If values are right then what’s left:

Life lessons from marketing

Susan Linn, EdD

 

Spurred by the right wing’s “outing” of  SpongeBob SquarePants,  progressives around the country are ardently defending the ubiquitous yellow sponge, just as they passionately stood up for Tinky Winky, from the PBS children’s series Teletubbies, who was accused of being gay by none less than the Reverend Jerry Falwell.  I abhor homophobia and find it reprehensible to use children’s entertainment to promote hatred--but the characterization of media icons as innocent or innocuous is naive.  From SpongeBob to the Incredible Hulk, cartoon and media characters sell children everything from junk food to cell phones—and it’s not good for them.

 

Today you are going to hear from my colleagues that the pervasive commercial culture contributes to a range of childhood ills.  As we take it all in, it’s important to remember that, in addition to products, corporations market values—and the values marketed to children are antithetical not just to their health and well-being, but to the health of democracy as well.  Being a good customer is not the same as being a good citizen.

 

Democracy survives if society adheres to a set of agreed upon values and behaviors such as cooperation, activism, critical thinking, peaceful resolution of conflict, and altruism that are learned in childhood.  Children may learn these at home, at school, or on the playground but not in the marketplace.  The language and the transactions of the marketplace have been adopted by the political process.  Candidates are packaged and sold as brands.  Children’s exposure to civics, civic education, and civic values is diminishing even as their exposure to commercial values escalates.

 

They are exhorted to turn to brands for their identity and, in doing so, embrace loyalty to a particular company for life.  Brand loyalty may be beneficial to corporations but it’s not beneficial to consumers.  As brand loyalty increases, customers are less sensitive to changes in how much that brand costs.[i]  Brand loyal consumers might keep buying a brand even if their original reasons for purchasing it–such as cost or quality–may no longer be valid, and even if it is actually in their best interest to buy the same kind of product from a different company.    Doesn’t unthinking loyalty to a politician or a political brand dull a voter’s inclination to make comparisons with other candidates or examine voting records?

 

Impulse buying is another behavior problematic for democratic citizenship.  A healthy democracy depends on citizens who look beyond a candidate’s surface promises and packaging to what they actually do and say.  The slogan “Just Do it” which has served Nike well for many years, implies that it’s better not to think too much.  The Coca Cola Slogan “Stop Thinking” is even more explicit.   Don’t think about whether you can afford, or even need, those sneakers. Just do it. Stop thinking about the calories in coke.  Don’t think about this candidate’s values or record.  Don’t bother grappling with issues.  Apple’s latest iPod campaign “Life is Random”—a rather cynical corruption of Buddhist philosophy---sends another troubling message:  Don’t bother working toward change.            

 

Democracy thrives on activism and not lassitude. In commercial land, as children learn to rely on products to solve their problems, make them cool, or bring them happiness they also learn to be passive.  Passivity is adaptive in a dictatorship but terrible for democracy.  When passivity is combined with ‘me first’ messages the overlying message is that there’s no point in doing anything unless it’s for personal gain.  Doesn’t democracy rely on activism, cooperation, at least a modicum of altruism and citizens who understand the need for a balance between individual and majority rights?  I do know young people who are passionate about activism, but I also believe there is a connection between the onslaught of marketing messages and the fact that eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds who grew up during the intensification of marketing are notoriously apathetic about voting?  And the results from MTV’s efforts to “Rock the Vote” or Snoop Doggy Dog’s “Vote or Die,” campaign were pretty paltry.[ii]

 

A healthy democracy relies on a population with a capacity for civility and peaceful conflict resolution.  Yet themes of violence, trickery and other anti-social behavior are often found in children’s commercials.[iii]  We are selling our children as audience share to the highest bidder. 

 

Whatever our political persuasion, fond memories of our own pop culture and a belief that our children have a right to the same experience can mean that we don’t want to face the degree to which today’s popular culture is corporate owned, initiated, and controlled. 

 

Both the Right and the Left have abandoned children in the marketplace.   The Corporate Right’s refusal to regulate certainly undermines the religious right’s concerns about media sex and violence.  Both the Right and the Left are often reluctant to look hard at first amendment protections of commercial speech.  And, until recently the Left has shied away from even talking about values. Their silence on the commodified sexuality marketed to children leaves a political void that is happily filled by the Religious Right.  Even as we fervently support sex education in the schools, let us acknowledge that the precocious and irresponsible sexuality being marketed to younger and younger children is harmful to girls and women.  After the 2004 Superbowl, as Conservatives were decrying the exposure of Janet Jackson’s nipple, Progressives should have been outraged right along with them.  After all, millions of children watched a man rip a woman’s blouse off.  And all of us should have extended our outrage to those Superbowl beer commercials gunning for kids by featuring a panoply of talking animals. 

 

In order to stop marketing’s impact on public health problems and to curb its assault on family, religious and democratic values, both sides of the political spectrum are going to have to change.  The Right is going to have to bite the bullet and support government regulation of corporations and the Left is going to have to rethink its definition of free speech as it applies to child-targeted advertising. 

 

It will take a cacophony of creative protest at the local, state, and national level to foment change.   It’s not going to occur from the top down.  Among the topics you hear about today, find one that you’re passionate about and get involved.  Do something to make it better.  We all need to be activists about child-targeted marketing.   The health and well-being of our children—and our democracy—is at stake.

Susan Linn EdD (slinn@jbcc.harvard.edu) is the associate director of the Media Center of Judge Baker Children's Center and instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is the author of Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood.