I do not entirely understand some of the discussions on this network. Judith Simpson's original posting included this:

'TV programmes and associated merchandising direct boys and girls into different cultural arenas; once there they start to participate in different fantasies, different shared meanings; these meanings are then incorporated into their sense of being masculine or feminine.'

Does this mean that children did not categorise themselves or think about male and female roles before advertising? The quotation appears to say this, but to me, it is absurd to think it is the case. I was 9 before TV advertising started in the UK, and 10 before I saw any, yet I was into 'boys toys' as much as other boys (and puppets - but they are not *quite* the same as dolls!)

It is clear to me that advertisers exploit what is already present. The differences between the sexes are inescapable for the vast majority of the population. Even in children, hormone levels are different in boys and girls - how can emotional experiences then be the same? The way a group of 10 and 11 year old boys *move*, for heaven's sake, is different from the way a similar group of girls moves. 

As I work with boys and girls, on near-adult terms (i.e. I make demands on them similar to those of the adults in my casts), I find age for age that girls respond in a more focused and reliable/consistent way than boys. That these differences are not to do with television or advertising, I assert as a former medical student and TV director!
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So far as TV dramas go, Anna Home's book 'Into the Box of Delights' (1993-ish) gives a mention to many of the dramas for children since WW II. In the 60's, Jenina, the BBC reconstituted Children's Programmes as a department. In this second incarnation, until about 1972-ish, all the drama shown in the weekdays and on Sunday afternoons for children and families was made by Drama Department. It was only under Anna as Exec. Producer on 'Jackanory' that BBC Children's Programmes began to make its own drama again, beginning with 'Joe and the Gladiator'. Monica Sims was then Head of Children's Programmes. I think the 60's were a bit of a dead spot - or was I merely not interested at that time? (There were 'family Dramas then , but often Dickens or the like.)

Unlike BBC Children's Programmes, BBC's Drama has generally (exclusively?) been run by men. Nonetheless, there were 'girls stories' dramatised: 'Anne of Green Gables' (50's version & 70's) was one. Then there was .... ummmm.

I can think of other 'girl's stories' made by Children's Programmes, i.e. series featuring girls in the main roles: 
'The Changes' (BBC 70's); 
'Break in the Sun' (BBC 1980); 
'Mortimer and Arabel' (BBC 90's); 
'Heidi' (BBC 50's); 
'The Secret Garden' (BBC about every 10 years); 
'The Chronicles of Narnia' (BBC 80's plus TLTW &TW by Southern, 60's, I think) places girls at the centre of the drama; 
'The Demon Headmaster' originally written in the 80's, adapted for the BBC in the 90's centres on a girl leading the attempts to thwart the villain. There are other examples, and I have neglected ITV almost totally.

BBC's story-telling programme, 'Jackanory', started in the mid-sixties. We paid attention then to getting a mix of adventure, folk, comedy, modern and historical stories - and 'boys' and 'girls' stories, with male and female actors. I think, but don't quote me, that there was a slight preponderance of women story-tellers - or maybe that was just in my stories. (All 'Jackanory's producers were women.)

Before Television was widely available (arbitrarily say 1953 - when many people got a set in the UK to watch the Coronation), there was no shortage of books with girls as the prime movers. If these books tended towards 'Jolly Hockey Sticks at the Chalet School' or 'Ballet Shoes on Ice' (not quite by Noel Streatfield), why was this?

Do authors - of scripts and books - when writing FOR children, tend to write about their own memories of childhood - or their own childhood idealised? (CF Humphrey Carpenter's 'Secret Gardens').
Will their material therefore be slightly behind the times? (Will the images of male and female roles, where these differ, be out of date?)

Edith Nesbit wrote good parts for boys. The position of girls was important - but stereotypical - with a few twists. Bernard Ashley wrote 'Break in the Sun' which was primarily about the experiences of a girl. 

What I am feeling towards is the influence women have had on children (1) as authors and (2) as drivers of what children see on TV. The question also arises as to whether some very able women were nudged into Children's Programmes during the 50's, and again later in the 60's and 70's, because that was deemed a 'suitable' area for women. (Similarly. women were nudged into Family Law at the Bar into the 80's.)  

I joined BBC Children's Programmes because I liked working with the people, male and female, there. The attitudes to the medium, to the audience and to colleagues seemed reasonable and friendly, as opposed to areas like Sport, Current Affairs and Drama, which was often unreasonable to the point of hair-tearing.

None of the foregoing is very scientific. What sometimes bothers me from some correspondents is the feeling that some of 'you' academics impute system and deliberateness to 'us' in television which is not there. Advertisers do what they believe will work - using, often, new techniques but images that already exist to strike up a response in the viewer. Programme makers want to make something that will work, be enjoyed, be watched by as many of the target audience as possible. In the drama areas, I think we like 'putting on a show'. We tend not to stop and think what the cumulative effect is of ALL the television that children watch. 

We are each a product of our genes and our times (well, that seems logical to me). Most of us can work only according to our lights and the little space we occupy. There is rarely time to raise our heads to look above the parapet at the wider picture - and where we do, the view is lopsided. Try, in the UK, to have a look at 'Broadcast' (the TV industry's newspaper)  to see what preoccupies most people in the world of Television and advertising and you will see what I mean! 

Where there is an imbalance, I am sure, in TV, it is 'cock-up' not 'conspiracy'.
 
As usual, a somewhat long and meandering email. But I am trying to show what I perceive as a difference of perspective between 'you' and 'us', rather than prove any one thing..

If you have been, thanks for reading.

Roger Singleton-Turner
(Former BBC, now freelance Director and Producer of Children's Drama)

P.S. Some of this may make little sense to those with no knowledge of TV in the UK. Sorry.




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