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ABSTRACT
Cartoon heroes play an important role in constructing gender narratives in children’s lives. According to previous studies, these narratives are often based on stereotypes, but they reflect new gender tendencies as well. This research analyses hero representations in Romanian children’s everyday lives. In East European countries, media consumption habits show remarkable differences between urban and rural environments; thus, in the present study, these gender narratives are discussed in a social context. Based on 80 interviews and group activities in 4 group sessions, this article presents the commercial and social aspects of the most popular cartoon heroes represented in various media. The findings of the study suggest that gendered heroes have a greater impact than genderless characters; however, several factors influence the process of children’s identifying with their favourite characters, such as social background, parents’ education, and the effect of the larger community.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my thanks to my PhD advisor Professor Dr Cseke Péter, and to my instructors from Budapest: Associate Professor Dr Hammer Ferenc and Lecturer Dr Pellandini-Simányi Léna. I would also like to thank my committee members, Associate Professor Dr Vincze Hanna Orsolya, Lecturer Dr Győrffy Gábor and Lecturer Dr Vallasek Júlia. I would like to express my appreciation to the members of my defence committee: Associate Professor Dr Antalóczy Tímea, Associate Professor Dr Bakó Rozália and Associate Professor Dr Magyari Tivadar. Furthermore, I would like to thank Lecturer Dr Keszeg Anna for editing and for her help during publishing my book, and to Dr Heidi Samuelson for proofreading and for her precious suggestions in the final stage of publishing the article.
I would especially like to thank to Lecturer Dr Fenesi Annamária for the statistics, to my husband Hermann László for his help with the informatics, and to my colleague Associate Professor Dr Virginás Andrea for her support and advice. Finally, I would like to express my special thanks to the children, parents, and educators who helped my research providing their data, and to the leaders of the institutes who allowed my data collecting.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Elisabeth Sweet (Citation2015).
2. Carol Auster (Citation2012).
3. Noémi Mráv (Citation2009).
4. Hungarians number nearly 1.5 million in Romania, living mostly in the west part of the country.
5. Bianca Fizesan (Citation2012, 83–99); Lepadatu Ioana and Delia Bălăban (Citation2009, 75–84).
6. Bruno Bettelheim (Citation1976).
7. Among these authors there are Hungarians like Vekerdy Tamás, who describes in detail how different fictional characters help children’s socializing process (Tamás Vekerdy Citation2001, 40–49), or Annamária Kádár (Citation2013), who gained popularity with her book titled Psychology of Tales.
8. Since Cluj-Napoca has a wide community of Hungarians, who use their mother language in almost all areas (schools, universities, entertainment, etc.), the social aspects of life can be best compared with those of inhabitants of a village with a Hungarian majority if we want to make an urban–rural comparison, because otherwise in the village we do not have enough people to see a community effect.
9. Based on developmental psychology, I compared two age groups of primary school children (1st and 2nd class with 3rd and 4th class).
10. The influence of language was taken into account owing to the existence of mixed families in the analysed group (where one of the parents is Hungarian and one Romanian).
11. That is, number of brothers and sisters.
12. Natasha Daly (Citation2017).
13. This is suggested in the study by Eva Änggård (Citation2005), who analysed narratives constructed by pre-school children: stories written by girls were based on everyday-life events, while stories written by boys were based on fighting.
14. Jamie J. Jirout and Nora S. Newcombe (Citation2015).
15. Bochner Stephen (Citation1994).
16. Jan M. Ochman (Citation1996).
17. Disney princesses were not calculated here, because there are multiple princesses and only their total number would have compared to the top eight heroes (while they were mentioned separately).
18. The family is classified in the high education group if at least one of the parents has higher education.
19. Morley talks about dominant, negotiated, and oppositional readings.
20. With a significance value of 0.009067.
21. Which is considered marginally significant with a significance value of 0.05410.
22. Vuk, the little orphan fox, is the only Hungarian cartoon hero among the most favourite characters.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Réka Kassay
Réka Kassay is a teaching assistant at the Photo, Film, and Media Department of Sapientia University, Cluj-Napoca. She received her PhD in media studies at the Babeș-Bolyai University in October 2013. After finishing her BA in film studies, she graduated from an MA programme in animation production for children at La Poudriere University, Valence. Her PhD thesis focused on the audience of animated movies, in collaboration with the Media Department of Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest. E-mail: [email protected]