Do Babies Learn to Swipe Before They Learn to Talk?

Posted on June 2, 2016 at 3:14 pm

Personal cloud storage company MiMedia has released the results of a survey of parents.

76% of parents admit to running out of storage on their phones from taking too many photos/videos of their kids
71% think Moms take more photos of their kids than Dads
Nearly 3 out of 5 parents (58%) say their child (age 0-3) was able to operate a touchscreen digital device by swiping before they learned to speak
57% think Moms share too many baby photos on social media (Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
Almost half (47%) of parents say their child (age 0-3) likes taking selfies
47% of parents share at least 1 photo/video on average of their child (age 0-3) per day, whereas 34% don’t share any
1 out of 3 parents (34% ) takes 1 video on average of their child (age 0-3) per day, whereas 13% of parents take 5+ videos on average of their child (age 0-3) per day
28% take 2 photos on average of their child (age 0-3) per day
Almost 1 out of 3 parents (28%) admits to taking substantially more photos of their first born than other children
22% of parents take 5+ photos on average of their child (age 0-3) per day
13% of parents take 5+ videos on average of their child (age 0-3) per day

Parents should be careful to make sure they are spending more time interacting with their children than taking pictures and videos of them — and that children learn about how to behave with people before they learn about how to interact with machines.

FCC: It’s Time to Look at the TV Rating System!

Posted on May 9, 2016 at 11:19 pm

The television ratings system has failed badly. It is secret, inconsistent, and completely out of touch with current technology. There is no accountability or oversight and no way to challenge the decisions made by insiders. I am proud to join with 28 organizations devoted to protecting children and media literacy in calling for a review by the FCC.

The content ratings system as currently constituted is deeply flawed because the power to assign program content ratings was assigned to the same networks where the content originates. This has created an inherent and tremendous conflict of interest: It is to a network’s advantage to mis-rate its programming for a younger audience so as to gain a larger viewing audience; and a majority of corporate advertisers choose not to advertise on television programming that is rated for Mature Audiences Only. Unlike motion pictures and video games, there is no independent evaluation of the age-based rating system for television.
An incorrect content rating renders the V-chip worthless. If a parent programs their television’s V-chip to block programs rated as appropriate for “Mature Audiences Only,” their child will still be exposed to graphic and explicit material. Whether accidental or intentional, an informal practice has developed whereby broadcast networks never rate any of their programming “mature only,” no matter how graphic, explicit or inappropriate its content may be for children. As a result, extreme, graphic content is rated appropriate for 14-year-old children; and other programs with adult content are even rated PG.

The TV Parental Guidelines Oversight Monitoring Board (TVOMB) has enabled and sheltered this flawed content ratings system, rather than following its Congressional and FCC mandate to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the system:

TVOMB is not accountable to anyone outside its own membership, nor is it transparent to the parents it supposedly serves. Most Americans don’t even know TVOMB exists. They don’t know that TVOMB is in charge of the ratings system, or how to contact its members.

Parents have never been told the names of those who sit on TVOMB; why they are qualified to sit on TVOMB; how they are appointed; when or where TVOMB meets; how they determine what content ratings TV programs ought to have; or how they respond to complaints from parents and other citizens.

The public is not allowed to attend TVOMB meetings. Representatives from the FCC are not allowed to attend meetings. Members of the press are not allowed to attend meetings. There is no transparency beyond the TVOMB members.

TVOMB is composed of a chairman and 23 members, including six members each from the broadcast television industry, the cable industry, and the program production community. There are only five non-industry seats on a board of 23, despite the board’s express purpose being to serve the needs of parents; and as of this writing, not all five of the non-industry seats are filled. Of those five non-industry seats on TVOMB, all are appointed by the TVOMB chairman (an industry member).

In other words, the body charged with oversight of the television content ratings system is comprised of those whom it is supposed to be monitoring. Under the current system, the same people who create TV content then rate the content they’ve created, and also run the board that oversees the rating process. They also produce an occasional public opinion survey that validates the current system.

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More Trouble for Women in Hollywood

Posted on May 4, 2016 at 8:00 am

It was bad enough when Marisa Tomei was cast as the elderly Aunt May in the next “Spider-Man.” But now the gorgeous Famke Janssen, who has played Jean Gray in the X-Men movies, says she will not be in the next one. As in the last time-spanning film, there will be older and younger actors playing the main characters, except for Gray, who will just be shown as her younger self, played by Game of Thrones actor Sophie Turner, who is 20.

“Women, it’s interesting because they’re replaced, and the older versions are never to be seen again,” Janssen told Entertainment Weekly. “Whereas the men are allowed to be both ages. Sexism. I think that I should be back along with my younger version and the way that we’ve seen it with Magneto and Professor X.”

Janssen, 51, said she had tried to discuss a return for the older Grey with producers but had not received a response.

“I have not heard any feedback on that, other than total radio silence,” she said.

And another beautiful actress, Amanda Peet, wrote an essay for Lena Dunham’s online magazine Lenny, about the pressures on actresses to look like they are under 25.

It’s painfully obvious, but I’m still ashamed to admit this: I care about my looks. How else can I explain my trainer, stylist, and Barney’s card? I’ve bleached my teeth, dyed my hair, peeled and lasered my face, and tried a slew of age-defying creams. More than once, I’ve asked the director of photography on a show to soften my laugh lines. Nothing about this suggests I’m aging gracefully.

It’s painfully obvious, but I’m still ashamed to admit this: I care about my looks.
Yet for me, it would be crossing the Rubicon to add Botox and fillers into the mix. I want to look younger (and better), trust me. The only reason I don’t do it is because I’m scared.

I’m afraid one visit to a cosmetic dermatologist would be my gateway drug. I’d go in for a tiny, circumscribed lift and come out looking like a blowfish. Or someone whose face is permanently pressed up against a glass window. Or like I’m standing in the jet stream of a 747. What’s the point of doing it if everyone can tell? I want the thing that makes me look younger, not the thing that makes me look like I did the thing.

As I’ve said before, these “treatments” too often make it impossible for actors to do the very thing we want them to do — show emotion.

It’s no better behind the camera. Variety reports that producer Heather Rae spoke about the problems she faced in getting support for her new film, “Tallulah,” starring Ellen Page.

“At the time this film was deemed not commercially viable, because it was a woman’s story, and it wasn’t about getting the guy,” Rae said at a private screening on “Tallulah” in New York, noting that executives said as much to her face.

20th Century Fox and Paramount have announced their new lists of films in production — without a single woman director.

Of the Three Movies Released This Week, the One With the Most Racial and Gender Awareness is….Zootopia

Posted on March 5, 2016 at 12:27 pm

The two live-action releases this week, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” and “London Has Fallen,” featured stereotyping and white actors playing characters of color. So it was especially refreshing to watch “Zootopia,” a Disney animated movie with talking animals, and discover some genuinely thoughtful and sensitive portrayal of race and gender. It is dispiriting to see that in 2016 movies like “Gods of Egypt” and “Whisky Tango Foxtrot” are using American, Australian, and European actors to play Middle Eastern characters. As Ann Hornaday points out in a very perceptive essay for the Washington Post,

, starring Tina Fey as an intrepid, amusingly clumsy television reporter assigned to cover the war in Afghanistan, takes full advantage of its lead actress’s unforced warmth, in the service of a film that balances drama, romance and comedy with admirable skill. But in the midst of what could have been a thoroughly delightful mid-winter diversion, viewers are presented with the off-putting spectacle of two white actors — Christopher Abbott and Alfred Molina — portraying key Afghan figures in the story, one wearing layers of bronzing powder and a native pakol, the other leering from behind a bushy beard.

The problem goes behind misrepresentation, authenticity, and making it tougher for non-white performers to get jobs and tell their own stories. “It’s a matter of aesthetics,” she notes. “Rather than getting lost in the story up on the screen, viewers find themselves distracted by a bad makeup job or too-obvious prosthetics. Rather than becoming wrapped up in the emotional truth a performer is trying to convey, they remain at arm’s length from a character that can never be fully, seamlessly realized.” It sends messages that audiences of all races cannot help but absorb about standards of beauty and appropriation.

But “Zootopia,” an animated family movies, has a remarkably sophisticated and thoughtful understanding of race and gender, perhaps because the characters are all animals, so the message is metaphorical. As Slate’s Dan Kois writes in a piece called “Disney’s Zootopia is a Delightful Kids’ Movie that is Also Totally About Racial Profiling,”

The movie gets laughs from some surprisingly touchy racial material: “A bunny can call another bunny cute, but you can’t,” Hopps scolds Wilde. Later, another character gets reprimanded for an impropriety that, famously, black men and women have to deal with all the time: “You can’t just touch a sheep’s wool!”

But as broad as the movie sometimes plays, it delivers a clear message that when individuals prejudge others based on their heritage—or when a police force cracks down on a certain kind of person based only on their own bias and fear—people get hurt and treated unfairly.

The lead character is a small female bunny who responds tartly to being called “cute” by explaining that bunnies can use that term about each other, but it is inappropriate from another species. And the focus on the story is on her challenges in overcoming stereotypes — and realizing that she has some of her own to overcome, too. This is a lesson the makers of films like “Gods of Egypt” and “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” should learn as well.

If Male Characters in Movie Scripts Were Described Like Female Characters

Posted on February 13, 2016 at 3:23 pm

A producer in Hollywood has been tweeting the idiotic, objectifying, and sexist descriptions of female characters in movie scripts. He calls them all “Jane.”

JANE, 28, athletic but sexy. A natural beauty. Most days she wears jeans, and she makes them look good.

JANE – his wife, 30’s, beautiful, wearing lingerie – applies lipstick in front of a mirror, making it into an erotic show.

Across from him, his wife, JANE. Also 40, still a knockout. The soft candlelight makes her beauty glow.

JANE, with lengthy blonde hair, enters. Attractive in an effortless way, she carries an alluring and yet forward charm behind a bold smile.

Slate has taken it one step further, imagining male characters described that way.

A vision in brown robes that caress his shapely curves, OBI WAN strides toward LUKE, placing his thick, pleasure-ready fingers over LUKE’s eyes before revealing the supple visage beneath his hood in a rapid striptease.