Imitation

I went out for lunch yesterday with my lovely boyfriend, who also works in the industry, and we got into a discussion about the importance of behavior modeled in children's media. (Yes, we are both mega dorks. This is old news.)

As we conversed and got over initial comments that precede these discussions such as “Darwin’s Theory”, “Need for more co-viewing opportunities” and “Why am I dating a dork? Oh because I am one as well!” we got into it.

Say there was a character hiding in a box. All signs would point to this being, uh, a bad idea to model. Here’s where our conversation got interesting.

Where do you draw the line at modeling behaviour in children’s media?

It all relates back to Social Cognitive Theory (psych 101 anybody?) which states that portions of a person’s knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing a person in various social contexts.

Basically, some kids copy what they see on a screen because it’s something new and they’re learning.

Obviously you should aim to model good behaviour all the time, but for a writer/creator of the stuff, it gets a bit hard sometimes to stay completely squeaky clean. Say your character makes a pie accidentally too big- that’s not good behaviour to model (wasting food, promoting over-eating) but it’s FUNNY! Without risks in the story content of your media product it gets harder to create scenarios that engage, delight and add some drama to a child’s media menu!

The writer in me always wants to raise the bar all the time, make the situation harder and harder for the protagonist to get out of, but sometimes raising the bar means modeling behaviour that isn't always desirable... like a flatulence problem.

For me, I draw the line at safety. Hiding in a box (or a clothes dryer, as I reluctantly admit to have done upon seeing a similar hiding place on TV when I was little) could potentially harm a child’s safety, so that's a big giant no-go. Making a giant pie, while wasteful, doesn’t immediately harm a child’s safety (although I guess you could make a case for long term exposure of giant pies = obesity), but even still that’s future consequence instead of immediate that a parent can help interject.

It’s funny to look back and think of all the things I did model from the media.

- I once tried to cook cheese on my slide in my backyard because I saw someone fry an egg on the sidewalk (the cheese just slid down my slide and was gross)

- Another time I tried to get the neighbourhood kids to re-create that slide thing at the end of Canadain Sesame Street- but only the snowy bobsled version

- And of course I’d also have to defend myself and others from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle imitators while en route to school.

More than anything, I loved to take flying leaps off our retaining walls holding on to an umbrella, a la Mary Poppins. Not the safest idea ever.

I wonder if Mary Poppins was being made today if people such as producers, writers, executive producers, broadcasters and studio heads would think it was such a great idea to make her fly with an umbrella like that, or would that idea get canned on presentation? I wonder what ideas produced long ago are being squelched now because they pose a risk? Where do children's industry minds draw the line at imitative behaviour in children's media?

At any rate, I'm glad that we as media providers for children are aware of the risks of imitation. In just my initial research on this, I discovered countless studies that definitely proved that there was a link in children between seeing and doing. Hopefully we'll continue to strive for a balance in what to cut and what to keep in order to always have a good story.