List: Children and Media Violence - Sexuality - Sexual Icons - TV

From:
So Sexy, So Soon
Dianne Levin, Ph.D. and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D

List of sexy icons and communication channels for children

Television:
Bratz Dolls, Cartoons, Movies
Pro-wrestling Girls
PowerPuff Girls
TV in the bedroom
70% of TV for teens has sexual content
2,000 Sex Acts/Year - Average teen sees on TV
Disney Channel
Cable Television

Music:

Plenty of sex for children and teens on MTV, VHS, BET and other cable stations, and of course, YouTube, like this Rihanna pop- R & B Rihanna, Paranoid music video. About 1/3 of music videos exploit sex and 70% have some sexual imagery.

photo: http://www.blog.peacemagazine.com/

Rihanna, R & B sensation, her concerts and music videos directed mostly to young teens, plenty of pre-teen also view. The title of her album "Good Girls Gone Bad," just about sums up the theme. MTV, BET, from cable-TV, and YouTube videos use sex to attract viewers and exploit everything from lesbianism to flirting with beastiality as the hook. Many music videos might be described as, "artistically directed soft-porn." Lady Gaga's Poker Face video, is like being party to an orgy, and verifies the truth in the statement, "pornography has gone mainstream."

MTV & Music Videos - Cable/Satellite TV and Music

Britney Spears caters to the musical passions of 4 year olds to tweens and young teens. Her juiced-up music is sexual beyond Donna Summes groundbreaking, Love to Love you Baby disco hit in the 1970s. Spears' version of Satisfaction similarly is -orgasmic- as was Summer's previous hit where she simulated orgasm over 30 times.

Disney, Mickey Mouse club star Britney Spears' first album was a bridge for child sex exploitation, with Spears dressed sexually with a sexy school dress and lollipop. She makes the top of the list in Levin's "Too Sexy, Too Soon.

Britney Spears (Disney)

High School Musical (Disney)

High School Musical is described as a

Ashley Tisdale from High School Musical ventures beyond the Disney structure in this sexy music video for the hit song, He Said, She Said. "What is that little girl watching?" I wrote in my journal, watching a 6 year old on the Internet, YouTube, at the public library. "Is it some pornographic thing? Where's the mother? How would a mother allow her 6 year old to watch a video like that unattended?" It was Ashley Tisdale, that explained it.

High School Musical Vanessa Hudgens is spoken of by 3rd graders in lowered voices, concerning the pornographic pictures they have seen on the Internet which she had made (and gotten into trouble for). Dianne Levin, Ph.D. describes High School Musical as a sort of bridge by which children can go on to more advanced sexually oriented media. Tisdale stars in a new R-rated movie that is clearly not for children, but, which, no doubt, many children will see, because it comes from a source from which they have become accustomed and come to trust.

Spice Girls (Let me be your lover)
[Today's Disney Cheetah Girls] (Disney)
Christian Agueleira
L'il Kim
50 Cent (Gantsta rapper) - P.I.M.P.
Justin Timberlake - SexyBack
Eminem

Magazines and Icons
Barbie

Barbie Dolls have become more decidedly sexy, with the new Barbie Dolls Lingerie version.

Levin has a hard time understanding the new Barbie Dolls lingerie version for children. Perfectly sculpted carved sexy bodies from get-go, Barbie Dolls have always been something of a controversy. Do they contribute to some girls development of anorexia? Do they pose another impossible iconized image for girls to live up to? Many believe so.

Lingerie Barbie
My Scene Barbie
CosmoGirl [magazine]
Sports illustrated Swimsuit issue
Shirts for kids with slogans - I'm Hot - Juicy, slogans across rear end, etc.

Video Games
Video games in the bedroom
PG-13 spin off video games for 10 year olds and younger
Hasbro's DreamLife TV Video Game

Movies
American Pie Movie for teens - 1999 - About desperately seeking to lose one's virginity.

Internet
12% of all websites are pornography
25% of all web-searches are pornography
Webkinz

Icon Violence For Kids:
Grand Theft Auto (Sex and Violence)
GI Jo

Violence, profanity, and yes, sex, mark this movie for children, which has been marketed to preschoolers.

Transformers is an example of intense violence marketed to preschool and other young children.

[Pro-wrestling]
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles
Star Wars

Things which Frighten Children - Sources of Violence for Children -
from book: Mommy, I'm scared: how TV and movies frighten children and what parents can do about it. by Joanne Cantor, Ph.D., professor of communication at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Overall Effects over time:
Desensitization to violence and others? suffering.
Imitation of violence/violent acts.

Movies:

What most children will see:

The X-Files
"A woman parks her car in a dark garage, she sees a footprint in snow outside, she takes a garden tool off the wall, a man lunges toward her, and she slashes his face with the tool (we see bloody gashes and the man screams); then she runs and another man chases and tackles her. A man places a dead body on a chopping block and we see him raise an ax over it and then hear a thump when the ax comes down; we see a pile of what looks like severed limbs to the side. A sedated man is placed on a chopping block, an ax is raised over him and the man holding the ax is struck hard from behind and he falls to the ground unconscious. A man begins to cut along a woman's neck (we see a bloody cut) planning to sever her head but he is interrupted. We see a severed head with tubes that pump blood through it and we see the eyes blink..."
The X-Files I Want to Believe, 2008.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443701/parentalguide

Jaws
The Day After (1983)
The Incredible Hulk
Batman
Goosebumps
E.T.
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho
When a Stranger Calls (1979, 2006)
Piranha (movie)

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

The Wizard of Oz has been described by child psychiatrist Peter Neurauer, as the potentially most firightening and confusing movie for children, especially for those without strong emotional attachents.

Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Jurassic Park
James Bond movies
Dumbo (1941, Disney)

Sleeping Beauty (1959, Disney)

Are Disney movies frightening for children? Many are. Scenes in Disney's Sleeping Beauty are both intense, violent and frightening for children.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937, Disney)

Disney's first feature full-length movie for children Snow White, was both pure and virgnally beautiful and purely evil, in its contrasting characterization of these fairy tale contrasting characters.

The sharp dichotomy between purity and pure evil is a recurring theme in Disney movies for children. Fouts and Lawson (Calgary University) feel that this stereotyping can cause children to view others as being all-good or all-evil. Lawson also believes that Disney movies might contribute to a child's fear and misconception of mental illness, with scores of references to "mad," "crazy," lunatic," etc. in their most widely known children's movies.

Alice in Wonderland (Disney) (1951)

Disney's 2nd flick was a horror spoof of dancing skeletons. He never lost his flair for horror, and most of his movies for children incorporate scenes of terror, fright, panic, and seperation anxiety. Beauty and the Beast has the most number of 'demonizing' references, as described by Fout and Lawson of Calgary University, Canada.

Photo: www.fanpop.com

Beauty and the Beast (Disney)
Peter Pan (1953, Disney)
Bambi (1942, Disney)
"it's better to wait" - until children are older - "for this movie"
Charlotte's Web (some children were scared from)
Captain Kangaroo (some children were scared from)
[Chucky Cheese-some children are scared from]
Ghostbusters
Kindergarten Cop
Creature from the Black Lagoon
The Blob (horror movie)
My Girl (movie)
Bonnie and Clyde (intense-1960s)
The Wild Bunch (intense -1960s)

What about 1/2-3/4 of children will see:
Natural Born Killers
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Creepshow 2
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
The Exorcist
Poltergiest
Silence of the Lambs
Friday the 13th
The Amityville Horror
Halloween (movie)

Television:
What most children will see:
The television news (when reality is a nightmare) - foreign wars and famine examples: Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda [Afghanistan, Iraq] - murder of JonBonet Ramsey - kidnapping - rapes - violence
The X-Files
Star Trek
Sci-Fi Channel (cable)
Scooby Doo
"The Count" on Sesame Street
Rescue 911
Cops (Song: Bad Boys - Bad Boys Whatcha gonna do, watcha gonna do when they come for you?)
Unsolved Mysteries
Little House on the Prairie (judged the most frightening TV program of its day for children).
Michael Jackson's Thriller
Hunter (TV show)
Beverly Hills 90210

What about 1/2-3/4 of children will see:
Creepshow
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
The Burning Bed (TV movie)

Books
Goosebumps

Things for which children need an explanation:
Movie: The Elephant Man
Scarlet O'Hara - Gone with the Wind - explanation on the cold-hearted yet beautiful character

This is not an exhaustive list, but a gives a general idea of the type of things that can effect young children, including their emotional and psychological development. For some children (and many teens and adults) these can be contributing factors in depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, even eating disorders, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, autism, most other disorders.

Study: Objective To test the hypothesis that audible television is associated with decreased parent and child interactions.

One clinical study was designed to determine the impact of television on young children with respect to children's language ability. While one might think that the viewing of television would increase a child's ability to understand and speak audible language, the study actually found that for every additional hour that a child was exposed to television, there was a decrease in 770 words (7%) that the child heard from an adult during a recorded session, as well as a reeducation in the number and length of sounds and spoken words by the child with the adult.

Audible Television and Decreased Adult Words, Infant Vocalizations, and Conversational Turns - A Population-Based Study, Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH; Jill Gilkerson, PhD; Jeffrey A. Richards, MA; Frederick J. Zimmerman, PhD; Michelle M. Garrison, PhD; Dongxin Xu, PhD; Sharmistha Gray, PhD; Umit Yapanel, PhD. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2009;163(6):554-558.

What parents can do:
1. Don't emphasize television and movies as a way of life and of entertaining children.
2. Provide fun activities and recreation for children:

photo: Microsoft, cannot be reproduced.

Art

Piano lessons

Field Trips

Going to the Park

Hiking/Camping

3. Realize that children seen "things" on TV "as in sex and violence- when parents aren't at home, or aren't supervising.
4. Use parental controls to block PG-13, R-rated and X-rated context from TV.
5. For younger children and sensitive children, block PG content.
6. Don't assume that because it's rated G it will be suitable for your children. Many G-rated movies are emotionally heart-wrenching for children or have intense of frightening scenes.