Page 103 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Ch ldren and Effects: From Sesame Street to Columb ne

had sexual relations; these subjects, too, were happy to blame their adventures
on the scenes of seduction they had observed in Hollywood films.
By 1934, Hollywood’s self-censoring organization, the Production Code Ad-
ministration (PCA), had perfected a system for previewing all scripts and com-
pleted films with an eye for making them “safe” for general consumption. Children
(and “immature” adults) were to be shielded from images of sex and violence. In
the 1950s, as the PCA began to lose power, a new bogeyman emerged: crime
and horror comics. Psychologist Frederick Wertham spearheaded a movement
against violent comics, claiming they schooled children in sadism and sexual
perversion. In 1954, the Comics Code Authority was set up by the comics indus-
try to censor itself. Though the Code was theoretically voluntary, the industry
feared that if it didn’t censor itself the government would step in and do the job.
Of course, comics were not considered the only source of juvenile delin-
quency in the 1950s: TV was also singled out. Shows like The Untouchables were
attacked for their violence, but it was not just television’s images that were seen
as the problem; TV itself became a new member of the family, a device that could
bring families together around a “wholesome” program or divide families who
fought over viewing decisions. TV might even do ill to children, adults worried,
by harming their vision or diverting their time from wholesome outdoor play.
In the post–World War II years, anxieties about the sexual content and, more
generally, rebellious attitude of rock ’n’ roll were also on the rise. These kinds of
anxieties would surface again in 1985 when the Parents Music Research Council
would successfully advocate for warning labels to be put on sexually explicit
(or explicitly violent) albums. Youth-targeted music had contained risqué lyrics
for years, but anxieties came to a head in the 1980s due in large part to the
dramatic commercial success of rap music and the rise of the Walkman, which
enabled kids to listen to music in utter privacy. Anxious parents worried about

sesaMe street

Sesame Street was the first American educational children’s program to receive government
funding and the first to be produced with input from psychologists and educators. It was
also a breakthrough show for its aggressive targeting of minority viewers, and part of its
enduring legacy is the idea that multiculturalism should play a role in children’s television.
Each season, a curriculum is rigorously plotted out and segments are tested on the target
audience (3- to 5-year-olds); segments that do not successfully hold viewers’ attention or
convey lessons are revised or discarded before broadcast. In the early years, a relatively
small amount of Sesame Street merchandise existed, but today the show’s characters are
widely marketed; such commercialization is a symptom of PBS’s overall commercialization
in the wake of dramatically reduced government support for public broadcasting. When
Sesame Street first premiered, it was controversial; developmental psychologists worried
about the show’s fast pacing and questioned the idea of using television to teach, and right-
wingers attacked the show for its picture of racial integration. Today, however, there is prob-
ably no program more widely acknowledged as having positive effects on young viewers.