TED.com

TED.com is responsible for the thesis.  I suppose to be fair, Hasbro should also share some of the blame. After all, they hold the rights to Transformers and G.I. Joe.  As a child, I remember spending countless hours reenacting battle scenes, staging daring rescues and escapes, holding out for a hero (rock on, Bonnie Tyler).  My lips uttered the movement of rusting mechanical parts and tanks under suppressive fire.  I was a boy.

Here I am at age 37.  The boy becomes a man.  Men have all kinds of societal expectations placed upon them.  Just look at any cologne or fashion advertisement (http://www.magazine-ads.com/col.html) and come to your own conclusions as to the roles men are projected into.  We role play, whether it is in our professional or personal lives.  In his book, A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle cautions us that "when you play roles, you are unconscious" and "this causes human interactions to become inauthentic, dehumanized, alienating."  Tolle also argues that "authentic human interactions become impossible when you lose yourself in a role" (p. 91).

With this thesis, I intend to create an honest, authentic body of work.  Permit me to embrace my boyhood.  Together we will reminisce about the hours spent playing The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers.  We will relive episodes of The Mighty Orbots, Rubic, and Teen Wolf and contrast this with current content, from Star Wars The Clone Wars to Call of Duty:Black Ops to Beyblade.  Let us journey together to determine how to best meet the learning needs of a boy.