Hollywood characters are the idols of most Russian children

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Do we want them to be able to love at all? So that our children, when they grow up, be faithful to the oath, friendship, feeling? So that they achieve something and achieve in life? Do we want them to grow up Russian (in the broadest sense of the word - feeling their inseparable connection with Russian culture, Russian history, Russian destiny - regardless of nationality)?

Probably many, having heard such questions, will consider them rhetorical: of course, we all want this! - only an abnormal person can want the opposite - that the children love no one and nothing, that they grow up not knowing what fidelity, true friendship is. Only a madman can want them to grow up helpless and dependent, not even having a chance to reach any heights in their lives. And only the enemy can want our children, when they grow up, not to know "whose they will be" and to feel "without clan and tribe."

However, these questions are not at all rhetorical. Because, judging by the results of a study of children's drawings collected by activists of the Essence of Time Movement, our children (all together, in a sociological, statistical sense) are at the mercy of madmen or enemies who mold them into the exact opposite of what we would like.

The hero I want to be like

Among the 2,500 drawings "The Hero I Want to Be Like" Russian children 5-13 years old permanently residing in Russia, there are only 1 Alexey Maresyev, 1 Nikolai Gastello, 1 Alexander Nevsky, 1 Zina Portnova, 1 Peter the First, 1 Joseph Stalin, 1 Gulya Koroleva, 1 Dmitry Donskoy.

There are also 2 Valentina Tereshkovs and Yuri Gagarin has already been drawn 27 times.

And also - 22 times the relatives of children are drawn - great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers - heroes of the Great Patriotic War. And then there is a certain (not very significant) number of dads-rescuers, dads-military and "mom is my hero - she gave birth to me."

Everything! This exhausts the domestic pantheon of heroes. With heroes of foreign origin, it is no better - if we mean the heroes: there are 1 (in words: one) Jeanne d'Arc, 1 Jesus Chrytos, 1 Spartacus and 1 Fidel Castro.

Anyone who has ever dealt with statistics understands that all these heroes listed above, including Gagarin and the generalized grandfather - a soldier of the Great Patriotic War, are NOT in the statistical, sociological sense. They are not in the minds of our children as heroes, because the figures given below any error are just an accident.

Come on! - some will say. These are children! Their heroes should be fairy-tale characters … Epic heroes, the Little Humpbacked Horse, Uncle Styopa, the Frog Princess … Kolobok, after all. Or d'Artagnan, Cipollino, Cinderella, Snow White … Bambi, at worst. Well, such an opinion has a right to exist - indeed, children may well want to be like the heroes of fairy tales, this is their child's right. How are we doing this?

Heroes that Russian children want to be like

Yes, almost the same as with real, real historical heroes. Among the children's drawings, there were: 1 Alyonushka, 1 Alladin, 1 Baba Yaga, 1 Buratino, 1 Vasilisa the Beautiful, 1 Grandfather from a fairy tale about a turnip, 1 Serpent Gorynych, 1 Little Horse-Gobunok, 1 Malvina, 1 Princess Frog, 1 Ruslan, 1 Sleeping Beauty, 1 Cipollino, 2 Snow White, 3 Alyosha Popovich, 3 Red Caps, 4 Dobryni Nikitich, 4 Ivan Tsarevich, 8 Kolobkov, 11 Ilya Muromtsev, 16 Cinderella, 19 Winnie the Pooh, 26 Cheburashek, 27 Puss in Boots.

Agree, it's not a fountain either! And, in general, all these fairy-tale heroes are also rather absent than present (statistically) in the pantheon of our children. Because even if you count them all - together with the mysterious "bunnies from a fairy tale" and "cockerels from a cartoon" not named here, as well as those drawings where it was not possible to understand who was drawn, although it is clear that someone was drawn from a fairy tale - you get a little more than 2% of all "heroes". This, of course, is not zero, as is the case with "real heroes", but …

So who do our children want to be like? Who do they consider heroes worthy of emulation?

Probably everyone has already guessed. Yes! Exactly! The main characters of our children are: Spider-Man - painted 187 times; 183 - Fairies from Winx Club: Fairy School; 159 - SpongeBob Squarepants (from the animated series of the same name); 145 - Batman; 125 - "Total" Superman, including Iron Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Captain America, Men Arctic, Black Cloak, Doctor Octopus, just "supermen", etc.; 78 - Ariel the Little Mermaid; 68 - Rapunzel; 56 - "Total" robot, including a red car from "Cars", transformers, the Zeus robot and the Tornado robot, etc., 56 - Smeshariki; 47 - Harry Potter …

And there are many more characters from various animated series, computer games and movies (most of which we have never heard of).

There is a well-known and very true saying (like Napoleon's): "A people who do not want to feed their own army will feed someone else's." Based on the materials of the study of children's drawings, carried out by The Essence of Time, we can say: a people that does not want to educate their children gives them up for education to enemies. It is difficult to interpret the results obtained differently.

We will be told: nonsense! So what if children are addicted to cartoon characters of foreign origin? They are still heroes! They protect the weak, fight criminals and monsters, save the world in the end! So what?

Unfortunately, there is a lot of "such" here.

Firstly, all these heroes of foreign cartoons are rooted in their own (for us alien and alien) cultures. First of all, American - after all, it is known that most superheroes from American films are heroes of comics - a very peculiar and very American traditional culture. But not only American. And Japanese - a lot of our children literally "get hooked" on Japanese anime - albeit at a slightly older age (and Japan, quite deliberately, at the state level, promotes anime all over the world - in order to promote Japan and Japanese traditional values). And European - so, mysterious for us, the series about the Winx fairies is Italian, and the famous Scooby Doo series is English. All these cartoons and their characters are flesh of flesh (although, rather, spirit of spirit) of their (and not ours!) National cultural traditions. They are called upon to bring up in children what is valuable for their (and not ours!) Cultures and countries.

But what is wrong with our children watching this, some will ask. Nothing! - more precisely, it would be nothing if, along with these cartoons, our children watched in the same quantity and quality made Russian cartoons and TV series based on the Russian cultural tradition. But this is not the case! And this means that our children grow up in isolation from our cultural tradition - but in close interaction with foreign (and sometimes directly hostile) cultures - we will talk a little further about what exactly these cultures “enrich” our children.

The great ethologist and psychologist, Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz wrote:

It turns out that by "handing over" our children to foreign mass culture, we, at least, educate future collaborators out of them, and at the most, we truly deprive them, dooming them to the impossibility of finding ourselves in a world alien to them

Secondly, it is very important that we “surrender” our children to the enemy “culture” ourselves - voluntarily and with some even enthusiasm. Because cartoons allow you not to deal with children: you put your child in front of the TV - and he doesn't bother you, "and we have so many things to do!" Whoever has not used cartoons in this way at least once - for their own "liberation" - let him be the first to throw a stone at us. However, our research shows that everything is not limited to one time: it is obvious that cartoons are constantly used to "free" children. This in itself is sad and wrong, but not only. The main thing is that our children are very much, to the point of "poisoning", overfed with cartoons.

Sociological studies show that over the past 30 years, the distribution of "free" time for children of preschool and early school age has changed dramatically. The duration of watching cartoons has increased 8 times, from 5% (20-30 minutes) to 40%. In addition, now children start watching TV much earlier, many still under the age of two (of course, it's so convenient - while a child is watching TV, you can run to the store, get your hair done, drink beer with a neighbor, but you never know …). As a result, watching cartoons has become the main child's occupation outside of school and kindergarten.

But if it has increased somewhere, then somewhere it must decrease! Children read less, go in for sports and walk less, draw less, mold and craft less. Cartoons could be beneficial if children watched them actively, that is, together with parents or acquaintances adults who could explain something, comment, decipher something, so that the child could use the information received for use in his games and studies. But, unfortunately, children cook in their own juice while watching cartoons, assimilating the most superficial information, since most modern cartoons are not aimed at solving educational and educational problems. And they are aimed at solving completely different problems.

Thirdly, modern cartoons, TV series, computer games, etc. are all marketing projects of varying grandeur. They are specially made (using the most modern knowledge in psychology, sociology, marketing, management) for the purpose of managing consumer behavior - including children. That is, they are made in order to produce consumers, to instill in people (including children) needs that do not exist in them, which will force them to buy certain goods and - even worse - to be guided by a certain way of life. Which they will consider the most correct and best! The "heroes" of cartoons will gradually be forgotten, and the addiction to a certain lifestyle and to consumerism in general will remain.

It is characteristic that modern domestic cartoons are built according to the same template - as marketing campaigns. So, for example, the TV series "Smeshariki", which our children love, is completely and completely like that. Moreover, it is indicative that, as evidenced by studies of children's perception of this series, children do not understand the plots and dialogues of this series, they are not able to play Smeshariki (except football - with dolls of cartoon characters), but they demand that their parents buy dolls and images of cartoon characters and other personal belongings associated with it. That is, meaningfully and culturally, "Smeshariki" does not give children anything - nothing at all! - but he does an excellent job of educating consumerism.

Needless to say that consumption, absorbed literally almost with mother's milk (very young children, from 2 years old, watch Smesharikov), leads to deep damage to the psyche and development of children, which can hardly be corrected later without absolutely titanic effort. But "Smeshariki" - one might say, is still just a student's work of our domestic "specialists" who are just beginning to understand why cartoons are "really" needed. What can we say about the harm caused to our children by the creations of foreign "masters" - but even the same spider-men and Winx fairies!