Ute Sartorius Kraidy

Bio: Ute Sartorius Kraidy is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Multiculturalism. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 12 citations.

Sunny Days on Sesame Street? Multiculturalism and Resistance Postmodernism

Abstract: Now in its fourth decade, Sesame Street, which has been called one of the most influential children's shows in television history, plays an important role in shaping society's construction of multiculturalism. This article addresses the role of educational children's television as a contributor to the forging of the notion of multiculturalism by analyzing Sesame Street's suitability as a tool for multicultural pedagogy. Using McLaren's theory of resistance postmodernism (1994), this study argues that while Sesame Street does not directly provide a language for educators to critique social and cultural practices, it is a text that allows and invites multifaceted dialogues that critically discern an Other in the construction of identity.

Occupied childhoods: discourses and politics of childhood and their place in Palestinian and Pan-­Arab screen content for children

Abstract: This thesis explores changing discourses of childhood and the ways in which power relations intersect with socio-cultural norms to shape screen-based media for Palestinian children. Situated within the interdisciplinary study of childhood, the research is an institutional and textual analysis that includes discursive and micro-level analysis of the socio-political circumstances within which children consume media in present-day Palestine. The thesis takes a social constructionist view, arguing that ‘childhood’ is not a fixed universal concept and that discourses of childhood are produced at specific historical moments as an effect of power. The study has a three-part research agenda. The first section uses secondary literature to explore theories and philosophies relating to definitions of childhood in Arab societies. The second employs participant observation and semi-structured interviews to understand the history and politics of children’s media in the West Bank. The final part of the research activity focuses on the impact that definitions of childhood and the politics of children’s media have on broadcasting outcomes through an analysis of (a) discourses on children’s media that circulate in Palestinian society, and (b) local and pan-Arab cultural texts consumed by Palestinian children. The analysis demonstrates that complex ideological and political factors are at play, which has led to the marginalisation, politicisation and internationalisation of local production for children. Due to the lack of alternatives, local producers often rely on international funding, and are hence forced to negotiate competing definitions of childhood, which while fitting with an international agenda of normalising the Israeli occupation, conflict culturally and politically with local conceptions of childhood and hopes for the Palestinian nation. While the Palestinian community appreciates the positive potential of local production, discourses and strategies around children’s media show that Palestinian children are constructed as vulnerable, incomplete and in constant need of guidance. Pan-Arab content presents a slightly less didactic approach and in certain cases presents childhood as a dynamic space of empowerment. However, by constructing children as ‘consumercitizens’, it alienates Arab (and Palestinian) children from disadvantaged backgrounds,as the preferred audience is middle-class children living in oil-rich countries of the Gulf.

Parasocial Breakup Among Young Children in the United States

Abstract: A survey of parents of children 2 to 8 years old was conducted to investigate parasocial relationships (PSR) and experiences with parasocial breakup among young children. Results indicated that boys were significantly more likely to have a female favorite character at a younger age than at their current age, but girls were no more likely to have a male favorite character at a younger age than at their current age. As children aged and transitioned to new favorite media characters, boys' favorite characters became more masculine and girls' favorite characters became more feminine. Child maturation, the influence of other media characters, and habituation to the character were the most commonly cited reasons for children experiencing parasocial breakup. Findings are discussed in terms of the similarities between face-to-face friendship dissolution and parasocial breakup among children and the importance of character gender to children's PSR, especially as children mature.

“They Are?!”: Latino Difference vis-à-vis Dragon Tales

Abstract: This article examines the ways that the animated children's program Dragon Tales wavers between deracinating its lead characters, Emmy and Max, and exoticizing the racialized difference that Enrique, a recent addition to the program, embodies. The analysis begins with the contention that the effacement of Latinos' physical, cultural, and linguistic differences vis-a-vis the representation of Emmy and Max constitutes an understandable strategy for neutralizing the otherness of Latinos but actually undermines multiculturalism because it fails to nurture children's ability to live fearlessly with and within difference. The program is further problematized through the argument that the crafting of Enrique only reinscribes the otherness of Latinos. With the effacement of Latino difference on one hand and the exoticization of Latino difference on the other, Dragon Tales ends up an example of a program unable to model and nurture a healthy accommodation of difference.

Behind the Screen: The Role of State‐TV Relationships in Russia, 1990–2000*

Abstract: Les systemes de regulation de la production des programmes televisuels sont aussi importants dans les etudes des medias que l'analyse du corps d'un texte. l'economie politique rend possible l'etude des programmes televisuels et des systemes de regulation de la production televisuelle dans un seul modele de meme que leurs interconnections. Deux systemes regulateurs de television sont decrits, et les dynamiques de leur transformation sont presentees. Les resultats des entrevues avec les fonctionnaires de l'industrie televisuelle sont utilises pour examiner l'influence des relations entre l'Etat et les entreprises de television sur le contenu des programmes produits par la television russe entre 1990 et 2000. This paper argues that the content of television programs is influenced by how their production is organized and regulated. The political-economic approach provides a useful framework to link television programs and the regulation of TV production within a single model, and to investigate their interrelationship. Two systems of TV regulation are described in this paper and their evolution is discussed. Data from in-depth qualitative interviews with Russian television industry insiders are used to examine the impact of changes in the regulation of television on the types and content of programs produced between 1990 and 2000.

Reproducing “Really Useful” Workers: Children's Television as an Ideological State Apparatus

Abstract: This article compares three popular children's public television shows—Thomas & Friends, Barney & Friends, and Bob the Builder—to an earlier PBS children's program, Sesame Street. Utilizing Althusser's theory of ideology and Hall's theory on encoding/decoding, we examine the underlying process of signification in these media texts and argue that children's television plays an important role as an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). We complicate the existing research on children's television programming and provide an alternative approach for understanding, situating the content of these shows against the sociohistorical changes in the social relations of production that have occurred since the emergence of neoliberal capitalism as a dominant ideological discourse. We argue that newer media texts such as Thomas are more closed than Sesame Street, which emerged prior to the shift toward neoliberalism, though in the newer programs contradictions exist that could serve to undermine rather than support neolibe...