Powerplay
Children, Toys and Popular Culture
Published on 26. September 1996
Book
Hardback
220 pages
978-0-7190-4716-9 (ISBN)
Description
From My Little Pony to Batman, from Lego to Nintendo, the toys that children play with make sense of their worlds. Should boys play with guns? Should girls play with Barbie dolls? This book investigates the marketing of toys, and their effects upon children. In an increasingly global media culture, toys are both consumer products and playthings, revealing a complex relationship between capitalist economics on the one hand and child psychology on the other. This study challenges accepted orthodoxies on the gendered and cultural meaning of toys. The author of this text argues that today's toys have the suppressed capacity to escape the very stereotypes of gender and power which they apparently reproduce. He also argues that toys are essential in the development of children into adults, and thus to civilization and culture. He states that violence and aggression on television and in the playground point to a deep and complex correlation between what children see and their behaviour and thought processes.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Manchester
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
50 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 138 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-7190-4716-9 (9780719047169)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Content
Part 1 Cultural studies and children's culture: children, texts and toys as "objects"; effectivity and a structure of feeling; from cultural studies to play; "go, go, power rangers!"; related research. Part 2 Toys today and the playing child: from Barbie to aliens; from wrestlers to dinosaurs; male identity as organizing principle; the video game; the developmental approach to the playing child; conformity or coping?; the harmonizing object (from steamboat to Mr Atomic); characteristics of play; play's characteristics modified; the pretence of being good; play exceeds the pretence (from Struwwelpeter to Freddy); historical versions of childhood. Part 3 The history and narrativization of toys: the element of narrativized spectacle; totems of power; dolls as adult visions of childhood - the million dollar baby; the coming of the machine; mass production and industrial growth; media merchandising; metonymic elaboration - from GI Joe to Star Wars toys; narrative and total marketing; once upon a Joe; production (from Sonneberg to Gaungdong); "America has been Turtled!"; multinational capitalism and culture toy retailing; a manufacturing case study - the UK; the new consumer. Part 4 Toys and society: the mechanical soap-opera; the infiltration of everyday life; object relations and aggression; television and violence; turtlemania; martial arts imagery; blending individualism and collectivity; the turtles - beyond post-liberal pessimism?; a system of meanings; images of society - the Britains farm; a Pizza Hut in Barbie's shopping mall; a semiotics of toys; metaphor and metonymy in toys. Part 5 Video games and identities: spectator or player?; gendered playing or playing with gender?; opening and closing; Mario and My Little Pony; playing the microworld; opening and closing in the gameworld; playing the other.