Cartoons' Effects on Young People

It's clear that cartoons, Disney films, and other animated films play some role in shaping attitudes of the children they're directed at because of the huge controversies many of these cartoons and films  raise. For example, after Frozen came out, I read countless articles about how it was such a progressive film, challenging the notions of women's roles and relationships held by older "princess" narratives. If these films didn't influence the attitudes and mindsets of young people, so many bloggers and writers would not be compelled to point out the evolving representations of various gender, sexuality, race, etc. groups. In some ways, however, the effects these films have on children might only come to fruition when we call attention to them. Lehman spends a great deal of time talking about Tom and Jerry and the Mammy figure who appears frequently in the cartoon, but as a child who watched Tom and Jerry quite a bit, I never felt like this negative representation shaped my impression of black women simply because I was too ignorant to even understand that the cartoon was exploiting black female stereotypes in its characterizations of the maid character. Had I been aware that this was the animators' intention, I may have been more prone to adopt the mindset of believing those stereotypes to be true. Overall, I think the degree to which children are shaped by cartoons depends, to some extent, on how much they know about the issues and stereotypes present in the cartoons, but more often than not, I think young kids are going to be more concerned with whether the mouse escapes the cat's schemes or whether the evil villain is defeated and the kingdom saved.

I wish I could have found the video clip, but here's an image from Disney's Frozen that I think demonstrates changing attitudes towards under-represented or stereotyped groups in children's films. I think it also demonstrates that filmmakers are recognizing how much power they have in shaping children's attitudes. Oaken is the male shopowner in Frozen and this is his family.