TELETUBBIES--OPENING THE DOOR TO READING
I believe that Teletubbies opened the door for a growing baby board book industry which in turn has invigorated reading amongst a new generation. Back when Teletubbies began to air on television there was a serious backlash-- television for toddlers? People thought that was outrageous. If my memory serves me correctly, some people felt very strongly that the last thing babies/toddlers needed was to sit in front of a television.
Well, that was several years ago, and since then a booming market has developed for selling videos, toys, computer games, and books to babies--or to parents who choose what their babies need. I am thinking here, also of the Baby Einstein series. In the introduction to their videos, the founder of the Baby Einstein company tells parents/viewers that the video/DVD is meant to stimulate the infant's developing mind with items that are familiar to their world. Bright colours, bold black and whites, nice music, poetry and quirky characters are all designed to entertain the child and to help them grow intellectually.
The same can be said for the design of board books. Most board books are full of vibrant colours, familiar objects, captivating images, and simple stories with rhythmic text. Just as Teletubbies and and videos do, baby board books often focus on images of the babies themselves, or other babies who serve as a mirror to the viewers/readers. But what baby board books also do is to offer an additional cultural cache--they are more acceptable than either the Teletubbies or Baby Einstein series because they are in print. The bright colours and captivating images which are used in all these media would not have grown and succeeded, without Teletubbies and Baby Einstein, in stimulating a new generation of readers; including my own children.
Questions
(1) Do you agree with the idea that Teletubbies/Baby Einstein helped open the baby market for publishing companies producing baby board books?
(2) Why do we as a culture value and privilege print texts over visual media?
posted by Carol N. @ 8:00 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
No, I do not think that Teletubbies/Baby Einstein helped open the baby market for publishing companies producing baby board books. When my daughter was a baby, she will be eight in a couple of weeks, I had no trouble finding wonderful board books to read to her. This was just prior to the appearance of the Teletubbies and quite a while before the arrival of Baby Einstein. I have just recently given her board books away to a neighbour. However, "The Big Red Barn," "Guess How Much I Love You," "Goodnight Moon," "The Very Hungry Catepillar," and "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" are some of the titles I fondly recall reading to her when she was a baby. There may be more board books available now; I'm not sure because I haven't been looking lately. I am wondering how many of these are based on "babies" television shows? I would be more likely to purchase one of the titles I have already mentioned than a Teletubbies book.
I am concerned about the popularity of the Baby Einstein videos, and other similar videos. There was a documentary about them on a few months ago. I'm sorry, but I can't remember which show it aired on. Basically, it discussed the fact that these videos are marketed to parents as ways to make their children more intelligent and successful. However, they showed how quickly the images flash before the babies' eyes, and explained the negative impact that this has. I wish I could remember more specifics. I'm sure there was something about brain development and attention span. But I do remember feeling glad the videos weren't around when my daughter was a baby, because I would have bought them. Having said that, I will admit that my daughter watched the Teletubies when they were on television.
With babies, I think that we should value and priviledge print texts over visual media. When I read board books to my daughter, I was interacting with her. She was on my knee. We could take time to look at the pictures. She could hear my voice. She could touch the pictures. She could even chew on the corners. :-) Now, I watched the Teletubies with my daughter, too. But how many parents leave their children in front of the television and go do the chores?
Because there has been some interest shown, and good questions raised in relation to my observations in the 'Teletubbies section', I feel the need to clarify that what I am suggesting in that section is that at the same time that Teletubbies, and later Baby Einstein lowered the age-bar for television viewing-- supposedly in the name of mental stimulation (whether that happened or not), literacy stakeholders (c.f. section on 'theorists') were forwarding the argument to lower the age-bar for mental stimulation and literacy development. Publishers of board books, a genre which had been around for a while due to its portability, affordability, and durability, grabbed at recognizable brand names such as Teletubbies and Baby Einstein (Underdown, http://www.underdown.org/trends.htm), as consumers in the 1990's-2000's spent more money on less books
(http://www.ipsos-insight.com
/pressrelease.aspx?id=2264). Even authors such as Eric Carle and Sandra Boynton became recognizable brand names themselves (Underdown). My main point was that this marriage of commerce/media and the book industry has, for better or worse, fed the important movement to have children read or be read to at an earlier age.
Hi Carol,
1) I have not entered the world of Teletubbies/Baby Einstein yet, since I don't have any children. I'll leave this questions for others to comment.
2)Why do we as a culture value and privilege print texts over visual media?
I'm not sure that we as a culture do value print over visual media. Segments of our society do, but for some I think its the reverse, especially if you compare the amount of time spent with each medium.
Overall, I think print allows for more interaction as opposed to the way visual media is typically used.
1) Do you agree with the idea that Teletubbies/Baby Einstein helped open the baby market for publishing companies producing baby board books?
Yes and no. When Carol clarified what she meant by "opening the baby market", then I'd have to admit that it did for certain segments of the population (I'm not being classist here, because I'm including myself). Case in point: child #1 - no TV until she was 18 months old, loved being read to from an early age, favourite book was a concept book called "Ten Tiny Turtles" that my husband and I can still recite from memory / child #2 - was not into books like sibling until "TV-ti-in" sturdy board books (child #2 destroyed more traditional books) were bought and that launched child #2 into "non-TV-tie-in" books.
(2) Why do we as a culture value and privilege print texts over visual media?
Maybe if we rephrased it as "why are parents more likely to share that they read to their kids for 15 minutes rather than they watched TV with them for 15 minutes", then I can answer more readily. The TV is seen as "the boob tube" or "mind-rotter" and (when I only had 1 kid) what I thought uninterested parents used to babysit their kids. My 5 year old and 3 year old still love watching their Baby Einstein videos (gifts, all gifts) although my kids tend to be "active viewers"; for instance, during "The Lion King", my daughter and I will re-enact some of the favourite scenes (it's sad when you have to watch the movie on your own to write down "dialogue cheat sheets" so you don't get scolded during the role-play for messing up your lines!). My kids also like to have the TV on as background noise (I dislike this practice, but my husband is okay with it and since he is the primary caregiver, he gets to allow it) so that they are usually busy drawing or playing trains and will only glance up at "the good parts".
Do you agree with the idea that Teletubbies/Baby Einstein helped open the baby market for publishing companies producing baby board books?
Board books were around when my sons were growing up at least 20+ years ago. I don't think they were the prime reason for the production of board books. I know that my sons had a few. Whenever anything becomes a trend on television business produces what they feel is a product that the consumer will buy. It this case it's a product that parents can use (want) to give their child a head start. None of this is necessarily based on the ability for the child to learn at a particular age but it makes us feel good that we are doing something to help our children learn. What do infants see, or comprehend when watching these shows? Bright lights, sound...Are they any smarter? We don't really have a baseline to compare.
Why do we as a culture value and privilege print texts over visual media? I agree with Phyllis on this one. I think that some segments of our society value print and others do not. Print and visual media (art) have been around for a long time in one format or another. We have learned to use print in acceptable ways. Visual art, in particular, television or movies is relatively new to society in comparision to print. We see the book as telling the "true" story whereas what we see as "liberties" in the film version. There appear to be more modifications in film than in print and therefore we are not "true" to the story. {does this make sense}
Darinka
Thank you to the new perspectives placed here. It is interesting how different and how similar our responses are. Just to clarify one thing--I did not mean that Teletubbies/Baby Einstein started the baby board book industry--my view is that the industry seemed to explode (pardon the colloquialism) after that period in time (Perhaps because of it, or in spite of it). My husband had an intersting comment about something he'd once read in the book Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making us Smarter, by Steven Johnson. One point he makes is that had print materials evolved following television and computers, print text would be criticized as being to flat, too linear, and not stimulating enough. One of my beliefs is that because we need rigorous training/schooling to learn how to read--we privilege reading over television viewing. We don't teach our children how to watch tv, except perhaps in media studies--but even then, it is not a necessity. We have to learn how to read, we don't need to learn how to watch television.
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