Sexism in Doraemon and Shinchan: Interrogating Popular Cartoon Shows through a Feminist Lens

Abstract

With the gradual destruction of nature and the rise of urbanization, children's world is becoming confined within the four walls, making cartoon characters their best friends. Just like the Ideological State Apparatuses mentioned by Althusser, such as school or family, cartoon shows, or rather, media in general, also perform(s) significant function in teaching values, including negative ones like sexist values, to the young, impressionable children viewers. Sexism functions in cartoon shows through various means, for instance, through advocating gender and sexual binary, supporting conventional gender norms and gender stereotypes, and through objectification of women. The methodology followed in this paper is the methodology of content analysis, interrogating selected episodes from these two shows and situating these episodes within the theoretical framework of Feminism. This paper, therefore, attempts a critical investigation of how sexism subtly becomes part and parcel of two of the globally most popular cartoon shows, i.e., Doraemon and Shinchan.