important, as they form the children’s identities and the way they will be looked at by other children. Cartoons have a lot of power over the forming mindsets of adolescents.
Cartoons may participate in the process of making labels and putting them on people, and once we label someone or something, we start to respond to the reality these labels create rather than to the actual way things are. My findings explain the relationship between the information carried by the cartoons and its reflection in the minds of the audience.
The cartoons have the potential to direct children’s attention to certain ways and shape their identities and perceptions. If the children are given wrong ideas about ethnicity and race this may seriously influence the way they feel about themselves or their classmates and friends, lead to conflicts or misunderstandings, and the modern society spends a lot of effort trying to reduce the number of such misperceptions in our world.
Reference List
Hey, Arnold! (2014). Common Sense Media.
Lustig, M. W. and Koester, J. (2009). Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication across Cultures. Boston, Massachusetts: Allyn & Bacon.
Woods, J. T. (2004). Interpersonal Commuication. Boston, Massachusetts: Centgage Learning.