Abstract
While sociologists of children and media have helped show that children are indeed active and shrewd users of television there is still a need to challenge the notion held particularly in much discourse about children and television that fantasy and make-believe are self-evidently appropriate genres for them. This is generally explained away by the fact that children are different from adults as they are more imaginative. We show the nature and consequences of this representation by looking at a short film produced by the BBC in 1998 to promote their role as producers of good children's television. The authors argue, using theories in social psychology and anthropology, that there is no evidence that children do differ from adults in this way. They argue that fantasy and imagination are something basic to the way that all humans organize their experiences. The association of these concepts with children is a cultural representation that should be challenged.
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