1.Introduction
Cartoon is nowadays one of the most popular medias for children all over the world. Lot of successful Cartoons are created since 1920s. We have Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry, Crayon Shin-chan. As we can see, those cartoons which was created by companies from different countries can also be really popular globally. It shows language is not a problem anymore for people to understand medias from other country. Most of Cartoons are really fun to watch, but are they actually educational or do they sometimes mislead children. Besides international cartoons, Chinese cartoons started to show up and develop since most of family had their own television. I would like to talk more about how those cartoons look like and how they might influence Chinese children.
2.Description of some famous Chinese cartoons
The very first one I am going to introduce is called Haier Brothers. It is about a intelligent old man create two people who are called Haier brother, and the purpose for creating them is to travel around the world and help local people with natural disaster. This series were created in 1995 which is one of the most successful cartoon in early period of Chinese cartoon development.
The second one is called Pleasant Sheep and Grey Wolf which I grew up with, This series basically talks about how a wolf is trying to kill sheep and eat them and how sheep use their brain to be alive. This series were created in 2005. Comparing with Haier Brother, its image quality was improved a lot and transition between one story to next one is also better.
The last I am going to talk about is Boonie Bears which was created in 2012. The story is about how forest ranger is trying to prevent people from cutting down trees. The image quality is almost the best in Chinese cartoons, and it is also what children nowadays prefer to watch.
3. Positive Influences of those cartoons
As we can see, creator always try to make their main plot be educational and simple. In Haier Brothers, children can learn a lot when Haier brothers are traveling the world such as local culture from different countries, what should we do when during earthquake and some knowledge of science and biology. In Pleasant Sheep and Grey Wolf, even though children can not study that much knowledge in Haier Brother, they are able to learn to consider what to do even in critical situation like how sleep react when they are caught by wolves. Also, never being a bad person is what this series told children. The principle Boonie Bears is trying to tell is more direct which is protecting our forest or our earth.
4.Potential misleading in those cartoons
It is true that the main plot is always good for children and education, but some of episodes in it are still controversial. The target audience of cartoons is certainly children who is just starting to know what this world looks like, and they are very easy to trust what others said or what showed in the television.
Here is an episode of Haier Brothers which illustrate the process of creating Haier Brothers, adult will absolutely not believe it, because they know how a person is born. However, for children who is watching this episode and they usually know nothing about how a person is born, it is really possible for them to trust it and think this is how people was created.
https://youtu.be/4ZOFtyutdC4?t=318
(From 5:18-8:18)
The other episode might mislead children is in Pleasant Sheep and Grey wolf. Grew wolf’ wife always punish him because of failure of catching sheep, and one of them is using a pan to hit his head, and he will be fine in a minute. I am not sure what might happen if children think it is true. They might do the same thing to their classmates, because they believe their classmates will be fine in a minute.
https://youtu.be/Whjq4ipY6Aw?t=674
The most controversial part in Boonie Bears is there are too many impolite words like “stupid”. It is better than previous two, because most people notice that and lots of parents have reported it. Now, Boonie Bears finishes its revision.
5. Conclusion
In conclusion, quality of Chinese cartoons were usually very low comparing to other countries at first. After the appearance of Haier Brother, Chinese cartoon is getting better and better whatever in image quality or transition from stories to stories. Most of those successful cartoon are extremely educational for children in main plot. However, it is still not perfect, because some of episodes in series might mislead children which is not acceptable. If creator of cartoon can realize this can really be a problem and try to revise it, I believe Chinese cartoons can actually reach a new height.