Abstract
Long before they develop the vocabulary to explain what they feel, children are already living inside the cartoon world, laughing, fearing, hoping, and wondering alongside characters that exist nowhere except in color and sound. Despite how central cartoons are to contemporary childhood, scholarly attention has rarely paused to ask what children themselves experience when they watch them. This is the gap the present study sets out to address through phenomenology, particularly the tradition inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and developed by thinkers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Max van Manen. The study explores how children perceive animated characters, engage their imaginations, construct meaning, and how the social and cultural worlds they inhabit shape what cartoons mean for them. The problem to which this study responds is both philosophical and practical, particularly the tendency for research on children and cartoons to be dominated by behavioral, cognitive, or media effects frameworks. The study argues that cartoons are not merely entertainment or pedagogical tools but are, for children, genuine phenomenological encounters with imaginative worlds that carry real existential and cultural significance.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21127022
Writers:
Ikemesit John Nkanta
Department of Philosophy,
Faculty of Arts,
University of Uyo.
Phone: +2348089357010
ORCID: 0009-0002-0624-1503