A Comparison in the Ways in Which sesame Street and teletubbies address and Construct the Child Viewer

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Sesame Street can be said to have a very basic storyline structure in the sense that there is flow from one sketch to the other through the interaction of the live action puppets and actual actors playing characters within the show. This can be seen in the screened episode where Gordon leads Sally to meet the characters within the show while the dialogue and the actions lead to different sketches. This helps appeal to the slightly older children who can grasp it while also challenging their intellectual skills. As with the Teletubbies, there is a repetition of words and actions that are used to impart the knowledge and skills to the children. Segments like Word of the Day, Letter of the day, Number of the day which repeated within the episode helps in instilling basic skills and knowledge like the alphabet, numbers, basic hygiene and how to interact with each other. The humour, colourful characters, story lines and song performances with an emphasis on audience participation helps in the learning and mastering of new skills (Minton 141).

Gender Representation

Identifying the various ways in which gender is represent in children’s television is important because children’s are extremely susceptible to new information and it could colour their view of the real world. According to a study done by Halim, Ruble and Tamis-LeMonda, that even though young children are mostly free of gender hierarchy, exposure to television increases their awareness while the higher value society gives to males affect how those children choose their academic career and occupations in later life (128-135). In regards to this, it can be said that Teletubbies is good educational program as it does not portray gender stereotypes to young children which can be seen in the fact that there are equal number of male and female characters with Dipsy and Tinky Winky being males and Lala and Po being females. The children are able to differentiate between the characters in regards to their gender even though they do not exhibit typical male and female behaviour as Tinky Winky carries a handbag while Po drives a scooter (Lemish and Tidhar 558-574).

Although, Sesame Street is an extremely prestigious children’s television series, it still falls into the gender norms still prevalent in majority of the television shows. According to Ditsworth, the unequal balance of male and female characters in Sesame Street can influence young children to accept the view that males are the only one who have power in society and females are subjected to them (214-226). This dominance of male characters and gender stereotypes, which is seen in the screened episode of Sesame Street where the two older females are portraying the traditional role of housewives and most of the characters including the puppets are male, prevents the development of an open mind in young minds by the perpetuation of societal gender stereotypes. This leads to girls maintaining the image of being submissive and appealing while boys acquiring the image of being confident, controlling and strength. Therefore, Sesame Street which is widely regarded show that reaches more than a 100 countries should not be perpetuating gender stereotypes that impact children which will hinder them in achieving their full potential.

Conclusion

The two shows are similar in some ways and very unique in other ways. Each program appeals to its audience with their own style but in a practical approach that considers the viewers and what their intelligence level is. The shows have been extremely successful and have benefitted millions of young children and their parents particularly providing pre-school education to children who cannot afford to go to pre-school. The enhanced focus on education geared towards children as seen in this review by both shows have allowed them to set benchmarks for the production of educational children’s television shows in other countries. Although, they are successful they still have faced controversies regarding their content like gender representation which means that the shows still have ways in which they can be improved and modernized so that children can grow with an open mind and ability to grasp opportunities to realize their full potential. Finally, Teletubbies and Sesame Street have ingrained themselves in popular culture and no childhood would be complete without them

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