Author: Aidan Murphy
Nickelodeon has created a ton of amazing content for children for the last few decades. I myself grew up watching the channel religiously. One of the shows that has always stuck out to me over the years is Victorious, which will be the show that I am going to analyze. Victorious is a television show that shows the life of talented high school student Tori Vega and her friends at a performing arts school in Hollywood.
The show features many notable stars like Ariana Grande, Elizabeth Gillies, and Victoria Justice. Victorious can be classified as having a target audience of ages 10-13. This age group would typically be made up of children entering or already in middle school, so grades 5-8. Upon watching the show it is made clear that it is meant for those between the ages 10-13. The show is not outwardly inappropriate, but the jokes are more mature and the show has plot lines meant for mature viewers. Since the characters of this show are high school students, it makes sense that the audience of this show would be middle schoolers.
Children enjoy watching shows the characters in a stage above them. Elementary students like watching middle schoolers, high schoolers enjoy watching college students, and why middle schoolers enjoy watching the high school lives of the cast of Victorious. Many of the jokes in the show are at the expense of another character, meaning they draw laughs from mocking something about another character. Similarly, the show contains a lot of sarcasm in its dialogue.
It has been said that children of younger ages (specifically around the age of 5 and under) are not able to understand sarcasm. Since this show relies heavily on sarcasm for its humor, children of that age group would not find this show to be funny. A reason why it would not be a good fir for children ages 6-9 is because of the plot points. Since these characters are in high school they have mature storylines, such as dating, cheating, and fights. These themes may not be suitable for a child of those ages and they may not be able to follow those relationship dynamics. Victorious, like a lot of the content that comes out of Nickelodeon, is made for the purpose of entertainment and does not focus on educating its audience. With that being said, I do believe Victorious is a great and important show for children to watch and there is some things children can learn from it. For starters, watching the character dynamics in the show can be helpful for children to see how different friendships work.
The friend group isn’t a typical high school friend group and the characters are very different from each other, but they are all still great friends. Despite their different personalities and interests, they all care for one and another and work well together on whatever art they are making. It would be helpful for a child, especially at the middle school age when long lasting friendships are forming, to see students who aren’t all the same creating strong bonds with each other. Another key takeaway that can be drawn from this show is how heavily incorporated the arts are in this show. It isn’t often that acting, singing, dancing, and theater are portrayed on screen for kids like it is in Victorious. Many children watching this show can see what the characters are doing at their performing arts school and see that as a talent they have that they can start pursuing more. I think Victorious is a great show in conveying the arts as something cool and fun for children.