Call For Writers: Children’s Television

Our theme week for June 2014 will be Children’s Television

They say children are like sponges for a reason. It turns out that a “child has already developed half of his total adult intellectual capacity by the time he is four years old and 80 percent of it by age eight.” This fact lays bare how critical it is for children to be exposed to expansive, quality learning experiences. In fact, neurobiologist at Baylor College of Medicine Dr. Martha Pierson says, “Children need a flood of information, a banquet, a feast.” In our culture, where children now watch an average of 35 hours of television per week, much of the formative information that children are rapidly absorbing and storing comes from TV.

In our capitalist society, many corporations see children as just another demographic with the power to influence their parents to buy toys. Around the 70s, many children’s TV shows became little more than advertisements for products, such that the FCC mandated children’s programming contain some educational content, which inspired the oft derided, tacked-on PSA (public service announcement) at the end of episodes to meet that regulation. This ruling was struck down in the 90s, so now we must rely on the questionable intentions of the corporations who produce children’s media to provide programming that enriches the lives and expands the brains of children.

Ultimately, we must consider what kind of programming we’re offering to these hugely malleable young people. What kind of messages are we sharing with our children? Are we giving them lessons of acceptance, diversity, and cooperation? Are we teaching them vital critical thinking skills? Or are we, instead, feeding them gender roles, racial hierarchy, and the centrality of the nuclear family? What kind of people, what kind of citizens will these children grow up to be?

We’d like you to examine children’s television shows, analyzing what role they play in the feminist movement as well as the general upbringing of children. Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, June 20 by midnight.

Barney & Friends

Teletubbies

Kim Possible

Hannah Montana

Jem & the Holograms

G.I. Joe

He-Man

She-Ra

Adventure Time

Dora the Explorer

Blue’s Clues

My Little Pony

Pokémon

Sponge Bob

Power Rangers

Reading Rainbow

Powerpuff Girls

Scooby-D00

Fraggle Rock

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

Sesame Street

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles