Playful Visions

Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children's Media Culture

Meredith A. Bak (Assistant Professor of Childhood Studies, Rutgers University)

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English

MIT Press
17 March 2020

Advertising & society; Age groups: children; Educational equipment & technology, computer-aided learning (CAL)

Series: The MIT Press

"The kaleidoscope, the stereoscope, and other nineteenth-century optical toys analyzed as ""new media"" of their era, provoking anxieties similar to our own about children and screens.

In the nineteenth century, the kaleidoscope, the thaumatrope, the zoetrope, the stereoscope, and other optical toys were standard accessories of a middle-class childhood, used both at home and at school. In Playful Visions, Meredith Bak argues that the optical toys of the nineteenth century were the ""new media"" of their era, teaching children to be discerning consumers of media-and also provoking anxieties similar to contemporary worries about children's screen time. Bak shows that optical toys-which produced visual effects ranging from a moving image to the illusion of depth-established and reinforced a new understanding of vision as an interpretive process. At the same time, the expansion of the middle class as well as education and labor reforms contributed to a new notion of childhood as a time of innocence and play. Modern media culture and the emergence of modern Western childhood are thus deeply interconnected.

Drawing on extensive archival research, Bak discusses, among other things, the circulation of optical toys, and the wide visibility gained by their appearance as printed templates and textual descriptions in periodicals; expanding conceptions of literacy, which came to include visual acuity; and how optical play allowed children to exercise a sense of visual mastery. She examines optical toys alongside related visual technologies including chromolithography-which inspired both chromatic delight and chromophobia. Finally, considering the contemporary use of optical toys in advertising, education, and art, Bak analyzes the endurance of nineteenth-century visual paradigms."

By: Meredith A. Bak (Assistant Professor of Childhood Studies Rutgers University)
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 17mm
ISBN: 9780262538718
ISBN 10: 0262538717
Series: The MIT Press
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 17 March 2020
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Meredith A. Bak is Assistant Professor of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University-Camden.

Reviews for Playful Visions: Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children's Media Culture

This multilayered study presents unique and compelling optics on the generative interplay between childhood, material, and media cultures. By deftly weaving together widely varied source material, eloquently engaging how cultural ideas echo across history, and rigorously contextualizing its histories within cultural theories, Bak paints a profound, holistic picture of the complex cultural formations that coalesce around play, proving that charting these cultural constellations around optical toys has a distinctive merit. -American Journal of Play