Disney discourse: Domination, Massification,
Commercialization of Kid Culture
Resisting Cultural Colonization
• Can con: the music industry
• The book Industry
• Subsidized national production
• NFB The Sweater:
– Hybridity and multiculturalism
– Play culture and the bond within diversity
– But the fate of hockey? Product on the ice!
Globalization, Immigration, and Social Diversity
• The national cultural curriculum: cultural knowledge as the glue of society =
the cannon and the melting pot/ mosaic/ salad bowl
• The Canadian Broadcast System Mandate: reflecting our lives, informing our
citizens, consolidating our values and telling our stories to each other
Canada as the globalization laboratory?
• Toy industry: name a canadian toy or game?
– Reclaiming community: Parade of the Lost Souls
• Two questions about globalization of children’s marketing
– Homogenization vs. mobility:
• Lemish study
– Hybridity vs. multiculturalism
• Mulan and Bollytoons
Disappearance of the Local
Global Kids Appeal: Hendershot
Sesame-ization (Hendershot)
• Glo-local culture: 50% own production
• Cinar scams
• Canadian Ambivalence: Joe’s rant and Molson Canadian (we are what
you aren’t)
• Are Carebears Canadian?
Beyond McDisnification: Emerging Hybridities --
From Astro boy to Pokemon
Miyazaki’s anime:
hybridity & Japaneseness
(1)Hybridized characters & “Japanese-ness”
– Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
– Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
– Re-introducing Japanese tradition (Japanese-ness)
– De-familiarlization of “Japanese Thing”
• Princess Mononoke (1997)
– Setting: 13-14C Japan
– Characters: Samurai Warriors
Japanese-looking protagonists
– Traditional houses, scenery
(2) Interaction with “other” Asia: implication of representation of “similar
other”
– Geographical proximity, cultural affinity?
– Historical conflicts within Asia
– “Asianism”: strategic auto-Orientalism?
• Experience of shared “Asian modernity”
• Leo Ching’s study of Asian pop culture
(Oshin, Doraemon)
• Lag between Japan and the “other” Asia
“Before the Japanese came into contact with Westerners, they depicted themselves with Asian
features and often smaller than life eyes. After the war however, standards of beauty that
many Japanese aspired to has been those of the West. Girl comics of the post-war began to
depict characters with the round eyes, long leggy look of fashion models of Paris and New
York.”
(Lu 1999 “Anime vs cartoons- A look at cultural identity”)
Rethinking Media’s Role in Consumer Socialization
Children of Progress: the domestic sanctuary?
Little house on the prairies
Children make their own culture but not always in
situations of their own making
• Social Psychologist interested in familial social communications
• Cultural Historian interested in changing Childhoods
• Media Analyst interested in Sedentary Children
• Parent
Reading the Lonely Crowd: historical changes in the
agencies of socialization
The Paradox of Consumer Socialization: self expression and self
control
The targeted child:
• lawsuit accusing the marketer and media company of engaging in the unfair and deceptive "marketing
and sale of food of poor nutritional quality" to children under 8 years old.
• Concerns:
– vulnerability
– pester power
Rethinking Consumer Socialization
• Scott Ward: consumer literacy involves children’s acquisition of the
knowledge and skills necessary to be consumers
– Money Literacy
– Shopping Literacy
– Advertising Literacy
– Lifestyle Literacy
– Consumer Identities
The competent child
CONSUMER SOCIALIZATION LITERATURE
John (1999) Research on Consumer Socialization
Developmental stages of consumer literacy
– 1)What is an ad? Age 5-7 recognize form but what about the economics? Eg
tax write offs to tobacco advertisers as business expense
– 2)What is its intent? Age 8 state persuade me to buy but what about brand
strategies and parable of the one way mirror? Ie cool hunting?
Cynical or Savvy
• Yes I do know that. I also knew that, but I don't care. Cause you can't stop us. Kids outnumber population on
earth, ha, ha. No I didn't know that one. You can't control us in our homes with our parents. I will see my
uncle. You know some day kids will RULE, RULE I tell you, and when it happens you will be banished
• I don't think that its ethical that big companies pay actors and other guys to show stuff on their movies. For example, when I
watched Spider-man, when Spiderman just gets his powers he is shooting his webs and he gets a Doctor Pepper ™ back. I
don't think this is right because if I was watching a movie I really liked and then found out it was trying to get me to buy stuff
I would feel cheated. …. in conclusion, the leaders of big companies are morons
Beware the cynical 10 year old
• I’m not lovin it
• Don’t they know that food is bad for you
• Why don’t people eat them -- is it cause they taste so bad?
Families as Primary Agents of Early Consumer
Socialization
• Valkenburg and Cantor - cognitive development in context of social
communication dynamic
– Like learning a language
– The formation of tastes - just say no
– The notion of ownership
– The notion of money (saving and spending)
– The notion of pleasure
– The notion of lifestyle and cultural capital
– The notion of self control and risk managment
Socialization as Negotiation
• Parental provisioning and discretionary consumption.
Four Aspects of Consumer Socialization
• Maturity and Cognitive Development: when do kids acquire the basic levels of
skill?
• Role of the family as primary agents of early socialization
• Role of external influences such as advertising, peers and shop keepers
• Children’s empowerment in the marketplace in relationship to choosing for
themselves their lifestyles and modes of satisfaction? Cigarettes?
Child Empowerment vs. Corporate Colonization
• Are kids vulnerable due to cognitive limitations ? (recognize
commercials and make critical readings of information)
• Are advertising using deceptive and misleading techniques? (claims
and spokespersons)
• Are there long term cultural consequences to marketing of children’s
products?
Fast Food, Sluggish Kids
Issues of identity and well being in consumer society
The Obesity Epidemic: USA
Fatland: Who is to Blame for Changing Lifestyles?
Fast Food Controversy
Markets as Food Promotion Systems
possible effects of food advertising on kids
• Exposure: approx 16,000 food ads
• Formation of preferences for sweet and fat: discretionary spending and peer
pressure
• Body ideals/ self esteem: from watching TV idealized characters
• Fun food, comfort eating, habitual snacking
• Eating while watching: habit in over 70% of homes (40% watch during dinner)
• Displacement effects of balanced nutrition
• Lack of risk or related knowledge
Most popular snack products eaten after school,
April 2003
Base: 629 children aged 7-16 source: BRMB/Mintel 2003
THIS WEEK'S QUESTION: Should Kellogg be
held liable for making children fat?
• One top marketing communications executive says "The Kellogg Company has a
legacy of providing nutritious breakfast cereal yet has clearly lost sight of what it
means to really be a leader in the face of a changing market."
• Another writes, "It's simple. Parents should be held liable. Kids do not have the
purchasing power to make themselves fat."
Ideology of the Marketplace
Can children make informed choices?
• information about products is universally available (vs skewed)
• subjects are capable of a risk/ cost/ benefit analysis of their interest in the product
• Case of Tobacco
Product is harmful
Product is addictive
Youth not able to make long term health decisions
Ads are misleading
Colonization or Liberation of Youth by the
Marketplace?
• Recognized youth as market
• Recognized identity quest
• Recognized pleasure and taste
• Enfranchized choices in entertainment and discretionary spending
• Recognized their role as consumers: their relationship to marketplace
Cultural Effects: Comfort eating
Fun Food/ Cross Marketing
Cultural Biases: Need for Speed
The Production of Family Dysfunction: Depression,
compulsion and Conflict
Objects of Desire: Just Can’t Get Enough
Welcome to the Age of Hyper-commercialization:
• Spin-offs and 30 minute commercials
• Cross marketing
• Product placements
• Viral marketing
• Celebrity endorsements
• Implied claims fantasy
• On-line embedded marketing and promotions
• Self-Regulatory Environment (knowledge of regulations and right of complaint)
– ads in video games programme/
– Katheryn Montgomery On-line Parental Consent
Cultural Effects and Identity Construction
• Gender -star wars vs style wars
• Class - you are what you own
• Ethnicity - multiple histories shallow roots
• Lifestyles - managing the illusive quest
Growing up Postmodern
• Work to meet needs
• Discriminate pain and pleasure
• Nation, ethnicity, gender
• Class, roles, norms,
• Meet needs, pride in achievement, status
• Manage Self-Esteem
• Avoid stress and boredom
• Personal Identity
• Cultural capital, impression management
• Manage lifestyle,
Critiques of Consumerism
• Traditional: Epicurean moderation in all things, luxury is indulgent and unpatriotic (decline of
Roman empire)
• Moral: Weber, self-denial and saving for growth
• Distributional: Marx, exploitation of classes; envy as motive
• Affluence: Galbraith, advertising and the management of over-production of needs
• Mass Consumption: Marcuse, False needs and inauthentic selves (alienated from our human
nature)
• Environmentalism: Beck, Risk Society and the unintended consequences of affluence
(pollution, waste, imbalance)
• Health: WHO, obesity vs. malnutrition as health problems
• Well-being and Identity: Schor, Confusion, depression, lack of self esteem
Adbusting consumerism
Schorr - Pathologies of Consumer Society?
• Survival needs money: credit; pester power
• Identity: body image; self esteem
• Belonging: culture capital; peer pressures; gangs and opposition
• Problems of Happiness: depression, inequalities of opportunity; lack
of real choice/ diversity due to the biases of corporatized market
system
Media, Consumerism and Well Being? J. Schor
Promotional Sanctions for Legal Products
Kids Experience of Gaming
Nick Yee: On-line Gaming
• Self-defined addiction
• Attempts at control
Flow and Compulsion: DSN -IV
• Flow video games designed to administer intense immersive experience
• 3 Factors are considered an impulse control disorder:
– Frequent, sustained behaviour pattern
– give it up other activities to engage it
– Commit anti-social transgressions
– Feeling out of control,
– Tolerance of dose, escalation
– Knowledge of problem, unable to manage
– Failed attempts to control behaviour
– Withdrawal symptoms
• 25% of heavy gamers report at least three
Frequent and Heavy Use
The addictive experience
EverCrack
EQ addiction
Criteria