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Child Abuse is Not Funny & Cartoons Are Violent – December 5, 2010 Do people really believe that changing your Facebook photo will do anything about child abuse? Maybe a few do; most, I’d like to think; aren’t that naïve. Some people are saying that the “campaign” is raising awareness , starting conversations, and providing solace/support to other Facebook users who are currently being abused – and some participants say they are abuse survivors. Awareness is good. But awareness must lead directly to intervention and then, ultimately, to prevention. Beyond the anonymous actions of changing your Facebook picture and donating money (there are some links for that on the group page), doing something about child abuse is not easy because, like true activism, it requires personal action. And courage is required to intervene when a parent is hitting her kid in a parking lot, or to calmly engage with a person who is yelling abusively at a child. It’s all too easy to ignore what goes on behind the closed doors of our neighbors, to tell ourselves that it’s none of our business, that it’s part of their religion. And it gets even harder because the change required to eradicate child abuse is massive. We need to change our institutions – hierarchal school systems where kids have no rights, where it’s okay for teachers to tell kids what to do, threaten and bully them; churches that tell parents they have a duty to spank their children or that ignore sexual abuse by priests. It means making sure all families have enough money to live on, that people with disabilities and various other challenges are respected and helped, when there is help available for anyone who needs to learn better parenting skills. And it means examining the messages we allow our popular culture to give to both adults and children. And that’s where this Facebook cartoon face caper concerns me: Many cartoons – especially the ones from the early days of television in the 50s and 60s – were violent. (I have learned as an adult just how violent, sexist and sometimes racist those cartoons were, because my mother didn’t allow me to watch cartoons as a child.) There is a great deal of research available about violence in children’s programming and subsequent violent behavior in children. But more worrisome in this context is that, aside from the effect of cartoon violence on children’s behavior to their peers, watching funny characters engaged in violence can desensitize children to the consequences of real violence. Researchers at Harvard's School of Public Health studied 74 animated movies made between 1937 and 1999, counting and categorizing the acts of violence, the type (comic or malicious) and the wide variety of weapons used, from Mickey's broom in Fantasia to the swords in Mulan. In a subsequent report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2000, the researchers suggest that a G rating may no longer be sufficient to reflect the content of animated movies. Children who are desensitized to violence have learned that violence is a normal and acceptable way to solve problems or deal with frustrations – and that it can even be fun. Moreover, in the cartoons, victims are unharmed and perpetrators are unpunished. So just imagine that effect of that mindset of a child facing abuse. And, of course, that desensitization will allow them to use violence against their peers and eventually their own children, completing the endless cycle. Instead of using a cartoon character, one Facebook user posted a grainy childhood photo of psychologist, researcher on childhood and abuse, and author Dr. Alice Miller. And, for me, that reinforced the fact that this is not a faceless crime, but one that affects real children. If you’re up for this enormous job of helping the children of our world gain some respect and safety, here are some links that might help.
Posted: 2010/12/05 3:10 PM
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