Thoughts On Conditioning

During the course of the week we have spoke about the term "conditioning". We've learned that this term is another word for brainwashing. Mr. Cassidy has showed us a few videos on child animated movies (i.e "The Little Mermaid" & "Jungle Book") and we as a class collectively pointed out what we thought to be forms of conditioning in these children movies. In the little mermaid we saw that the witch like women was inferring that people who are ugly, fat, or extra skinny, are desperate people. Also she was inferring that women with a nice body and gorgeous looks don't need potential in order to A. Get what they want, or B. Get somewhere in life. In the second video (The Jungle Book) we came to the conclusion that the monkeys singing are symbolic of black people, we came to this conclusion by listening to the type of music that was playing ( Jazz ), and the sounds of the voice. All in all though I helped to come to these conclusions, I strongly oppose to the way Mr. Cassidy portrayed them to effect the youth that watch it. Mr. Cassidy claimed that youth are getting brainwashed without even knowing it by watching these movies. Though it is a strong claim I feel as if that isn't completely true. The definition of identity is, "to associate or affiliate closely with a person or group; to establish an identification with another or others." The reason I bring up this definition is because I feel this definition implies that identity is given to us by the people who surround us or our society. Now, you may be wondering what that has to do with conditioning. If our identity is given to us by our society and the people we are around doesn't it make sense that youth are conditioned by the real world things around them? To further elaborate, I don't find it logical or accurate to take a video and desifer it with adolescents and claim that what we see is what the youth see. After watching the videos in class Mr. Cassidy wrote words and we said the first race that came to mind, or the first gender. I admit when he said criminal I said Black, and when he said Terrorist I said Islamic, but what I don't admit is this is due to the cartoons I use to watch. I find it hard to believe that a child enjoying his/her show or movie is being brainwashed during the course of it. The real reason why my peers and I said the races of genders we did was not because of our youth cartoons, but more or less because of the world we live in today. To conclude, we are not brainwashed by the things we've watched before, but because of the world and societies we live in today.