Results tagged “children” from Uncivil Society
A powerful use of cartoon imagery in an ad for Brazil's Children's Cancer Support Center.
Still, as this incident from Oregon reminds us, a charity is not immune from intellectual property claims pertaining to the use of copyrighted or trademarked cartoons. Even children's cancer charities have been known to receive cease & desist letters.
In the immortal words of Dorothy Parker, Tonstant Weader twowed up.
The United Nations today named the Disney animated character Tinker Bell an “Honorary Ambassador of Green” to help promote environmental awareness among children.
The announcement came just prior to a screening at UN Headquarters in New York of the world premiere of the Walt Disney animated film, “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure.”
“We're delighted Tinker Bell has agreed to be our Honorary Ambassador of Green,” said Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. “This beloved animated character can help us inspire kids and their parents to nurture nature and do what they can to take care of the environment.”
A 1950 PSA teaches children to eat right and exercise. The fourth panel, in which the boy encounters breakfast cereal for the first time, is a snapshot from cereal's postwar transition from an adult health food to a nutrition delivery vehicle for children.
The Dicapo Opera is, in the words of one reviewer, "the closest thing New York has to a mini-Met." The photo above is from their latest season schedule, which features a fun juxtaposition between their "delectably sexy" production of Dangerous Liaisons and the faux-crayon infused Opera for Kids.
Tonight's the premier of NBC's The Philanthropist. Longtime readers of this site know how I react to do-gooder shots such as the one above--my mind whirls back through the 1960s into the late nineteenth century like some an imperialist version of Time Tunnel, swarming with images of white people bringing civilization and Pampers to the uncivilized primitives who desperately look to us to raise them from the depths of their corruption and incompetence.
Sure, as the New York Times reports the show reportedly includes the obligatory scene where The Philanthropist is chided for
playing the role of the charming rich businessman who travels the world, getting his hands just dirty enough to go back home and tell his American friends how meaningful his life is compared to theirs.
But that's an old rhetorical ruse, at once allowing viewers to assure themselves that they are not That Guy while reinforcing the more systemic problem. See, the show tells us, you're not just a dilettante. You really are leading them out of darkness, you really are their savior--in short, you are the master on whom they depend.
It's empire. It's racial supremacy. And it's something we should not indulge.
I know the show hasn't aired yet, but you could write enough to get tenure at Duke based on just the scenes described in the reviews and the obligatory white-guy-gives-hope-to-black-children photos released to promote the show.
Unless, of course, the scene depicted in the above PR photo ends with The Philanthropist blown up by an old British landmine.
Martina Fugazzotto is the award-winning author of comics aimed at giving teens an educational & entertaining introduction to sexuality. Below: her table at this weekend's MoCCA Art Fest.
Was having this as a nickname when I was in elementary school. Yay dinosaurs!
Now back to writing about social enterprise and values . . .
Via News From Me, a 1950s game show appearance by legendary comics writer Leo Dorfman features a revealing discussion about comics + society, from their popularity among soldiers in WWII to their suitability for children just a decade later.
Via Journalista & Scans Daily, a tender tale of a girl who fears that her family and friends may be causing global warming through their air conditioners--until they explain that air conditioners actually keep Earth's air cool!
Now this is embedded giving (ba dum bump!). For more info, click the pic below.
Throughout the ages the finger-painter, the play-do sculptor, the Lincoln-logger stood alone against the day care teacher of her time.
She did not live to earn approval stickers, she lived for herself that she might achieve things that are the glory of all humanity.
These are my terms, I do not care to play by any others. And if the court will allow me, it's nap time.
Note the windows. Design transparency was a key part of the growth of confidence in franchised fast food--sent the message that the place was sanitary and the food, healthy.
The memory of The Jungle was still fresh.
Via Robot6, this is brilliant stuff--an essential archive for anyone with an interest in the history of charity & public service.
The HBO series In Treatment reminds me of the 1950s comic Psychoanalysis, which used the comic book format to make Freudianism accessible.
The book is one of several noble failures in socially responsible publishing after the comic book inquisition of the 1950s; do-gooders interested in a more compelling example would do well to track down reprints of EC's earlier Shock SuspenStories, which took on racism, sexual exploitation, mob justice and host of other hot-button issues.
Another must-read from the same company: Judgment Day, in Weird Fantasy 18 (online here). This story & issues of Shock made a huge impression on me when I was a tyke scoring copies of ECs for a dollar a pop at flea markets & private homes.
A UK charity has sparked a religious war with a comic strip aimed at promoting tolerance. The latest issue of Who Cares? Trust magazine Klic! features Standing Up For What You Believe In, in which a cross-wearing Christian bullies a Muslim girl for wearing a hijab. The key scene (image above):
In a cartoon strip, a boy wearing a large cross around his neck is shown telling a friend that a smiling Muslim girl in a veil looks like a terrorist.
He later confronts her and shouts: "Hey, whatever your name is, what are you hiding under your turban?"
She replies that the garment is called a hijab and that it is part of her religion "like the cross you wear".
The girl is then shown standing up for another boy, who is being bullied, and her behaviour is contrasted with that of the boy wearing the cross.
Some Christians are in an uproar over being stereotyped as bigots, and the fact that the charity receives a substantial amount of funding from the government is only stoking the fire.
The charity's intriguing response: the cross is not a reference to Christians.
Who Cares? Trust chief executive Natasha Finlayson described the cross as "bling" rather than a religious symbol.
Via Robot 6
As if kids really needed a multibillion-dollar corporation to sell them on eating crayons . . .
Via Gothamist & Kinetic Carnival, video of a 1905 school outing to Coney Island. So much of interest here--the fashion, the barrel roll, the mechanical horse ride and, of course, the "charabang."
