Family Media Influence

One of the largest and most intricate form of media is children’s, especially television. Family media has existed since the availability of things like comics and radio narratives however the introduction of the television set has progressed into a more niche form of family media in children’s television. It is important to understand that since television has become a household staple, children’s television is now ubiquitous in youth culture - in some way or form, a child will know of television programming targeted at them. We know that, today specifically,
“98% of [American] homes have a Television set” (Hodge and Tripp), and US Census results concluded there were about 73.6 million children in the United States in 2015, with estimates …show more content…
Gender presentation was equal between men and women, however their contributions and role within the show was not, and race was very narrow through presentation. Class was ambiguous, however their simple narrative lacked for much development of their individual character. From a more psychological perspective, Patti M. Valkenburg states “children are active in the that they interpret media in their own way...they can also be more influenced if they actively open up to certain influences” in her book Children 's Responses to the Screen. In other words when a child is open to learning from a source of media, they will actively interpret what is in front of them. So in terms of gender, despite an equal representation of humans, the original show greatly imparted the idea of femininity and being physically weak in the show. Daphne, one of the main characters, is seen as a token damsel. What she lacks in actual substance of character she makes up for accidentally triggering catalysts for the plot. Velma, the other main female, on the other hand is remarkably intelligent but is incapable of independence as seen when she loses her glasses and often initiates an unfortunate run-in with the ‘monster’. This supports the idea of women always being a support-role to stronger male characters and enforcing the value of fragility that accompanied the …show more content…
Daphne’s family is clearly rich and oftentimes she uses her wealth to push certain plotlines along. Velma’s family is all very smart and often have impressive career choices, however wealth and money is clearly less than Daphne’s case. Fred’s family is much smaller than the former’s and his parents are presented as touristy-types when they accompanied their son on a mystery (seen in the movie ‘Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy!’). They represent an even lower class than Velma and Daphne. And in the case of Shaggy, his family has been presented as southern-based, rural-life people. They’re mostly all very humble when it comes to wealth and as such he represents the lower class. One needs to speculate if the four classes being represented through friends supposed to quell societal disagreements between classes, or support the broad demographics of the show in their representation of more developed characters. The influence on children could be positive in an attempt to provide normalizing the socialization between classes and friendships as well. All of these new developments allow for larger arcs in character building, such as relationship between characters or stories of their past/families. The narrative is still mostly standalone, but more substance is added besides solving