Review of Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood by Troy Belford. Originally published at the Anthropology Review Database: http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi? keycode=3667 Barbaro, Adriana & Jeremy Earp 2008 Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood. Northampton, MA : Media Education Foundation. Notes: DVD, 67 minutes Reviewed 09 Oct 2010 by: Troy Belford <troy.belford@gmail.com> Beloit WI Medium: Film/Video Subject Child consumers - United States Keywords: Advertising and children - United States Marketing research - United States ABSTRACT: “Consuming Kids” takes a serious and critical approach to the use of marketing on child audiences. The focus of the documentary is how children receive and are influenced by marketing, but ultimately the film makes an argument about how adults are interacting (and competing) with that marketing through their children. The film advocates regulation of marketing that is produced with an audience of children as a target. The central argument of public safety is presented as the justification for proposed market reform in this area. The film takes a historical opening, beginning with some of the advertising regulation that was adopted in the United States in the 1970s to limit the effects of television ads on young children. The main thrust of this regulation was advertisements for cereals with a high sugar content. The creators of the documentary place the historical shift that made advertising to young consumers possible, on the level of intensity we think of today, in the deregulation during the Reagan presidency that allowed the practice of specially targeted advertising towards children. That lack of regulation is presented as the foundation on which the marketing industry was allowed to operate in such a hyper-kinetic, predatory and multimedia model. The proliferation of that advertising made possible the toy and television show phenomenon, where a half hour cartoon was created in order to be a vehicle for the merchandising of the characters. Examples include He-Man, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Mask, etc. The film does lose some details in a generalization of the market. The film presents The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as an example of a commercial vehicle created as a multimedia licensing franchise in the same way in which He-Man and the other examples were created. The problem is that The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were not created out of a desire to form a franchise but as a small independent black and white comic book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. The book was a tribute to and parody of the comic publishing zeitgeist of the mid-1980s. It took the gritty realism of Frank Miller's contributions to the Marvel comic Daredevil and presented them with central protagonists that were essentially funny animals, yet another reference to earlier comic publishing trends of the 1950s and 1960s. The black and white comic was dark and violent, with the main enemy killed by a thermite grenade in the first issue. This death was depicted realistically, with chunks of flesh being the result of the explosion. The audience for the Turtles comic was limited to older, more mature collectors who saw such comics as a form of popular literature in most cases. Eastman and Laird then licensed the characters to several companies where they were targeted towards children by introducing pizza and making one of the characters a “surfer dude,” a common trope of the 1980s. It was only at this point where they altered to the point of being content oriented towards children. The film presents the characters in a montage, showing the Eastman and Laird comic cover and implying they were spin-offs of the youth market creations. Though the Eastman and Laird comics were never nearly as popular as the licensed youth market image of the Turtles they continued to publish their comics with more mature themes while the cartoon, toys and films capitalized on the youth market. In 2009 The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as an intellectual property, was bought by Nickelodeon, which is in turn owned by the media conglomerate known as Viacom. Some might know Viacom as the owner of MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, and numerous other basic cable channels. This lengthy digression points out one simplification of a media property that I found to be a troubling aspect of the film in general. While we cannot deny that there is a commercial motivation behind the creation of any mass media property that is ultimately subject to licensing, we also have to account for the artistic input that goes into the creation of the media content. This means we must analyze the visual, narrative, and social aspects of the creation as an emergent form of popular culture. This film has no interest in that analysis, instead depicting the creative media as the motivation to sell products. I find such a view of popular culture to be a cynical place to begin any analysis. The Harry Potter phenomenon, a much more complex and uncomfortable licensing franchise for intellectuals to critique because it comes from a recognized literary source as opposed to the oft maligned television, is curiously absent. The idea that books can be the source of licensing and feed into the franchise is an absent element of the documentary and might be an important clue into what bias might be behind the comments of the commentators. This film does make observations about how consumerism in the United States has moved from marketing products based on actual features to be conveyed by advertising to the practice of marketing social meaning of products. Attaching social meanings to marketed products is an old, old practice that a basic book in advertising, such as Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders (1957), would describe. The argument of the increased selfishness and shallowness of youth culture might be valid. The film chooses to base this in a gender binary, presenting girls’ behavior as an acquisition-based trend that has driven younger and younger girls to adopt the dress, mannerisms, and vocabulary (not necessarily with the mature understanding) of much older people. Conversely, it presents young boys as consumers of violence through films and video games. A montage of video game violence shows several instances of violence found in game play and ends, predictably, with a cut scene from the incredulously violent Manhunt video games. For those who are not familiar with the game, the Manhunt game and its sequel are famous for their high levels of violence and gore, as well as for their snuff film quality of game play. These games seemed to have been produced as a counter protest by game developers against the violence in video game mobilizations of parents’ groups in the early and middle 2000s. A similar trend can also be seen in the number of rock, rap, and heavy metal counter protest songs penned around 1986 Parents Music Resource Committee (PMRC) attempts to censor and ban popular music which contained “questionable” lyrics. While the issue of violence in video games is of concern when we speak about an 8 year old, it should not be an issue that a video game development company creates something that is intended for adults. Not all video games are played by 8 year old children, and they should not be playing Manhunt. I would not show an 8 year old child the torture scene from the 1976 movie Dustin Hoffman Marathon Man, but they could see it on cable television without my control. The issue of film ratings is explored, arguing that they are too lenient with the PG- 13 rating. Many film creators have argued that the opposite is true, that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) makes unnecessary cuts by giving films an NC-17 rating which requires them to cut sex scenes, profanity, and homoerotic content in order to allow the films to receive an R rating and be shown in the majority of the nation's theaters. These theaters will only show R rated films, not NC-17 rated films. As a result the rating of a movie will be a contractual obligation of many films, meaning that they must deliver an R rated film. This is true of PG-13 films as well. Studios shoot a movie that should be an R rated movie and make edits that will allow it to pass as a PG-13 film. This will increase box office revenue since young people are more likely to see it, or at least more likely to buy tickets to it and try to sneak into the R rated film they want to see. For those interested in the MPAA and the film rating system I would recommend viewing the wonderfully insightful 2006 documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated.” This film also presents an astute argument about how the turning away from “commercial clutter” towards educationally produced media such as Baby Einstein is just not a good alternative. Educational products are presented as another “scam” (the film's words, not mine) and goes on to cite studies that say there is no real evidence that educational media teaches a child anything; in fact the viewing of any media in the first 2 years of life might lead to a lack of focus, learning disabilities, and cognitive difficulties. The deprivation of imagination, the constant entertainment through gadgets, the structuring of play and the isolation experienced through media immersion might be a real barrier to productive social interaction. The documentary does not ask the follow up question about whether that will mean anything when everyone is that way, but it does make a very fitting closing remark about what it means when children cannot pretend to play Harry Potter without an official toy set. That might be one of the most alarming social trends, the lack of imagination applied to the process of play. This is also the only time in the whole film that the mega franchise of Harry Potter is mentioned. The documentary also failed to address the larger issue of how access to such desirable features as Sponge-Bob Squarepants-shaped macaroni and cheese might have an added dimension of self-esteem to the child from the household that can afford to indulge in it. The larger issue of the advertised brand name, versus the unadvertised generic, might be a greater structural issue that is not limited to children. To be an effective consumer in the United States a child must learn to weigh perceived benefits of a product against real benefits, an ability that I believe many adults are lacking, and that is the crucial factor which needs to be focused on and not the limitations of marketers. The film addresses the final question of “Isn't this up to the parents?” by saying that the parent cannot maintain the control to monitor their child to the level that is necessary to prevent the attendant outcomes of indiscriminate media targeting. This media targeting is attributed in the final argument of the film as being the causation of childhood obesity, depression, diabetes, etc. One of the pundits compares the movement towards regulation of advertising to children to the civil rights movement. I am not inclined to think this is so, but this film review can only raise attention to the issue of whether legislation is a viable solution to many of the social problems the film addresses. My opinion, for transparency's sake, is that the regulation of content should not be the role of the government. That being said, the vertical integration that allows the studio that makes the film and the television studio to make the show to own the station that broadcasts the show and the publisher that prints the book, as well as the record label that releases the album and the media outlets that promote it, should not allow a single diversified media corporation. Deregulation has greatly affected the FCC by changing its charter to police licensing and monopolistic practices to a concentration based on content management in terms of “decency,” an ill-defined legal term subject to local standards. Only one of the pundits actually advocates the idea of children gaining media literacy and learning how to understand the manipulations that all media make. Activism, resistance, advocacy, legislation, etc.-- these are all seen as ways in which the various interviewees offer the solutions of the social problems that arise with media advertising aimed toward children. Only one interviewee took issue with the denial of advocacy to the child and saw the solution of the issue as a pragmatic education of the child and not an issue of legislative public safety. One of the extras on the DVD is a short “educational” film excerpt that is reminiscent of religious-based anti-heavy metal rhetoric from the 1980s that decries the social value of media by choosing only the most violent scenes from the most violent examples and setting them into a quick cut montage. This is a commonly used but deceptive technique that advocates a “harmful matter” opinion about certain kinds of popular culture by placing dramatic tension and conflict based in violence out of context in a mash up set to some frenetic music. The same could be done with Shakespeare plays in order to demonstrate the mindless violence that is inherent in them (though usually off stage) regardless of the narrative structure. I find myself taking issue with the statements of many of these educators, particularly those who see marketing research done with children as equivalent to pedophilia because it speaks highly of a fear of the new media and a fear for the young. Marketers help move product in a capitalistic system, but they also produce research that is valuable to anthropology, provided it is published and not proprietary. There are obvious issues between the ethically informed observations of the ethnographer and the applied ethnographic skills of the marketer. The two positions are probably closer to one another than we would like to admit, but the value of “voyeuristic” research (as the film constructs such activities) is scientifically valuable and important. It is in the applications, the refinement of strategies, that the marketer uses where we find the ethical values displaced for moral judgments that are not valued by the profession of the marketer in the same way that they are by the academic anthropologist, sociologist, psychologist and other researchers. The frightening truth is that any published research can be misused. Limiting research topics to things that cannot be exploited narrows the field of inquiry in such a way that much valuable research, well within ethical standards, cannot be practiced for fear of providing materials that would allow a population to be exploited. To submit to such a limiting view of ethnographic observation is to accept paralysis in the face of an ever changing world. “Consuming Kids” is a social action film. Films distributed by the Media Educational Foundation are excellent productions but tend towards a “preachy” attitude towards their subject that is at times simplistic and often promotes what is usually justified and agreeable information in such a heavy handed manner that it often loses its broader communicative aspects. It is a good film, thought provoking and useful in the commitment to media literacy that the film makers are representing. It is well edited, despite some of the reductionism that it applies to youth culture, aided by the frequent use of the advertising being discussed. Unfortunately, I also think it promotes a passive consumer model that provides little in the way of an alternative than to just cut children off from the things of youth culture. While parents might view youth culture as unnecessary, the child's peer group does not, and there is a real role that parents must take in the compromises between peer approval and parental authority. For those interested in how consumer models reflect class, Allison Pugh (2009) has demonstrated that there is a class division between lower class and middle class parents in regard to how they guide the consumption of their children. Lower class parents tend to emphasize that they indulged their children in the more expensive video games, toys, fashion etc. while middle class parents tended toward expressing how they denied certain things to their children. The social values of having these things in a more economically depressed peer group might be a real communication of love in this social relationship, not the perceived indulgence of the nag factor that this documentary seems to construct such indulgences as. I would recommend pairing her work with this film if used in a curriculum. Despite my disagreements with the film's overall tone and message I cannot deny that it is incredibly stimulating towards discussion. It would be very useful in courses which deal with popular culture in the United States, child psychology, business, and communications. If shown to classes the instructor should reserve plenty of time for lively discussion because it will be bound to follow. I highly admire that quality of “Consuming Kids,” and it is based on this ability to stimulate debate that I recommend the film. References cited: Packard, Vance. 1957 The Hidden Persuaders. New York: D. McKay Co. Pugh, Allison J. 2009 Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.