Viewing Wars: Action Heroes and Canadian Mothers Concerns about Violent Television for Boys 3-6 Stephen Kline Media Analysis Laboratory Simon Fraser University Canada (draft June 2, 1999) Much of the growing interest in the analysis of audiences is written against the previous effects approach to understanding mass media. These models primarily theorized the influence of mass media rather narrowly as the flow of a dominant meaning from TV (stimulus) to audiences (respondents) and subsumed the idea that ‘reception’ could best be understood as the ’assimilation and storage of that meaning’. Since the late 1970’s however, challenged by a new theorizing of separate encoding and decoding processes (Hall’s 1980), communications studies has become aware of the fragmentation of mass media audiences and the active assimilation of media content (Morley 1986, Schroder 1994). This has inspired greater interest in viewers motivations and choices underlying viewing, and the reception processes have become the focal point for an audience centred study of communication and media culture (Livingstone 1998). There is a growing interest in applying this approach to children’s relationship to media (Livingstone 1999). In this regard, the work of the Himmelweit project using cross national comparative research on children and youth audiences is providing an empirical basis for a broad and subtle understanding of the global problem of children and media. Yet in the light of research that shows young audiences often make diverse, unexpected and even aberrant readings of their media, there is a growing need to better theorize the ‘diversity’ in young peoples media use and audiences (David Buckingham 1993, 1997). Current studies of young audiences with one broadcast footprint, typically reveal no modal child viewer but profound niched differences not only in the programmes they watch regularly, but in their preferences for and identification with particular TV characters (ABA 1994). Indeed nowhere is the influence of audience fragmentation and niche marketing more in evidence than in the under 7 children’s audience between males and females. [Insert Chart #1.] It is not surprising given targeting by promotional marketing, that by age six Canadian children’s audiences reveal significant differences in TV programme preferences and viewing along age and gender lines (Kline 1993, 1995). 1 But even 1 After deregulation, US schedules for the family oriented mass programming made with “children of all ages” in mind totally disappeared. This broad programming mandate was replaced in the 1980’s with a more targeted, and gender and age specific production objectives. Both in the public education programming ( Sesame Street; Electric Company; Bill Nye) and in the commercial sector where animated character series (He-man and She-ra) colonized the schedules targeting defined programming. During the 1980’s targeted action hero programmes Transformers, Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers and now Pokemon comparing across many countries, the strongest differences are not national, so much as gendered. Jo Groebels (1999) study of 12 year olds reveals the global effects of audience segmentation -- the gender differences once acquired, persist: boys preferred programming is action and horror oriented, and their favourite role models are “action heroes”. The variation in children’s media use is perhaps best explained by the programming priorities and attitudes so evident among commercial media producers which have favoured superhero animation and high intensity conflict for penetrating into world markets because they reliably attract young male audiences. (Gerbner 1998). Audiences however fluid and diverse, are historically constructed over time through the application of ratings research (Ang 1990). In my own thinking about the children and adolescent media preferences and use, variation is best described not as diversity but as fragmentation (Leiss et al. 1990). Young males particularly exhibit a fairly rigid pattern in their entertainment genre preferences establishing loyalties fairly young, common preferences in both TV and video game genres, as well as a reticence toward educational programming and reading. (Kline 1997, 1999).Those familiar with Himmelweits work know that her approach to children’s audiences was comparative, broadly focused on the domestic scene, social-psychological and yet aimed at public policy and debate. I have become similarly convinced that a better system for comparative study of global children and youth audiences must provide a subtle analysis of the relationship between programming choices and the differences in cultural environments in which various media are habitually used in different ways by children. In the wake of war in Europe, and the equally recent massacres in US schools, audience researchers are once again having to think beyond the apparent idiosyncrasies of contemporary youth audiences to understand why so many “boys” are fascinated with violence in media. The weight of thousands of studies adequately confirms that their choice of programming can play an important role in the processes of acquisition of violent and aggressive attitudes and behaviours in young audiences (MacBeth 1996). Yet when it comes to the public debates about children as audiences, the mass media effects model continues to hold sway ( Huston et al. 1992), particularly with the focus on children’s exposure of media violence ( Hamilton 1998, Television Violence Monitoring Project 1998). Although there are differences, the majority following for action adventure programming, and the rarity of cross-over viewing is still characteristic of boy audiences who seem uniformly fascinated by the animated tales of warrior heroes. In this regard we must note that the traditions of “effects” research still holds sway in our thinking about this problem of the reception of media violence – and analysts continue to favour the notion of observational learning to explain the violent attitudes and fearfulness, mean world views, desensitization, copy cat modeling of aggressive behaviours that are in evidence (Dubow and Miller 1996, Heussman et al. 1994; NTVS 1998). Effects researchers have demonstrated that violent media can reinforce, legitimize and consolidate aggressive attitudes in personal relationships with both peers and authorities – especially among some heavy viewers. Yet the consequences of heavy consumption of violent media seems to vary for different viewers and this limits the ability to apply such results. filled the Saturday morning ghettos as action adventure animation successfully cultivated loyal male audiences around the world. These programmes continue to fill US screen’s with a steady flow of highly aggressive and often warlike fictional material that the reviewers of the National Television Monitoring Study agreed was most problematic (1997) Although our understanding of the context of the depiction of violence has progressed from the 1970’s (APPC 1997, Wartella NTVS), the lived context of children’s viewing of violence is generally not. Three factors in the contemporary debates about violence and media suggest that it is time to rethink the contribution that “audience research approaches” can make to critiquing the media’s production biases towards violence programming for children since: 1) policy discourses about the audience are increasingly focused on parental responsibilities and domestic regulation (ie V-chip); 2) research discourses are also focusing on media use in the context of competing media in the “domestic environment”; 3) the fragmentation in children’s audiences that reveal the real differences in family life and culture that influence the child’s relationship to media. In short effects research has probably gone as far as it can in explaining the media’s generalized role in the acquisition of male aggression without explaining this fascination for action adventure programming or how it develops in boys. Family Dynamics, Media and the Socialization of Aggression Given these regularities in young male audiences, this project examines aspects of the family context in which Canadian boys between the ages of 3-6 acquire their fascination for violent and aggressive programming and play media. The role of parental style in shaping and mediating children’s aggressive attitudes and behaviour has been well researched. (Korzenny et al. 1981) The Singers have noted that for very young children family discipline style as well as encouragement of imagination can be important influences mediating the effects of viewing TV violence on judged aggressiveness and activity levels of children ( Singer et al. 1984). The work of Abelman has noted the differential impact of inductive and sensitizing family styles on gifted vs. emotionally disturbed children’s judgement of “pro-social television content (Abelman 1991). As social psychologist I recognize the social differences in the children’s audience behaviour had to be conceptualized within socio-ecology of the households in which they lived. Not only do we need to understand how variations in family practice and control shapes the adolescents use of media but also how family dynamics change over time as children grow. Broader surveys of parental mediation of TV in the USA reveal a vista of increasingly laissez fair parenting and growing anxiety: only a small minority restrict or control their child’s exposure to programmes and most of this control is directed at sex, violence and swearing (Parental Advisory