Proceedings of The 2nd International Conference on Future of Social Sciences and Humanities
Year: 2020
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/2nd.fshconf.2020.09.174
Fantasy Animations and Children’s Imagination: A Qualitative Study
Maryam Khaleghipour and Ehsan Shahghasemi
ABSTRACT:
Fantasy animations give children the possibility to navigate in imaginary and fantasy worlds, so they can immerse themselves in the story and imagine another world. This paper attempts to show that children’s experiences of the fantasy world have a significant effect on children’s imagination about themselves and the future of the world. Therefore, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 65 children (35 girls, 30 boys) between 6-12 years old, and the children were divided into two interview groups. Then the interviews were analyzed, coded, and categorized. The results showed for those children who watched fantasy animations a lot, imagination about the future of the world was a mixture of reality and fantasy; we found, also, that there was a big difference between their actual self and their ideal self. But children who watched fantasy animations less than three hours a day had a more realistic image about the future and there was a lesser difference between their actual self and their ideal self. Importantly, children with heavy consumption of fantasy animations thought and imagined in the context of fantasy, and this deeply affected their perception of the future.
Keywords: Fantasy; Children; Cartoon; Animation; Iran.