Media Dairy Week 6

My guilty pleasure is a show called Totally Spies; the target audience for this show is girls between the ages of 8 and 14. I wouldn’t normally consume this media text as I am not the target demographic, however what made me consume the text was the genre that the text was from which is the spy genre. My reading of the text is a preferred reading as I highly enjoyed the series growing up as it uses a lot of the tropes from the spy genre such as high tech gadgets, mysteries, and evil villains with grand schemes that must be stopped. An appeal of the show was that every episode always had a wide variety of gadgets that were never always the same each episode; there were only ever two gadgets that stayed more than once which kept each episode fresh. My main reason for enjoying the show is due to nostalgia, this is due to me growing up with this show and many other that where on the now discontinued Jetix channel. From a feminist standpoint this show can be seen as empowering as while the girls could be considered stereotypical, when they are in a dangerous situation they are able to get out of it themselves and the majority of their villains where men. To apply this to a media theory to my reasons for liking the show I would apply the uses and gratifications model, specifically escapism and entertainment. This is due to the fact that at the time I was young and watching kid’s cartoons, using them as a means to entertain myself after coming home from school or on the weekends. I wouldn’t use it for personal identity as at the time the characters situations where completely different from my own, in terms of age, gender, and their environment and their lifestyle. I was unable to talk to anyone about the show due to it not being socially acceptable for a boy to like a show staring female characters in a traditionally ‘girly’ story, thus I cannot say I used the show for social interaction. Finally because the show was an animated children’s cartoon I was unable to use it for information, due to the show giving me no idea as to what the real Beverly Hills was like and what the people from there are truly like as it gave me nothing but a glorified version of that environment.