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    Toys - Roland Barthes

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    Kashish Babbar
    This essay analyzes how toys socialize children and condition them to conform to societal norms. The author argues that toys often mimic adult roles and responsibilities, teaching children gender stereotypes and preparing them for their future roles. Additionally, modern plastic toys have replaced wooden toys, reflecting society's shift to industrialization and capitalism. Rather than fostering creativity, many toys now train children to be consumers. In this way, toys have become a tool for social conditioning that imposes society's values and ensures children conform to the existing social order.

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    Toys - Roland Barthes

    Uploaded by

    Kashish Babbar
    405 views2 pages
    This essay analyzes how toys socialize children and condition them to conform to societal norms. The author argues that toys often mimic adult roles and responsibilities, teaching children gender stereotypes and preparing them for their future roles. Additionally, modern plastic toys have replaced wooden toys, reflecting society's shift to industrialization and capitalism. Rather than fostering creativity, many toys now train children to be consumers. In this way, toys have become a tool for social conditioning that imposes society's values and ensures children conform to the existing social order.

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    This essay analyzes how toys socialize children and condition them to conform to societal norms. The author argues that toys often mimic adult roles and responsibilities, teaching children gender stereotypes and preparing them for their future roles. Additionally, modern plastic toys have replaced wooden toys, reflecting society's shift to industrialization and capitalism. Rather than fostering creativity, many toys now train children to be consumers. In this way, toys have become a tool for social conditioning that imposes society's values and ensures children conform to the existing social order.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    405 views2 pages

    Toys - Roland Barthes

    Uploaded by

    Kashish Babbar
    This essay analyzes how toys socialize children and condition them to conform to societal norms. The author argues that toys often mimic adult roles and responsibilities, teaching children gender stereotypes and preparing them for their future roles. Additionally, modern plastic toys have replaced wooden toys, reflecting society's shift to industrialization and capitalism. Rather than fostering creativity, many toys now train children to be consumers. In this way, toys have become a tool for social conditioning that imposes society's values and ensures children conform to the existing social order.

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    SHORT STORY – PARAPHRASING/

    INTERPRETATION
    TOYS BY ROLAND BARTHES
    The concept of Tabula Rasa first promulgated by Aristotle and later developed by
    many philosophers’ states that human beings are born as a ‘blank slate’ and their
    mind is shaped and developed by exposure to experiences and perceptions. Hence
    childhood is believed to be an impressionable age where children develop their
    ideals and beliefs through the process of socialisation. This essay by the literary
    philosopher Roland Barthes on French toys highlights how even insignificant
    objects like toys have meanings and they play a much more substantial role in
    social conditioning than one might fathom. Many have never entertained the
    possibility that toys could have a greater purpose than of pleasure and
    entertainment however, toys as ‘microcosm of the adult world’ invariably
    conditions the child to eventually conform to the life designed for them. 
    The rarity of toys that allow for creation and discovery and the greater prevalence
    of toys that mimic adult life reflect how children are treated as miniature adults and
    are trained to conform. These toys ensure that when these children grow up they
    are conditioned to accept even the most erroneous beliefs of society. This process
    of conditioning happens even before the child can learn to rationalize to ensure that
    there is acceptance to ways of life that one might find objectionable. The abhorring
    presence of elements such as war, bureaucracy and even Martians is normalised
    through representation. The most evident sign of conditioning through toys can be
    seen in enforcement of age-old gender stereotypes where boys are given toys that
    signify how powerful and strong men are while girls are given toys that teach them
    to be nurturing so that they can be trained for their role of homemaker. Thus there
    is no opportunity for the child to develop his own ideals and they subconsciously
    imbibe the values that society regards as ideal. This ensures that the child never
    becomes the creator of his own world but a mere user of the world designed for
    him. 
    Toys also serve as a mirror of society and its processes. In today’s capitalist
    society where innovation and creation are limited to those with resources and
    financial capital, toys reflect this harsh reality by seeking to train children into
    becoming consumers and not innovators. Even the materials used to make these
    toys reflect the evolution of our society into a capitalist industrialised society.
    Originally made with wood that allowed for sustenance of a connection with nature
    and earth, now they are mere products of the plastic world, a result of chemical
    reactions and industrialization.
    The wooden toys used to travel a long journey with the child, maintaining its own
    relationship, ageing with the passage of time and having its own legacy. The
    mechanized toys of today are void of any warmth and emotional connection given
    that they cannot even survive without a tiny spring. Their short life ensures
    prosperity of the capitalist mode of production by ensuring sufficient demand.
    These modern toys are also reflective of changed human psyche that has lost its
    connection with nature and is deprived of happiness due to the devastating effects
    of industrialization. The wooden toys that once flourished in the age of craftsmen,
    now don’t flourish, because the craftsmen have been replaced by labourers and
    creativity has been replaced by exploitation. 
    Thus we see how toys, originally conceived with the purpose of entertainment,
    learning and fostering creativity have become mere cog wheels in the machine of
    social conditioning imposing societal norms and processes. With our current
    generation losing their touch with nature and becoming more materialistic, it’s
    important that toys play a role in creating autonomous and creative individuals
    instead of training children to get in line for the mass producing capitalist world.

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