|
Author
|
Comment
|
dcapo
Registered User
(4/8/06 6:01 pm)
|
Please help!
Please allow me to apologize in advance for this maybe being long. I'm the mother of four grown children and the grandmother of 7. I have to write a research/arguement paper on Fairy Tales for my college English class. I'm just plain stuck for a thesis/claim. So far I've come up with a scenario of the family, mom, dad, 2 children 4 and 6, done with dinner and retireing to the living room to watch the news. The kids start a game of candyland on the floor in front of the tv. The news has a story of a mother who cuts of her 10mo. olds arms and won't go to trial because she is legally insane and will "be placed in the state's asylum until she is no longer considered a danger." The a story about a missing 4 year old who was found by a stream beaten, raped, naked and dead. Complete with video. Then the trial of the mother and father who sold their child to a child-sex ring. Of course all stories come with graphic video, explicit details from the reporter on the scene and comments from the newscasters in the studio. These kid's hear all of this, if you are a parent you know kid's don't miss a thing. Then it's bedtime and they get read a story by Dad. He picks the Grimm's version of Hansel and Gretel. Not the cleaned up and sanatized version either. The children are then told a story about an evil mother figure, a weak and gutless father figure, child abandonment, being lost in the forest, finding another evil female figure who tricks them, abduction, emotional and physical abuse, cannabilism, having to become a killer to survive, then thiefs, then running home to the parent who abandoned them in the first place. So, where's the magic, enchantment and moral lessons? I guess my question is should you read Grimms to little kids? Is there research? Or can someone suggest other thesis? PS I love this site. I like Zipes and Tatar. Freud and Yung are too deep for me. Bettelheim is an ass.
|
searsmith
Registered User
(4/8/06 6:53 pm)
|
Fairy Tale Violence Thesis Help
A better way to pose a thesis is to begin with the obvious yes or no argument you wish to make about exposing children to fairy tale violence (not presented as a question, but as your own opinion about what the public ought to think about this) and then add a secondary argument, which you then argue in more detail, about why (your chief reason) this should be so.
Any good argument will include qualification as it develops, so don't be concerned if, for example: 1) want to argue for limiting the kind or degree of fairytale violence, 2) find including illustrations is problematic, 3) believe different children will have different impacts from violence depending on their culture and life circumstance (especially since, and this speaks to Zipes' feeling that children's lit is an important instrument for socialization and acculturation, in the case of the Grimms originals, we no longer exist in the German culture of the early 19C, of course, which is why the Grimms themselves cleaned up earlier versions and why the French fairy tale writers of the 17C did the same).
You can find a good deal of research on children and media violence. I'm not sure how much of it is directed toward read violence. And certainly, you would want to argue for some distinction between violence kids know is real and that which is fictional, depending especially on their ages and ability to understand such a distinction (which occurs quite early).
Kelly (Dr. Searsmith)
|
dcapo
Registered User
(4/8/06 7:10 pm)
|
Re: Fairy Tale Violence Thesis Help
Thank you so much. Being out of school 35 years has made this college thing difficult. I was just wriing things down and hoping that something would click. You really are a God-send. I wasn't sure if I was even making sense. I just know as an adult I am less uneasy reading Stephen King than I am reading The Brothers Grimm. If I'm honest Grimms fairy tales parallel my life more than King's horror tales. I shouldn't have dropped psychology. Thank you Dr.Searsmith
|
searsmith
Registered User
(4/10/06 9:46 am)
|
More advice on argument
You'll get the hang of it -- just try to enjoy the process. You'll do better work when you enjoy it, especially the part where you piece together a good theory. That will keep you from finalizing a draft too soon.
Also, be sure to depersonalize your thesis. What I mean is, use your own experience, ideas, and impressions as a basis for your arguments, but don't argue directly from your own life, since that will seem too limited to other readers to be convincing evidence. Argue from general principles that you believe others might accept based on their good logic. And, as evidence, go to sources of shared experience and authority like the fairy tale texts, theories of child development, general claims about media impacts on children, and the like. You already have a good impulse to look these things up.
Do ask your faculty for help, too. That's what they're there for. Draft the paper or the thesis with support and take it in for a look in office hours.
|
|
