What’cha doin’? Moral actions in Disney’s ​Phineas and Ferb K. Chittick // Grade: 7 MA Media Studies - Television and Cross-Media Culture Graduate School of Humanities, University of Amsterdam Date of completion - June 26, 2017 Supervisor Joke Hermes Second reader Sudeep Dasgupta Word count 17.613 [disclaimer] Without the supervision of the profound and lovely Joke Hermes, this would have NEVER been finished. I’m eternally in her debt because of her infinite believe in my capabilities [disclaimer] Table of content Introduction 3 Chapter one - Moral significance of popular children’s television 7 Chapter two – Children, television, and morality 11 2.1 A historical view of children’s television 11 2.2 Morally justifiable violence 15 2.3 Moral allegiance 15 Chapter three - Moral theory 18 3.1 The fragility of goodness 19 3.2 The development of moral reasoning 20 3.2.1 The highest stage of moral development 22 Chapter four – Phineas and Ferb 25 Chapter five – Candace 30 Chapter six – Dr. Doofenshmirtz 25 Conclusion and recommendations 39 Bibliography 1 Introduction Growing up in a family of five with large age differences has always been interesting. Six years younger than my only older sibling, however nineteen years older than my youngest brother has made me experience childlike activities multiple times. One of the things that I enjoy much is that stay up to date about (new) media and how they play a part in the daily lives of my younger brothers. Watching an ‘old’ childhood movie together that is nostalgic for me yet a complete new experience for them, while getting disappointed that they don’t seem to enjoy it as much as I did. Me being confused about the attraction of online unboxing videos which they seem to enjoy greatly… We do also enjoy the same things, like some of the cartoons that are being made today. ​Phineas and Ferb ​is one of those cartoons that we all like to watch, and we do so together. The three of us sitting in front of the TV, while I encourage them to discuss what we are watching. A comparison of us with the main characters of ​Phineas and Ferb is easily made. Me being the authoritative older sister Candace while they are the inventive similarly aged brothers Phineas and Ferb. While our carbox house in the backyard does not compete against their robot treehouses, and our small mentos experiments with different kinds of sodas shows no match for the growing elixir the cartoon brothers experiment with, we are able to relate to the social interactions between the siblings. I get often asked if I would also ‘bust’ them if they would race around in a home-upgrade of their bicycles like in the show. Why won’t their sister Candace just join them in their fun activities, like I often do? And of course they mention that snitching is not good and should not be done. At least, they remind me that that is something I have teached them when they tried to get the other one in trouble by telling on them for innocent playful behavior. This has got me thinking, especially since they are asking for answers I want to provide them with. I tell them to bust when the other is performing a dangerous activity where one can get hurt physically, and that in that case I would do the same. A lot, if not all of the activities of the cartoon brothers however is physically dangerous. Yet I agree with my brothers that even though that is the case, Candace should sometimes just let them be. But why? The activity of busting impacts and directs Candace’s daily life immensely. Moreover, her unclear motives to bust, which seem to be more habitual than carefully deliberated or reflected upon, complicates viewing her behavior as good or bad. To bust or not to bust becomes an objective of intention, an article of real live moral debate. Like that, 2 this children’s cartoon character prompted a debate about what is right or wrong behavior. Seeing as only one of the characters of ​Phineas and Ferb already offered me an interesting conversation, I want to further analyse the social actions of the main characters for potential moral storytelling. Furthermore, what kind of moral messages are there to be found in a cartoon series that could be beneficial to the moral development of children? Through media, children can directly get in contact with a moral narrative they can interact with. According to a research performed by Statistic Brain in 2017, a US child spends on average 3.5 hours a day watching television. Through active observation and imitation of characters in television children learn complex social interactions like morality, as is stated by Albert Bandura in the Social Learning Theory. Bandura’s theory may be old yet it is not outdated, as it is still used, applied, and proven in research performed in recent research from 2017 (Arnas, İnceoğlu, & Oğul; Daalmans, Hijmans, & Wester; Richards & Calvert). What is considered a right or wrong interaction changes as children grow up. Jean Piaget observed that the criteria on which children initially approach morality is based on the concrete consequences of an action, and later in life determined on the intention of the actor to conclude right from wrong. These different stages of moral development correspond to different stages of cognitive development. This rough summary of Piaget’s cognitive development theory shows that different people, especially children, have different sets of cognitive tools to think about morality. Key here is that moral development is thus more about what we think, then finding the right moral values on how to live. Therewithal, the thinking of morality will be visible through good/evil actions. Lawrence Kohlberg elaborates on Piaget’s theory, and his debated moral development theory will be discussed later on. To link it all back to this thesis about what case can be made for the moral use value of ​Phineas and Ferb​, a series that does not immediately suggests it has any, the concrete question that this research will aim to answer is; What kind of moral messages are there to be found in ​Phineas and Ferb that could be beneficial to the moral development of children? To answer the question, this research will do a critical reading of the main characters of the show with a focus on their social actions for a closer look of potential moral storytelling. 3 Method Based on various theories and concepts about morality and moral development, with a focus on Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning developed in 1983, a critical reading of the main characters of ​Phineas and Ferb shall be conducted. Through this character analysis, this study will examine whether the moral thoughts of the characters behave like the moral stages as discussed by Lawrence Kohlberg, i.e. whether they allow for a moral learning curve. In order to answer the main question of this thesis, several scenes from the one-part episodes of the series have been selected. Episodes used are selected on the basis of supporting and portraying moral actions. This resulted in 45 episodes being included in this analysis. The 36 multi-part episode and two movies have not been included in the analysis as the setup of these differ from the formula used in the 187 other episode and are thus considered an exemption, both in setup and character activities. Access to the episodes of the show was made possible, as the entire series is available on Netflix. Additionally, plot summaries, titles, and episode numbers were found on a online wikia phineasandferb.wikia.com. The characters that are analyzed are chosen on basis of them being main protagonist/antagonist. As cultural studies is involved with understanding the processes through which societies come to terms about e.g. moral norms in community life, this study fits within cultural studies (“What is Cultural Studies?”). The television show contributes to everyday meaning making within the specific context of children’s social interactions which also provides attention to in-group power relations. This thesis is a start to resolve the lack of research that investigates the content of children’s television and its relationship with moral theory, as the two are definitely connected/intertwined. The first chapter will frame this study of the popular animated children’s series ​Phineas and Ferb ​to contextualize the quest of searching for moral significance in children’s television. The second chapter will delve into the history of children’s media that shows how morality historically is connected with children’s television, and how Jason Mittel’s alignment helps explaining how moral actions performed by tv characters can be recognized and adopted by children. In the following chapter, the moral development theory of Lawrence Kohlberg will be elaborately discussed, as well as other moral (development) theories. In the chapters that follow, the actions and moral well being of the young brothers Phineas and Ferb, their sister’s 4 Candace questions of moral intent, and evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz distinction between good and evil will be analyzed and placed within the provided moral framework. In this analysis the actions and motives of the characters will be compared with moral theory as described in chapter three and other theories will be added as necessary. 5 Chapter one - Moral significance of popular children’s television There is no other media content that is debated as much as children’s television, yet there is not much academic research that analyzes the programs themselves. The anticipated effects of children’s programs are far more interesting and discussed, as parents are afraid their children might be harmed by the content provided in television shows, and thus not interested in discussing the content itself.