What is the explanation of the adultization and vulgarization of animated short videos?

Investigate motivations

Recently, Ms. Zhang from Jinan, Shandong Province, called to report that when she was tutoring her daughter in her homework, due to disagreement between the two parties, her daughter erected a "stupid wave one" in her. An angry Ms. Zhang harshly criticized her daughter and learned from her mouth that the swear words and insulting gestures were learned from short animated videos. She looked at the short animated videos her daughter often watched, and found that there was no shortage of vulgar language, adulthood and violent scenes.

　　

"Isn't it harmful, children can't fully understand the meaning when they watch animated videos, so they just imitate and use them, and develop many bad habits. Ms. Zhang said that the relevant departments should take care of the problem.

　　

At present, are the phenomena of adulthood, vulgarization, and violence of short animated videos widespread? What are the strategies for dealing with them? This reporter conducted an investigation into this.

"Which one do you want to hug, stinky feet or fragrant feet?"

I saw that Xiaoxue, the protagonist of the animated short video, chose stinky feet without hesitation, and said that she liked stinky feet. Xiaoxue hugged her stinky feet for a minute and was rewarded with 1 million gold coins. This made Xiaobei next to him envious, and picked up his stinky feet in a similar way. The girls got the gold coins and cheered, "Great, you can get so much money with stinky feet!"

　　

Recently, the children of Ms. Liu, a citizen of Beijing, became obsessed with such a cartoon, and the first thing they did when they got home from school was to turn on the projector. I thought it would be good for my children to watch cartoons, until she saw the above scene - isn't this money worship, teaching children that they can do anything as long as they are given money. She watched a few episodes and found that the later episodes were even more outrageous: "If you wet the bed 200 times, you can get the certificate of the bedwetting king, and your parents can be beaten by me casually ......"

　　

With the rapid development of the Internet, the animation industry ushered in the spring, but because most of the viewers are minors, the bad problems of some cartoons have gradually been revealed, and many parents report that their children often imitate the protagonists in cartoons in life, saying some dirty words and making inappropriate speech and behavior. Previously, due to the existence of phenomena such as "inappropriate violence and vulgar language", "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf" and "Bear Infested" were required to rectify the content, which attracted public attention.

　　

The reporter of "Rule of Law Daily" combed and found that in recent years, there have been countless cartoons that have been taken off the shelves, stopped broadcasting, or required to be rectified, mainly involving violence, blood, inappropriate plots, adultization, vulgarization and other issues. For such phenomena, some parents and industry experts have called for the introduction of content standards for domestic cartoons, and strict restrictions on violent, vulgar, dangerous plots and uncivilized language. At the same time, we may wish to learn from the practice of implementing a "grading system" in some countries, and the relevant departments will strictly manage it accordingly, and the platform will strictly implement it accordingly, so that creators can also classify their creations to protect the needs of audiences of different ages and levels.

Violence, absoluteness, and vulgar language

Brainless animations are very harmful

"Children often watch some short animated videos, which are full of words of fighting, killing, and some characters are dressed in revealing clothes, and deliberately pose strangely or say some vulgar swear words, such as stinky dog shit, perverted, head in water, death, death of the whole family, etc. Mr. Zhou of Haidian District, Beijing, told reporters that his 11-year-old son usually likes to use a tablet computer to watch short animated videos on some apps, and because he is worried about bad shots, he will first check it on the Internet or quickly browse it himself to see if it is suitable for children to watch.

Ms. Zhang, from Jinan, Shandong Province, and Mr. Zhou have the same problem. Her daughter is 10 years old this year, and because she is usually busy with work, she has no time to spend with her children, so she uses the online TV at home to watch her favorite cartoons. Once, when the two had a conflict, the child called her a "bad mother", "punched and kicked" her, and sometimes threatened her, "If you don't buy me toys, I'll ......." Ms. Zhang paid attention to it, and she went to check the cartoons that her daughter often watched and found that there were a lot of violent content in them, such as "I want to beat you flat", "I want to destroy you", etc., and the female characters in some short videos were also very exposed. "When I thought that the baby used to watch this kind of brainless animation every day, I was so angry that my high blood pressure came up. ”

　　

The reporter searched on a third-party complaint platform and found that there were thousands of complaints about "adultization, vulgarization, and violence of cartoons". As early as April 2021, the Jiangsu Provincial Consumer Rights Protection Commission released the "Investigation Report on Infringement of Minors' Growth and Safe Consumption in the Field of Animation", sorting out 1,465 problems from 21 popular cartoons, focusing on vulgar language, violent scenes, dangerous behaviors, etc. According to the report, 80% of the parents surveyed support strict control of screening standards.

Zhang Xiaobing, deputy director of the Institute of Juvenile and Child Studies of the China Youth Research Center, pointed out that minors are in a critical period of physical and mental development, the three views are still being established, and the ability to discriminate and judge is not high.

　　

According to a survey on juvenile legal education conducted by Zhang Xiaobing's team, in the face of bad information on the Internet, 0.9% of teenagers imitate it, 4.1% continue to pay attention to it, and 2.8% forward it to classmates or friends. Especially in terms of vulgar language, some minors will use Internet language stalks, foul language, and even some uncivilized language, which is not conducive to the learning and inheritance of excellent traditional Chinese culture.

Mr. Zhou agrees, "Some deformed relationships between men and women in cartoons can make children form wrong values, and violent content will gradually affect children's behavior, such as he often swears in his life and makes insulting remarks to his elders, which I am very distressed about."

The role of parents is indispensable

Guide your child to be positive

According to Zheng Ning, director of the Law Department of the School of Cultural Industry Management of Communication University of China, cartoons containing violent and bloody, dark terror, and instigation of crimes, as well as cartoons with problems such as pretending to be exposed, pornographic and vulgar, and bloody and terrifying scenes, violate the Law on the Protection of Minors, the Cybersecurity Law, and the Measures for the Administration of Internet Information Services. The relevant regulatory authorities should crack down on some cartoons that clearly violate the law, and platforms should also consciously take measures to prevent cartoons containing such content from being put on the shelves, or modified and then put them on the shelves.

Regarding the reasons for the frequent occurrence of such chaos, Li Danlin, a professor at the School of Cultural Industry Management of Communication University of China, analyzed that if the core of minors' education is not to strive to cultivate their sound personality, good ethical literacy, and physical and mental health, but to be obsessed with utilitarian goals, so as to ignore the former, then people who grow up in this environment may also be difficult to uphold media ethics and due responsibility when entering the field of communication, and play a role in the good creation of communication order.

　　

Zhang Xiaobing believes that unclear cognition is one of the important reasons, for example, there are some views that plots such as pornography and vulgarity and money worship are only the focus of content creation, and do not belong to the problem of violating the law. She and her team members have conducted research on children's online soft pornography, and found that some people believe that children's online soft pornography is neither illegal nor affects the physical and mental health of minors.

　　

The interviewed experts suggested that parents should actively stop their children from watching inappropriate programs when they find them, and guide their children to watch positive programs to help them develop good viewing habits. Encourage the public to make complaints and reports on cartoons that contain content such as violence and gore, dark terror, and instigation of crimes. Relevant platforms should strengthen regulation, set up youth models, reasonably limit the content that young people can watch, and adjust this issue in terms of viewing channels.

Zheng Ning also believes that parents have the right to report, but whether to remove from the shelves must be in accordance with the provisions of the law and in line with the relevant procedures, and cannot be removed from the shelves as soon as there is a report, after all, the legitimate rights and interests of cartoon investors, producers and authors should also be protected, and the disposal of cartoons should comply with the principle of proportionality.

Gradually implement the grading system

The quality of practitioners needs to be improved

In the interview, some industry insiders pointed out that there is no clear classification system in the mainland animation industry, and animation companies are increasingly integrating adult elements into the production in order to make their products have a wider market, resulting in frequent chaos in the animation market.

"Nowadays, short video content is all-encompassing, and different videos are suitable for different people, but now anyone can pick up their mobile phone and browse the content at will. If possible, I would like to rate the video content so that children are not exposed to this inappropriate content. Ms. Zhang said.

An animation industry practitioner who did not want to be named told reporters that the film and television rating system is a reference system in some countries rather than a mandatory regulation, and it is more similar to industry self-regulation, or for consumers' reference. Theoretically, works of all levels will appear on the market, but the rating will affect the consumption decisions of guardians, and protect minors through the market behavior of consumers themselves.

　　

On March 16, 2021, the State Administration of Radio and Television issued a notice to publicly solicit the "Radio and Television Law of the People's Republic of China (Draft for Solicitation of Comments)", clarifying that integrated radio and television program broadcasting institutions shall establish and improve mechanisms such as the evaluation committee for minors' programs through measures such as the establishment of special time slots for minors, to prevent the commercialization, adultization, and excessive entertainment of programs for minors, and to protect the lawful rights and interests of minors. The draft has sparked heated discussions in the society, and many people regard this provision as a signal that the film and television classification system will be implemented soon.

　　

But to this day, the system has not been implemented. In Li Danlin's view, the main reason behind this is that there is no overlap between the core considerations of the hierarchical system and the overall communication policy and regulatory concept. The problem of the grading system includes the concept of its understanding, how to establish the grading criteria in the new communication environment, and how to construct the mechanism for the implementation and application of the grading criteria.

　　

Zhang Xiaobing believes that the implementation of the grading system is difficult, "For example, what is the standard for grading? In 2022, the number of underage netizens in mainland China has exceeded 193 million, is it based on age and grade? Or is it based on the content and field of film and television videos? Who will formulate the grading standards? How to construct the review mechanism at different levels? It is difficult to determine whether entering a certain level is fixed or whether it can flow freely to other levels, and what the specific entry and exit procedures are. ”

　　

To this end, she suggested that first of all, the grading standards should be clarified; secondly, a grading committee should be established, which will be composed of relevant department personnel, experts, teachers, parents, Internet enterprise practitioners, etc.; third, the grading procedures should be clarified, and there should be specific entry and exit procedures for the grading of each film and television video.

　　

The experts interviewed suggested that the scale of cartoons should be graded according to the acceptability and needs of different age groups, so as to avoid the scale of cartoons exceeding the acceptable range for children. For example, Japanese cartoons are divided into four levels, of which G-level animation means that it is suitable for all ages, PG12 animation means that under the age of 12 needs to be accompanied by an adult to watch, R15 animation means that it is forbidden to watch under the age of 15, and R18 animation means that it is forbidden to watch under the age of 18. The classification system of Japanese animation has made its animation industry develop rapidly, and the mainland can learn from it appropriately.

　　

Some people in the industry also proposed that the film and television classification system should be jointly established by the relevant units for the protection of minors and the film and television departments, psychology and sociology professionals. Even though the classification system at the national level has not yet been introduced, the current market concentration of Internet screening platforms is relatively high, and several platforms have technically and spontaneously established grading standards, which is also operable. However, the spontaneously established system cannot replace regulation, and if a spontaneous grading system is established, it will cause some trouble to creators, which needs to be considered. At present, the initiative to establish a grading system should still be vested in the regulatory authorities.

　　

In addition, the quality of domestic film and television practitioners also needs to be improved. At present, whether the concept of content creators in the film and television industry on the education of minors is scientific, whether they have received relevant disciplines and ethics education are all factors that affect the grading of works. For most filmmakers, their focus is still on the work itself, and they do not yet have the awareness or ability to take into account the technical aspects of the protection of minors. The above-mentioned animation industry practitioners suggest that the cultural and value education of animation talents should be strengthened to create a clear viewing space for minors.

Source: Rule of Law Daily