Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us by Linda Christensen

Christensen's argument in her paper is that children and even us as adults are easily influenced by the Media. Christensen says, "Children's cartoons, movies, and literature are Perhaps  the most influential genre "read". Young people, unprotected by an intellectual armor, hear or watch these stories again and again, often from the warmth of their mother's or father's lap"(127).  Children learn from the cartoons or movies they watch daily but behind these cartoons their are many hidden messages.
         Christensen discusses the many stereotypes behind children movies. I never really thought  of cartoons and movies as having stereotypes until I read this paper. As I was growing up I always though of Media as just entertainment but this paper has opened my eyes and made me realized that that every cartoon is meant for teaching and influencing children. I found it interesting that one of my favorite cartoons as growing up has a bad influence on kids. I always knew ninja turtles is bad because of the violence but I never took a closer look at it. Towards the end of the paper Christensen shows a summary made by a student who took a closer look at ninja turtles. The paper says " The show is based on fighting the bad guy, shredder....they battle and fight but never get hurt. This cartoon teaches  a false sense of violence to kids: fight and you don't get hurt, or solve problems through fists and swords"(136).  Clearly the lesson taught with this cartoon is not good for kids they are being lied to because problems are not resolved with violence and if you do fight you get hurt.

A picture that I found online that goes with this article is the picture below. I chose this picture because it shows how Media basically feeds humans with information not necessarily true information.