Who instilled the stigmas that the fox is cunning, the wolf is evil and the donkey is stupid? The answer to this lies in the problematic way in which animals are presented in the culture of children and youth
Animals are very present in the culture of children and youth. The material and visual space that surrounds children, even from infancy, is very rich in dolls, toys and games in the form of animals. Visual images of animals are printed on accessories used by babies and children such as clothes, blankets, curtains in the children's room and more. In the children's library, almost every book includes animal characters. Also in movies and television programs for children - animal characters have a central role. The cultural space for children also includes "real" animals: petting areas, living areas, zoos and circuses, which are mainly aimed at children. When parents are asked why they adopted a pet into their home, they will usually answer that they did it for the sake of the children.
According to Dr. Tal Kogman, researcher of child and youth culture, vegan and activist for animal rights, "studies show that parents, educators, as well as psychologists and various emotional therapists in modern times, attribute great educational and emotional value to the contact and relationship of children with animals, and accordingly Children's worlds are filled with representations of animals, as well as flesh and blood animals."
"Children's literature plays a very central role in the design and distribution of animal representations in this space," explains Tal, who teaches in the master's degree program in the study of child and youth culture in the School of Cultural Sciences in the Faculty of Humanities. "In the majority of children's books, especially those aimed at young people, animal characters appear. In classic children's works such as "Little Red Riding Hood", "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865), "Pinocchio" (1883), "The Wind in the River Valley" (1908) and "Pooh the Bear" (1926), animal characters occupy a central place, alongside Human characters appearing in them or even exclusively.”
"The study of children's literature links this dominance of animals in children's literature to the way this literature developed in the modern period. Children's literature grew and took shape on the basis of folk literature - the supplementary and the practical - in which the frequency of the appearance of animal figures is high. Another explanation is related to the psychological symbolism attributed to animals, which is used by authors of children's literature to achieve different goals in the emotional and artistic-aesthetic field. And also - the multiple use of animal characters is due to the widespread perception that stories about animals are interesting to children, and thus they facilitate the transmission of didactic and ideological messages to the young recipients."
Human-animal relations
"In recent years, the appearance of animals in the culture of children and youth has received attention from another direction - from the study of "human-animal relations" (Human-Animal Studies). This field of research deals with the relationships between humans and animals in different cultures, past and present, including representations and images of animals in literature and child and youth culture."
"Research on human-animal relations points to some key characteristics of the presence of animals in the culture of children and youth. First and foremost, he points out that the distance between the representations of animals and the animals themselves - those living in nature or in urban complexes - is great. The main and prominent trend in the culture of children and youth is the humanization of animal characters: the animals are given human qualities and human motivations. They are dressed as humans, talk like us, and most of the time the material environment in which they operate is not at all similar to the real one. In other words, the animals in the child and youth culture are in a sense present-absent. They exist as a "shell" without content, or to use another metaphor - as a "hanger" on which we hang human characteristics and needs."
"Another striking characteristic is the stereotypical manner in which the animals are designed. They are usually labeled by a single trait, for example, the donkey is stupid, the lion is heroic, the rabbit is cowardly, the horse is noble, and the wolf is of course evil (as in the story of Little Red Riding Hood). It is true that the authors of children's literature often use these images while breaking them (like the cowardly lion who develops courage in The Wizard of Oz), but even in these cases the repertoire of familiar animal stereotypes is used, and thus children's literature contributes to their preservation."
"Another question that this study deals with concerns the design methods of the normative and desirable relationships between man and animal in the plots of the books and films for children and youth. For example, in Red Riding Hood, killing the wolf is presented as positive and the hunter is in the figure of the savior. In many stories, the human character shows patronage towards the animal characters, such as Christopher Robin's attitude towards Winnie the Pooh and his animal friends. This patronizing pattern of humans towards animals is very common in children's literature, and is also reflected in other dimensions in the space of children's and youth culture, such as in petting zoos and animal circuses."
"Although we find here and there works of children's literature, some of which are even canonical, that offer a different design of human-animal relations, such as The Black Colt (1877), Doctor Doolittle (1952-1920), and The Magic Farm (1952), but they do not change the The general trend described above.”
Child and youth culture as a political space
"In our time, in which the living areas of animals are rapidly disappearing, the extermination of animal populations is taking place on a large scale, and huge ecological problems are caused by industrialized animal interfaces - researchers of human-animal relations point to the culture of children and youth as a political space, which works to preserve anthropocentric concepts (man in the center) traditionalism. As the unmediated contact of children with animals becomes less common in today's urban and industrialized society, the role of child and youth culture becomes more and more critical in shaping our relationship with the animal world, in the present and in the future," concludes Tal.
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