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6
Film Identities in Practice
In the early stages of my fieldwork, I arrived at my research school at
playtime, to meet the class teacher. I walked past the nursery children out
in the playground. ‘You’re Darth Sidius! You’re Darth Sidius!’ said one boy
to another who was lying on the ground with his arms raised into a trian-
gle, holding his imaginary light sabre in an accurate re-enactment of a Jedi
warrior character in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, (Lucas, 2002).
I made a mental note to add this to my research journal at the time, and
this moment has since increased in significance because of the many times
I encountered similar play. These children were four-years-old, the film
upon which their play was based was shown in cinemas two years before
their birth. This playful engagement demonstrates that film is far from
ephemeral (Robinson, 1997) but is a source of narrative, providing symbolic
resources (Buckingham and Sefton-Green, 1994), in this case an iconic ges-
ture, for play as well as identity negotiation (Marsh, 2005).
In the previous chapters I presented research which demonstrates that
children’s films, like other popular media, provides children with some of
the resources with which they can play and perform identities and explore
and develop literacies. Furthermore, I have argued that narrative is a cultural
aspect of literacy and that many children’s earliest encounters with narrative
are in the form of popular children’s films. In the two subsequent chapters,
I explore the particular contribution of children’s films to children’s reper-
toires of narrative as expressed in different contexts and different media.
The focus of this initial data chapter however, is to explore the ways chil-
dren participate in and engage with children’s films and the impact of this
engagement on their identities and their orientation to literacy.
I therefore attempt to describe the identities of the six children who
participated in the research and their associated memories and experiences
of watching film and playing film-based games at home and at school. As
described in Chapter 4, the interviews were edited into six video vignettes
and in the following written accounts I draw on this video data but also map
these experiences against data about the children’s experiences of film at
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Identities in Practice 89
home and school that were expressed in the course of the research including,
for example, the photo audit and a number of research conversations.
Connor
When I first visited Year 5, I presented them with information about my
area of interest, my own background, what the research would consist of
and how to get involved if they would like to. The presentation title was
‘Children and Film’ and I showed some images and clips from films to illus-
trate my main points. Throughout this process I asked the children in the
class to raise questions if they had any. The whole presentation took much
longer than I had anticipated and this was as a result of the highly enthusi-
astic response I received. Many of the children asked interesting questions,
but one hand went up more than any other. Within the first few minutes
of the presentation I had learnt Connor’s name and had tried to respond to
his ideas. For example he commented:
I think all children’s films have a message, Miss, a moral at the end. Do
you?
Later he responded to a clip from the opening scene of the film, Mirrormask
(McKean, 2005), by saying:
Well I think that girl is going to be the main character, the one we see in
the first shot and the rest of the film will be about her problem and how
she solves that problem.
I had asked the class what they thought might happen next. The film is unu-
sual; a British film with a long opening sequence animated with grotesque
illustrations. I chose it to illustrate that the research might not only involve
looking at popular children’s films so that this did not come as a surprise
later in the process. Connor was able to apply his knowledge of children’s
films to a new and unfamiliar text, that is to say, that often the main char-
acter is shown in close up in the earliest moments of the film, and that she
has a problem and that the film will conclude by solving the problem. He
was applying the version of Todorov’s (1968) theory of narrative structure
he had encountered in school to help him make sense of a new film. What
is more, it was clear that he was externalising ideas he had been thinking
about for a while.
Initially, I was quite overwhelmed by Connor’s enthusiasm. I had agreed
with the teacher and head teacher that we would select the final six from
those who said they would like to be part of the group on the basis of their
opportunity to benefit from the project and, in terms of the research, to
attempt to explore some distinct experiences. I was concerned that while
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90 Children, Film and Literacy
I might have wanted to work with Connor, because of his interest and
enthusiasm and his perceptive comments, I did not want to choose some-
one who would dominate the group too much or someone who perhaps
always got chosen for everything. When I discussed these concerns with the
class teacher her response came as a surprise. She pointed out that Connor,
while being a popular member of the class, had never responded like that
to a group discussion activity before and that the subject of film had clearly
been the prompt for his reaction.
Pompe (1992a) demonstrates how the inclusion of popular culture in
school can lead to a shift in the hierarchies of learners, that is to say which
children are perceived as successful and which are not. Here Connor’s
usual classroom identity shifted and his expertise in film was highlighted.
Furthermore he was able to demonstrate complex and sophisticated under-
standings of an unfamiliar text; a text which left the rest of the class uneasy.
As a result, the teacher encouraged me to work with Connor as she felt that
he had demonstrated that film was a special area of expertise for him and
this would be a great opportunity for him to explore this interest further.
It became evident that for Connor to enact an identity in relation to learn-
ing that was both motivated and curious and to be able to demonstrate
his ‘funds of knowledge’ (Moll et al., 1992) about stories, he needed to be
invited to draw on his particular love and rich repertoire of films.
Connor saw his interest in film as something which defined him and used
the word ‘always’ in an interesting way:
I’ve always wished that I could have my own film when I’m older.
Here ‘always’ implies a longevity of interest about watching, creating or
owning a film. Film, for Connor, was not background wallpaper, something
he could take or leave or something to pass the time. Film was extremely
important and part of the structure of his life. He described it as part of
a routine; playing sport after school, watching television, having his tea
and then at night, after bath time but before bedtime watching films. In a
fleeting discussion he named two films he had recently watched, Wedding
Crashers (Dobkin, 2005) and Cool Runnings (Turtletaub, 1993) both of which
were screened on television in the week prior to the interview. Neither film
is specifically a children’s film, nor are they popular contemporary films.
Connor does not therefore only watch recently released children’s films; he
also watches older films targeted at more mature ‘tween’ audiences (Willett,
2005a).
Connor, the only boy in the group with access to television channels in
his room, described regularly making decisions about what he watched. He
commented on a number of occasions that he did not just watch something
if it was on. He did not flick channels; he noticed if there was a film on
he wanted to watch and then set aside time to watch it. He also described
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Identities in Practice 91
choosing films from his own collection, ensuring he had built up enough
time since he last saw it so that when he watched it again it was not boring.
If we substituted books for films in this description we would have a picture
of an engaged and selective reader, who sought out new experiences and
occasionally returned to old favourites.
Connor was highly popular both with adults in school and his peers. He
had high social status to the extent that he was not afraid to express his
interest in dance, even performing in assembly and persuading other boys
to join in. He candidly talked in interviews about himself; he saw himself as
being ‘mixed race’ and having two families and a gran who let him use her
mobile phone to make films. In terms of his peers he appeared to lead taste
rather than follow and would always be the first to see a certain film. His
love of film was matched with his love of street dance and he drew on these
two interests throughout the project, as can be seen in his film preferences.
Connor talked sometimes about being able to see stories in his head. He
came to see me at break time one day in the early stages of the project and
told me he had ‘a dream of a film last night’:
C: It was about these two boys, brothers, and they had a real dad who was
a yoga master. Anyway it was one of the boy’s birthdays. They weren’t
twins. A big storm blew up and the two boys were separated. The father
died. Then it was about seven years later and the two brothers were
bought back together again.
B: How do you know it was a film and not just an ordinary dream?
C: It just was.
[He looked at me as if to say, ‘can’t you see it’ and I began to think I was
participating in a film pitch.]
B: Well, it’s a cracking idea for a film!
He described having lots of ideas for films and not being able to work out
why real filmmakers do not make films similar to his ideas. Within his idea
he encapsulated a great deal of knowledge of film and not just children’s
film. He knew that films have to have key characters who have relationships
with each other. He recognised the importance of dramatic moments, which
are sometimes connected to extreme weather, the storm, or significant life
events, a birthday. He also knew films have to have a dramatic event early
in the narrative, the disruption of order; the dad’s death and the brothers’
separation. Finally, he showed he understood the conventional requirement
for resolution, the reuniting of the two brothers. As he told me his idea, he
visualised it in scenes including flashback and flash forward, which signals
his understanding of the particular way film can move swiftly through
time. Connor’s creative ideas for film demonstrated complex understanding
of the underlying structures of narrative and the particular ways films tell
stories.
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92 Children, Film and Literacy
Going to the cinema was also a special experience for Connor. He
described memorable visits to see new releases and described himself as not
patient enough to wait for some films to be released on DVD (by which, like
some of the others in the group, he usually means obtaining a pirate copy).
Some films, he said, he has to see at the cinema on the big screen because;
‘you can just tell they’re going to be good’. It could be anticipated that
Connor might be on the trajectory to becoming what the UK Film Council
describe as an ‘avid’ (UKFC, 2007).
Avids’ identities are bound up in film. It is who they are: a constant that
frames and informs their perception of themselves and the wider world.
(UKFC, 2007, p. 3)
Very young ‘avids’ in this report are described as often developing a strong
liking of film to form bonds with parents or older siblings and as an escape
from home life, supported by the availability of films on television or DVD
and memorable cinema experiences. This description resonates with the
picture that had emerged of Connor’s relationship with film.
It would be reasonable to assume that Connor’s love of stories in the
moving image form would assist him in accessing the literacy curriculum.
However, Connor’s orientation towards school literacy was highly negative
and appeared detached from his sense of himself in relation to his love
of films. He regularly said he was not good at writing and occasionally
expressed frustration about the stories he had in his head that he thought
should be turned into films. He was less motivated by getting his ideas down
on paper because he became disappointed with the way his writing failed to
match up with his multimodal imaginings. Evidently, Connor’s avid engage-
ment in film enabled him to infer meaning and respond to texts in complex
ways, but this asset did not positively impact on his school literacy identity.
Connor related incidents from his life with a high degree of performance,
re-enacting key moments such as his first visit to see (Lasseter, 1995), which
was an important memory he shared with his mum of eating popcorn like a
robot because he was so involved in watching the film. The ‘Toy Story’ films
became highly significant, favourite films, to Connor:
I used to always play Toy Story with my friends. I used to go and get my
green pyjamas on and they were actually Buzz Lightyear pyjamas and
once when I were little, I weren’t very clever, I stood at the top of the
stairs, I closed my eyes and went, To infinity and beyond’ and I jumped
off the stairs and cracked my head. [Laughter] I was only little though
and I really liked Buzz Lightyear. I were about three.
Later he said, ‘I’ll always like Toy Story. I know that because it’s a good film’.
Liking Toy Story has become an aspect of his ‘ongoing’ identity (Giddens,
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Identities in Practice 93
1991, p. 54). He used the word ‘always’ again here in a nostalgic manner,
acknowledging that he had moved on in his taste but also that the film had
a particular status both as a favourite film and as a source of a story about
him as a child that he had shared with his mum.
Connor’s taste in film changed over time. He reflected on his early child-
hood, saying that he loved Toy Story but that now he liked real films. At the
time of the first interview he used the example High School Musical (Ortega,
2006) which he said had real people in and was about dancing, but by the
second phase in the project when the group were devising ideas for their
own film he rejected High School Musical for films such as Save the Last Dance
(Carter, 2001) and Step Up (Fletcher, 2006), which he perceived as more
mature, not as babyish, while still about real people, difficult situations and
dance. According to Rosenblatt’s (1970) definition Connor ‘experienced’
films, entering the lives of others and identifying and empathising with
their situation. He sought out ‘everyday’ (Luke and Carrington, 2002) films
which incorporated not only his love of dance, but also reflected his own
circumstances and significantly found space to represent the poverty, con-
flict and diversity, absent from many classroom texts (Carrington, 2005a).
Connor’s response to Home Alone 2 (Columbus, 1992) is particularly of
interest in the light of Kincheloe’s (1998) critique referred to in Chapter 2:
Well Home Alone 2 it’s like, it’s not that good at the first bits but when
the boy like plays tricks it’s really good how they could actually think of
tricks like that. It’s like, like un-normal tricks. It’s like normal tricks would
be like to put a bucket on top of a door, so when you walk though the
door [gestures to explain trick]. But instead he like puts flame things on’t
door and when they open [gestures to show trick] and he uses loads of
string. It’s like they burn their heads off and stuff like that.
Here Connor had similar expectations to those explored by Barker (1989) in
relation to the formulaic conventions of comics, forming a cultural contract
between storyteller and reader. Connor was aware of the formula of the Home
Alone films, having watched the first in the series. That is to say, a boy is left
behind by his parents and has to fend off two evil robbers, by himself, before
being reunited with his family. Just like the regular comic audience, Connor
did not have high expectations of the narrative; it is ‘a given’ that the story
will follow a particular pattern, but the pleasure Connor had in the Home
Alone films was in how the character, Kevin, trapped, tricked and outwitted
the baddie robbers. These tricks cannot be ‘lame’ like a ‘bucket on the door
trick’, they have to be clever and complex; this is the contract between maker
and audience.
Appreciating how ‘they’, the film-makers, come up with these tricks is
also part of the pleasure of the film for Connor and the issue of the child
being abandoned by his parents is not even mentioned. As Hodge and Tripp
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94 Children, Film and Literacy
(1986) demonstrate, children do not only respond to the moral or adult
meaning of a text; they take pleasure in other aspects of the text, in this case
the empowerment, ingenuity and transgression of the child, albeit tempo-
rary. Connor identified with the central (male) child character, but what he
recalled most vividly was the process of wondering what the makers of the
text, ‘they’, were going to do next. As a reader of films then, Connor was
able to immerse himself in the text, but he also steps quickly inside and out-
side the diegetic world of the text (Mackey, 2002) often positioning himself
as an insider, alongside the makers of the Home Alone films. Being a reader
of film then, involves different processes in different contexts, including
thinking like a maker of films.
Connor was the only child in the group who had tried out film-making
before, at home. He had used his gran’s phone to create a film because he
was bored. He described the making process here:
I’ve made that. It’s not exactly a film. I’ve made up a voice. I’ve got a
couple of teddies. I got her phone and I put it on video and what I did so
it didn’t see my hand: I kept pressing the pause button and then I moved
it into a different place and pressed play [means record] and then spoke
a bit and then moved it again.
Here Connor described using a stop motion animation technique, voice
over and editing in camera, displaying considerable intrinsic motivation.
He has tried to teach himself filmmaking to entertain himself. Motivated
by ‘having nothing else to do’ and his own interest in film, Connor chose
to try to make a film. Just as other children in the group described reading
and then writing stories, Connor described watching films, dreaming films
and imagining ideas for films in his head. Engagements with texts, in this
case film, have close links to the urge to produce texts. Being a storyteller
is a strong aspect of Connor’s identity but his stories are moving image sto-
ries. It is important to contemplate that although language clearly has an
important role to play in expressing narratives (Robinson, 1997), for some
children the moving image has become at least as important.
Abbey
Abbey approached me after the first classroom presentation to tell me how
much she would like to take part in the project. She talked about liking
realistic films and as this was quite distinct from other interest expressed
by the class, I was intrigued. Abbey described herself as ‘helpful, funny and
caring’ and commented:
Really I just like to be involved in things.
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Identities in Practice 95
This was certainly evident and Abbey was desperate not to miss any of the
research activity and was always the last to leave. Abbey described herself as
a book lover mentioning for example, the Enid Blyton and Louisa M. Alcott
series. She said she enjoyed writing stories and preferred to write, more than
type, but also stated that she loved making and watching films. Although
it transpired she had not in fact ever made films before, she clearly was
enthused by the idea. She also mentioned participating in other activities
including Guides and playing a musical instrument at school and church.
She did not have a television although she could watch DVDs; she did have
a Gameboy but said her brother used it more than she did and she suggested
that she would like an MP3 player, with things she likes on it. She perceived
herself as successful at school but thought that other people saw her as a
‘nerdy chatterbox’.
Throughout the research process Abbey expressed herself thoughtfully
and carefully, which at first I interpreted as confidence in her ideas. She
was prepared to ‘hold the floor’ and take a good deal of time to explain
what she meant to the rest of the class. This was not always popular and it
took me a good while to work out what was going on when Abbey talked
to an audience outside her trusted friendship group. Abbey’s identity was
influenced by her family’s religious identity but this was not something she
emphasised. In fact, she had developed strategies to avoid being given any
particular label linked to her background. Abbey’s overt construction of self
appeared to illustrate Giddens’ (1991) suggestion that self-identity is formed
through the narratives that we attempt to construct about ourselves and
share with others. However, Abbey was not constantly playing a role, she
did not exhibit multiple identities, she managed to develop what Kenner
(2005) calls a hybrid identity which drew on her distinct experiences at
home, in the classroom and in social situations at school.
The individuals’ biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with
others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must integrate
events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing
‘story’ about the self. (Giddens, 1991, p. 54)
Like all the children in the group, Abbey presented her identity in a way
that enabled her to access social groups. For Abbey particularly though, this
was a more overt and conscious process in which she perceived her own
differences from others and tried to assimilate. Abbey seemed to spend such
a long time explaining her ideas because she was also considering, even wor-
rying about, how they would sound to her peers and teacher. I came across
this strategy in the first interview. I noticed that she talked about watching
Stormbreaker (Sax, 2006) the filmed adaptation of an Anthony Horowitz,
Alex Rider novel. Quickly, she reverted to discussing the books. I think this
was because she thought I would be more interested in what she had to say
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96 Children, Film and Literacy
if she was talking about films, but that her own responses stemmed from
her readings of the books.
Abbey had had her fair share of teasing and intolerance in school and had
learnt to reveal only so much about herself to others. However, when Abbey
was among her trusted friends, and two of these were also in the research
group, she was much more spontaneous and less concerned with what others
might think. In fact, at times, unfettered by the censure she often received
from other classmates, her enthusiasm carried her away and it became harder
for others to ‘get a word in!’
Of the children in the group, Abbey had watched the fewest films.
Initially, she could not think of a film she had recently watched when first
interviewed:
I don’t think I’ve watched any this month actually although I might be
watching one later because it’s my brother’s birthday today and he’s got,
he’s just got Toy Story and Superman from mum and dad.
Films were not the significant element to her that they were to Connor or
others in the group. She said for example:
We are not the first family to go and see a film.
She laughed at this, as if to say, ‘Well in fact we’re usually the last’. She went
on however, to describe an incident when her family missed out on seeing
The Incredibles (Bird, 2004) and saw National Treasure (Turtletaub, 2004)
instead, which turned out to be a film she preferred and helped her develop
her interest in mysteries. It is significant here that although Abbey watched
far fewer films than the others and did not watch as wide a variety of films,
the films that her peers watched, were known to her and she was keen to be
involved in related play and discussion of them:
Well quite often, there’s something like, there’s a new film out and say
if they’ve watched it they tell me a bit about what it’s about. I decide if
I like it or not.
Abbey talked about this process in the context of a discussion of playing
games such as Star Wars. She described playing these games with her broth-
ers, she has three, and at school. When talking about playing Star Wars, it
would seem as if she was basing her knowledge of the film on her friends’
accounts.
I remember, we used, we quite like watching Star Wars em and we quite
often played, em tried to remember what the film was about and sort of
act it out. And sometimes it ends up quite funny sometimes because we
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Identities in Practice 97
forget what it says and we make up something different and it just goes …
it just goes completely wrong. [laughter]
Abbey described the films as serious and said that she thought the ‘actors
in it never tell a joke at all’. This might imply that Abbey did not respond
to the humour in the Star Wars films and takes as her primary reading the
more serious elements of the story. It might also imply that Abbey, again,
did not repeatedly watch films so she was basing her play, her response and
her reading of the film on a single viewing or possibly from second-hand
accounts. This did not stop her from playing the story of Star Wars with her
siblings and also sometimes in school. As Buckingham (1993) demonstrates,
giving an appearance of knowledge of popular culture texts is critical to
maintaining social standing in school.
Abbey explained early on that her parents were not too keen on films and
that they sometimes only let her and her brother watch half a film. She was
the oldest of four, and this led to her watching texts for younger children
than those in the group who have older siblings. However, this was hardly
a case of restricted viewing. Abbey described her parents as selecting films
for her that they have seen already. She suggested that they know what she
would like and that ‘usually they are right’. Abbey had been to see National
Treasure, a recent cinema release, and The Incredibles on DVD. She was the
only one of the group who did not have a DVD player in her room but she
watched films occasionally and at the cinema as a very special treat. Her
first cinema experience was as part of a school visit to see Piglet’s Big Movie
(Glebas, 2003) and this was an important memory for her. Initially, when
she discussed her memories of this trip I was concerned that she was again
anticipating what she thought I wanted her to say. I mentioned liking sad
films and enjoying a good cry when I presented to the whole class, Abbey
also described her emotional responses in her questionnaire:
I went to see Piglet’s Big Movie in 2002/3. I went with school which meant
I didn’t have anything to eat, but no one told me that usually you do
have food. I loved it! I cried because parts were sad.
In her interview she described in detail the moment that made her cry. She
suggested that the film was about friendship and that the scene that made
her sad was a moment when the character Piglet felt left out:
I think I like it because it’s sad. I don’t know why. I just like sad films.
She also recalled that it was her first cinema visit and that this was not the
case for the rest of the class. She recalled this visit much more vividly than
any of the other children, suggesting that it was indeed a significant first
experience. Her comment that she did not know ‘you were supposed to have
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98 Children, Film and Literacy
food in the cinema, nobody told me’ suggests that this first experience was
significant in other ways too. She was learning what you do when you go
to the cinema and she noticed and remembered her difference from others
because her peers already seemed to know the rules. As a reader of films
Abbey had fewer experiences than the others to draw on but she clearly
demonstrated the ability to identify and empathise with characters and had
begun to develop a particular orientation to certain sorts of films.
Eight Below (Marshall, 2006) was another film seen with the school that
Abbey described as based on a true-life story. The moments she remembered
are those of extreme difficulty and hardship for the protagonist, ending
with the abandonment of the sled dogs (Matilda also remembered this scene
vividly):
My favourite film was Eight Below. I liked it because it was sad and had
animals as some of the main characters. Now I still think it’s one of my
favourite films!
It is striking that Abbey did not refer to subsequent viewings of this film;
she recollected from her initial viewing. However, the film appears to have
made an impression on her preference for real life rather than fantasy films
with fairies or talking animals. She suggested that there are a lot of realistic
films for children but then could not think of any. She then changed her
mind, commenting:
I think most children’s films are fantasy actually. In fact Eight Below is the
only one I can think of at the moment.
This reflects a number of things, firstly that Abbey had not seen a vast
number of films, but all the same she knew she liked live action drama.
She perhaps also liked the more realistic elements of films such as the Harry
Potter series. Although she pointed out that these films have magical fantasy
elements to them, she particularly referred to Harry’s situation with a family
who don’t love him and the issues that arise in the stories about friendships.
It is, perhaps, also important to acknowledge that there is not a plethora of
realistic films, as Abbey defines them, available in Britain. A realistic drama
is more likely to be found on television and as a consequence Abbey sought
to satisfy her enthusiasm for the more ‘real’ aspects of texts where she could
and sometimes those realistic elements could be found in animated Disney
films or fantasy and adventure stories. As she pointed out in her interview
‘sometimes animation can be real’, by which I think she meant the stories
present the point of view of a child which she can relate to.
Abbey’s sharp recollection of her emotional response to Piglet’s situation
in Piglet’s Big Movie where she recalled thinking ‘oh no they’re leaving him
out’ suggests that she had begun to develop empathy with characters in texts
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Identities in Practice 99
and had an expectation that films will invite her to emotionally engage with
a character and that this is an important part of the pleasure of the text.
Abbey recalled that it was only her who cried at the film and this could be
because it was her also her first cinema trip and as such quite a momentous
occasion for her. But it could also reflect her emotional response to the text:
Well I loved it because it’s [pause] mainly about friendship? And it’s just
a really nice film.
Abbey said this second sentence in the present tense, not distancing herself
from it, as if she had grown out of it. Like Connor with Toy Story she stays
loyal to the film as if it represents an important experience for her. However,
like all the girls, Abbey distanced herself from overtly ‘girlier’ films, texts and
artefacts. At one point she told me about a girl at church who was obsessed
with being a princess, who always wore a princess outfit. She was dismissive
of this and described how in her own play, based on fairy stories, she was
more likely to be the ‘king’s servant[!]’ and that she would only have wanted
to be a princess when she was younger, aged 5. Unlike Connor, who stated
he had to be Buzz in any game he played, Abbey did not claim one particular
character that she played but many, and most often taking up an adult role.
Abbey’s photos of home do not display the same number of film and
popular culture artefacts as Eve’s and Matilda’s do. Most of the objects she
photographed were clothes, bedding, bags, books and soft toys many fea-
turing popular characters from television series for very young children. The
toys she photographed were also those of her younger siblings. However,
the jewellery box she photographed, that was her own, was Winnie the Pooh
themed, again reflecting her immersion in the younger fictional choices of
her siblings (the images of Winnie the Pooh in Abbey’s house are all from
the Walt Disney franchise version of the character). She photographed fewer
DVDs and Game Boy games and they are not positioned on a shelf or in
a drawer, they are taken as single images. Abbey photographed one of the
books from the Horrible Histories’ (Deary and Hepplewhite, 1993) series,
which demonstrates her judgement that popular books published in series
are commercial brands and as such are perhaps considered more closely
aligned to popular culture artefacts.
Two other items of clothing were displayed: a Star Wars T-shirt and a Harry
Potter sock. Abbey talked about both of the films occasionally, although not
in any depth. She did refer to playing the films and can certainly adopt the
Star Wars action postures. However, she did not demonstrate the intimate
knowledge of the films that the others had, nor did she position herself as a
fan in the way Matilda and Eve do. For example, she did not have a poster
display or a shelf dedicated to her own enthusiasms, but all the same these
texts are visible in the weft and weave (Pahl, 2002) of the family’s existence;
in their clothes, in their school bags and in the covers they sleep under.
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100 Children, Film and Literacy
One of Abbey’s photos, above all the others stands out. It is of her brother
in a Spiderman outfit. When she saw the pictures she laughed, recalling
how hard it was to get her brothers to do what she wanted them to, once
the Spiderman outfit was on. In fact, as soon as he had the costume on
her brother became Spiderman complete with web shooting wrists and the
posed foot ready to spring into action. He displays engagement with what
Reid (2009) describes as the gestures of film from Spiderman without having
the intimate knowledge of the films that comes from repeat viewings.
Some films, such as the Star Wars or Spiderman (Raimi, 2002) films acquire
status as almost universally shared experiences. Bromley (1996) describes
children’s film-related play based on Disney’s Aladdin (Clements and
Musker, 1992) as drawing on a ‘collective memory’ which children of var-
ying degrees of expertise can access. Abbey and her siblings found various
ways to learn about films from their peers and then join in, however Abbey
was never an expert in a popular film or film genre. This contrasts with
Abbey’s school literate identity where she was perceived by staff to be a very
high achiever and by her peers as being very clever.
Abbey was not saturated in children’s film and popular culture. She was
an enthusiast but she had seen fewer moving image texts than her peers
and owned far fewer related artefacts. Despite this Abbey had memories of
film that were significant to her and contributed to her identity as a reader
of particular sorts of ‘real’, dramatic and adventure stories. Abbey was also
able to access the game-playing and talk about significant films she had not
experienced directly through the existence of an ‘interpretative community’
(Fish, 1980) who shared their knowledge and experience and enabled her
to join in. Children’s readings of children’s films are social, offering useful
resources for group play. Some films such as Star Wars become highly signifi-
cant shared and collective memories so that individual children will develop
a whole range of strategies to ensure they are able to (in Abbey’s words) ‘be
involved’.
Liam
Liam was selected to take part in the group because in his questionnaire he
referred to being able to talk with his friends about films in school and this
struck me as interesting:
My favourite film is The Simpsons Movie. Me and my friends talk about
what happens. I like it because it is funny.
Liam told me he was good at ‘chillin’ and the only thing he was good at, at
school was Maths. From the outset Liam responded very differently accord-
ing to context. In his first interview he talked in his own accent and he was
not afraid to show enthusiasm. In small group work Liam often displayed
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Identities in Practice 101
a different identity, speaking in an American gangsta accent complete with
hand gestures and with an attitude that was meant to imply he was not
interested. He said he believed people at school thought he was a gangsta
and used words like ‘chillin’, ‘fit’, ‘homies’ ‘sic’. Often he allowed himself
to be drawn in and did get involved in the activities on offer, but if he felt
he was being observed by his peers he was careful to show that he thought
it was all boring.
During one interview Liam told me he wanted to run a strip club and be
a ‘pimp’ for the ‘laydeez’ when he grew up, asking me if I knew what he
meant. Clearly Liam was trying to shock me, but at the same time he was
alerting me to that fact that he felt there was a big distance between my life
and his. In one drawing activity he described how he quite likes Horrid Henry
(Unwin, 2006) on television because he’s naughty, but he went on to say:
He couldn’t dream of half the stuff I do.
Again he was emphasising the gap between children’s lives as seen on pop-
ular children’s television and his own life, echoing Luke and Carrington’s
(2002) observation about the absence of representations of some chil-
dren’s lives within classroom or, in this case, children’s television texts.
Unsurprisingly, he looked to adult programmes and said he liked ‘dramatic
stuff on television like EastEnders’. Liam at the end of Year 5 was displaying
a very different persona from the one I encountered in the first interview.
Here he presented a cosier picture of watching films at home:
Well, I sometimes, mostly I watch films at home because it’s free and at
least you get to lay on the sofa and stuff with your family.
Liam shared enthusiasm for the music and popular culture tastes of his
older brother, especially rap music and magazines that he ‘can’t remember
the titles of’. In his first interview though his taste in film was much closer
to his peers:
I like funny films that make people laugh. Stuff like Alvin and the
Chipmunks – the chipmunks are squeaky and dodgy and funny.
He described his mum surprising him with a new DVD from time-to-time.
He said that because he is the baby of the family he gets special treats. For
example his mum bought him the latest Pokémon deck, Pokémon Pearl,
when it first came out. Having something like a DVD or Pokémon deck or
football cards when they first come out was seen as real treat and reward;
a signifier of status by all of the group, although sometimes they also see
this as ‘being spoilt’ or ‘having everything’. Liam was not often the first to
have things, though. Mum also played an important role in cinema visits,
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102 Children, Film and Literacy
organising family trips ‘five or six times a year’ or enabling him to go with
friends. Liam presented these visits as special occasions:
Well I think of the food cos when you get to the cinema you have food
and you get to see a film you haven’t seen before so it’s kind of exciting.
Although Liam did not appear to drive cinema visits in the way Connor did,
he was enthusiastic about going to the cinema and especially about going
with friends. The rest of the group described going to the cinema with fam-
ily, unless it was a birthday visit or a school trip. Liam did not necessarily
always decide on the films that he wanted to see at the cinema, but he could
be said to know what he liked and more particularly what he disliked. So,
when he went along to the cinema with friends the group chose Alvin and
the Chipmunks (Hill, 2007) over Enchanted (Lima, 2007) because the boys did
not want to see Enchanted. Liam did not give his reasons for this choice, he
just smiled as he spoke knowing that I would understand that Enchanted is
distinctly a girls’ film and so not really an option. Film preferences for Liam
were distinctly social, indicating family, friendship and gender allegiances.
Liam described stories he liked as:
Like some stories like action stories films stuff that are like don’t really
happen but it’s like quite good and make believe and stuff like that.
Here, Liam demonstrated his full awareness that when watching his favour-
ite films, such as superhero films, he is entering into a fictional world. He
suggested that although he knows they are made up and not realistic that
was what he liked about them. Film also generated social activity for Liam,
enabling him to enter into talk with his friends. He talked about this again
with reference to The Simpsons Movie (Silverman, 2007) in the first interview
where I sought clarification of his written questionnaire response:
L: So we talk about what happens …
B: Well that, so that’s really important then. So if you hadn’t seen The
Simpsons [pause]
L: Then we wouldn’t be able to talk about it … what happens
B: [Speaks over] you wouldn’t be able to talk about it … So what … so,
would you say that The Simpsons was particularly true of that … you
needed to see? …
L: See it to talk about it [Nods and smiles]
B: OK so what sorts of things did you talk about?
L: We talk about what happens in it and start laughing and memories of
when we went to see it.
B: Can you think of any now?
L: It’s like when Homer [begins to laugh] gets this pig and he’s walking it
on’t wall, he’s like on’t roof and he’s going ‘Spiderpig, Spiderpig’ [does
actions and sings] and it’s funny.
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Identities in Practice 103
B: And do you think it helps because you’ve all seen Spiderman as well …
there’s sort of that …
L: yeah … yeah, it takes the mick.
Like Abbey, Liam recognised the social value of having seen films but it is
not just social status that motivates him to talk about his film experiences.
He clearly derived pleasure in re-living funny moments of particular films,
retelling them and explaining the joke.
Early on Liam said he liked to play imaginative games based on films.
He talked about doing this both with friends in the park and at school on
non-football days. The three main films he played were Harry Potter where
he liked to play Harry and be a goodie, Star Wars which is a game he played
with a particular friend where they were both wookies in their own version
of the story as well as a more generic army action story:
L: Sometimes we pretend we are fighting each other with guns and magic
B: So it’s army games
L: Yes army games and magic and stuff like that
B: Or more magic?
A: Yeah magic
Liam explained that in this game different ideas are drawn on and mixed
up and that although the children draw on films they don’t always follow
them rigidly. Liam described how sometimes when they played they moved
away from the storyline of the film and ‘go wherever our imagination runs’.
This seemed to be evident in relation to characters in particular. So Liam
described making up new characters in Star Wars games. This was a tactic
which allowed the play to move beyond re-enacting the story and resolved
tensions over who was going to be a main character. It was also clear from
group work that Liam rarely got to be the role he wanted to be, so he was
very keen to use this strategy.
At other times Liam would say that he did not play games, but that he ‘hung
out with his homies causing mayhem’. This was towards the end of Year 5 and
could reflect changes in Liam’s after-school activities, being given more free-
dom to play out. Although markedly different from his earlier descriptions of
play, it was potentially just as much about re-enacting fantasy – a world that
he would like to be connected to. It was also a world that he perceived through
his relationship with his brother and his shared interest in niche music, 50
Cent, an American rapper, and related films and television programmes.
Connolly finds that children’s identities are ‘contingent and context specific’
(Connolly, 1998, p. 190) and clearly, Liam had a foot in a number of distinct
social and cultural spheres, one of which he was able to share with his peers
and one which he felt distinguished him from them and from school.
Liam is not black but was beginning to signal his affiliation with aspects
of black culture. He was trying out or practising a version of self which was
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104 Children, Film and Literacy
almost entirely based on his experiences of popular culture. He did not do
this in class and his peers, who teased him about it, limited the extent to
which he did this socially. It is, however, important to acknowledge the way
Liam made use of aspects of culture, through language and role playing, to
explore his identity at a time of transition. He was approaching year 6 and
his siblings were in secondary school. He looked beyond what he saw as the
younger experiences of his past, to films such as 30 Days of Night (Slade,
2007) an 18-certificate horror film that he had recently watched. However
there are some universal texts such as The Simpsons, Spiderman and Star
Wars which occupy space on the border between childhood and adulthood,
which he felt safe and able to share his pleasure in.
Eve
Eve, on first impression, was quiet, successful at school and, while not one of
the ‘popular’ girls in the class, and very respected by her own group of friends.
She had confidence and maturity so that sometimes during the research I over-
looked the idea that she was just as keen to have fun and should not always
have to be the sensible one. It was clear on a number of occasions that Eve
found her ‘sensible’ identity limiting. However, this was a role she occupied in
most of her time in school. Eve’s participation in the project became a chance
to slip out of this identity from time-to-time with interesting consequences.
Eve described watching one or two films per week at home, usually over
the weekend, and television most nights. She said she went to the cinema
about once every two months. Like most of the group Eve could play DVDs
and videos in her room but not television channels. Eve highlighted the
influence of her family on her viewing carefully. Her younger sister regularly
persuaded her to watch things that she finds a bit babyish such as Bee Movie
(Hickner and Smith, 2007). Her parents, especially mum, clearly took great
care over film choices, looking at film programmes collected at previous
cinema visits and recommending films for Eve to consider. Eve also talked
about a neighbour who was a close family friend who sometimes recom-
mends films or theatre for her to go and see.
For Eve, like Liam, going to the cinema is an occasional treat:
If there’s something good on and we, and then – it’s a sort of special
occasion or if we haven’t been for a very long time – we might go and
see something at the cinema.
Here Eve identified three reasons why her family might opt to go to the
cinema to watch a film and implied that sometimes it might be all three
reasons at once. She pointed out that her parents are just as likely to want to
go and see these films as herself. Children’s films can be very closely linked to
special family events such as birthdays and are significant aspects family life.
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Identities in Practice 105
Eve also talked about funny or comedy films as an important genre that would
stimulate a cinema visit. All the children expressed a preference for funny
films at some stage throughout the research process, demonstrating another
often overlooked aspect of children’s films, that is to say their humour. By
‘something good’ Eve was often referring to big budget, well-promoted main-
stream films adapted from popular fiction series such as The Golden Compass
(Weitz, 2007) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Columbus, 2002).
Her film-viewing seemed to be carefully connected to her reading:
My favourite film is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I’ve seen it
at the cinema and I’ve got the ones that are out and I’m reading them.
Both Eve and Matilda described how they are reading the Harry Potter books
before watching the film adaptations although this requires patience and
care so that no one gives away the story to them. This indicates quite intri-
cate group interactions and negotiations to maximise pleasure from both
book and film. Although Eve is considered average in terms of school-based
literacy, she has an extremely positive view of both reading books and watch-
ing films for pleasure and has developed tastes and preferences, some which
she felt linked her to others and some which marked her out as distinct.
Eve openly discussed playing games based on stories, books, and films
as well as television programmes such as Doctor Who (Davies, 2005) and
Primeval (Hodges and Haines, 2007–2011), two particular favourites of hers.
She described how she used to play games when she was little based on ani-
mals, but that now she plays slightly older games and she emphasised which
trusted friends play these games with her:
I’ve got this group which I’m in, we’re playing this game where we’re
these creatures and then we’re sort of magical and we have sort of powers
and we save the world [smile].
Eve displayed her knowledge of the narrative structure of a fantasy adven-
ture film which incorporates all the things she liked. She liked animals,
magic and fantasy and she understood that the plot of fantasy is usually
driven by the need for there to be good characters vanquishing bad charac-
ters to stop them from destroying the world. Eve described watching film
and television at the weekends, playing them at school the following week:
When we watch TV or read a book we just tell them and we sort of just
play on that storyline.
Here Eve identified herself as someone who gained knowledge of particular
texts which she then shared with her friends, particularly those who did not
encounter as many different texts as she did, like Abbey. This gave her some
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106 Children, Film and Literacy
status in the group and she was seen as a valued contributor to the group’s
imaginative games.
In the context of both engaging with texts and playing the texts, group-
ings were carefully managed to ensure that those involved shared the same
pleasures. Outside this group it was clear there were children who would
laugh at their tastes and games. Groups, aligned through their interest in
popular media, existed within a constellation of groups, some of which had
higher or lower status. Some of these groups, like Connor’s street dance
group and Eve’s animal games group, were quite firmly formed and exclu-
sive. Other groups were more fluid and inclusive and these were often based
on collective texts such as Harry Potter and Star Wars.
There is a photograph taken by Eve that demonstrates well the range
of her interests and enthusiasms in relation to media texts. She had posi-
tioned posters of Doctor Who (Davies, 2005), Harry Potter (Columbus, 2002),
Pokémon (Yuyama, 1998) and High School Musical (Ortega, 2006) alongside
some posters of animals. She commented in an early interview about a time
when she and her friends were really mad about animals. Indeed the other
girls in the group regularly said that she was mad about animals but Eve was
quite keen to distance herself from this aspect of her identity, which she felt
she had grown out of.
Eve’s photos also suggest her tendency to collect, so we have sets of books
including those collected from cereal packet offers and noticeably here Eve
has complete sets. Eve also chose to present books and DVDs together, for
example the Horrid Henry (Unwin, 2006) series. Both Eve and Matilda showed
figures of film characters in their photos and there is evidence of the process of
positioning them for each shot, encouraging them to be playful and to pose.
Eve’s collections were extensive and demonstrate why she was such an
important resource to others in her friendship group. Popular culture,
including children’s films, clearly provides resources for playful performance
of identity. In the social contexts of school (in the playground), knowledge
of popular culture texts also acts as cultural capital, enabling participation
in talk and play. As can be seen in Eve’s case, (but also Liam and Connor’s)
her changing popular culture collections reflected her deliberate shifts in
identity towards what she saw as more grown-up choices.
It is important to note that Eve, like Liam and Connor, having watched
so many children’s films, was also keen to watch films she had not encoun-
tered before and in her case these are films her mum signalled as those
which she might like because she was older and more mature than her sister.
These are films such as It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946) and Miracle on 34th
Street (Seaton, 1947) which she described as favourites, although she does
not talk about them during the group research process. Much later when the
group watched a clip from Great Expectations (Lean, 1946) it was interesting
to see Eve’s enjoyment of the film and her greater preparedness to engage
with an older, black and white style of film-making.
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Identities in Practice 107
Aaron
Aaron was well-liked at school and was able to access the school curricu-
lum more successfully than the other two boys in the research group, who
often said he was the best at writing and asked him to write down anything
related to their film. Aaron was considered by his teacher to be of average
ability in relation to literacy and it was clear that writing in particular was
not a favourite activity. Aaron and Connor were very good friends. Although
I did not know this at the point of selection, it was highly useful to see how
their interest in film and involvement in the research was heightened by
being able to work with each other as trusted friends (this was also true of
the girls). Aaron shared Connor’s interest in street dance and had begun
to take classes out of school. He was also influenced by Connor’s taste in
film. Connor often got the DVD first and then Aaron might, if he thought
it sounded like his sort of film, watch it himself. This led them to have con-
versations about films outside the more universal texts of the group so they
both independently refer to the film Ghost Rider ( Johnson, 2007). However,
where Connor’s experience of film-watching is almost entirely individual,
for Aaron it is most often a shared experience.
Aaron watched films as part of his relationship with his dad and brother
at weekends:
I always go to the cinema with my dad to watch movies and I’ve seen at
least seventy or something like that because I go to that Cineworld one
and I get these passes and I see as much movies as I can.
He was conscious that he had watched a lot of films but often he could not
name one in particular that he really liked from recent viewings. Going to
the cinema had become much less of a special occasion than it was for all
the other children in the group and was almost casual:
We don’t buy all the food – all we do is just get the cinema tickets and
just watch things.
This is also the case with watching at home, which was almost a daily activ-
ity like a bedtime story:
Every night well nearly every night before we go to bed we have, we
watch a movie and then we go to sleep.
Aaron also talked about ‘culling’ his collection occasionally so that he no
longer had films that he had watched so many times they had become
boring. He didn’t have the same degree of complexity to his selection
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108 Children, Film and Literacy
process as Connor and it appears that there are certain films he would
repeatedly watch because they are favourites:
Spiderman 1, 2 and 3. They’re good cos you do not know what is next and
I get into it still now.
Aaron described a number of times when he felt scared watching films but
said that he watched them because he wanted to know what would happen
next. He showed me how he covered his eyes with his fingers but peeped out
at the screen. He also told me about his younger brother’s taste for horror
films, which he did not share and a time when his mum tapped on the win-
dow when he was watching the film, Scream (Craven, 1996) with his brother.
As Aaron retells the story, he recalls the combination of fear, excitement and
humour, but he is firm in his dislike of horror films. His enjoyment of action
films was quite different:
A: They’re exciting, and they’ve got, I like to erm see them all shouting –
[laughs and looks to see if I approve] they’re funny.
B: So you like all the shouting and the what else, go on …?
A: The chu chu [gestures and makes sound as if using a machine gun] them
shooting each other …. I sometimes laugh because when they’re shoot-
ing each other and they die and it’s funny …
B: It’s actually quite funny …?
A: It’s like, if there’s an army tank, they’ll blow a missile and people sort of
jump backflips over things [shows how the people spiral in the air].
Throughout this dialogue, which took place early in the research process,
Aaron checked my reactions, only admitting his humour at the spiralling
bodies when he was sure I would not be offended. He clearly recognised
that some people do not like or approve of violence in films. Interestingly,
Aaron enjoyed action violence and at a great distance, in a certain context
he could find it funny, whereas, in another genre (horror) he found violence
frightening. Clearly, he deploys different readings of texts, depending on
their modality in a similar way to the children Robinson (1997) observed.
However, this reading strategy is inflected by his preferences for one genre
over another. Robinson (1997) argues for the use of familiar texts in develop-
ing children’s reading, highlighting the important ways in which children’s
tastes influence their reading. Since genres such as action films, do not have
easy equivalence in the classroom, it would therefore be difficult for Aaron
to draw on these familiar, preferred texts.
Other than his dislike of horror, Aaron enjoyed many of the same films
as his brother because they are very close in age. He described the least con-
flict with his sibling by comparison with Abbey and Eve, for example. He
marked himself as someone who liked action films, but was just as keen to
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Identities in Practice 109
define himself by what he did not like, horror. Like Eve then he sees himself
as someone with tastes in common and distinct from his siblings and peers.
Aaron’s friendship with Connor often involved the swapping and sharing of
films, although for the most part this was Connor suggesting titles to Aaron.
One of the films they both watched around the time of the first interview
was Ghost Rider, a vigilante/biker storyline with a 12a cinema certificate but
a 15 DVD rating. The film had an impact on Aaron that it didn’t have on
Connor. He told me:
He’s like quite nasty because – like if they’ve done something wrong he
don’t send to jail – he kills them.
Here he was talking about the hero or anti-hero of the story and clearly this
is a first encounter with a text that moves beyond the expected conven-
tions of films for children. In films for children goodies send people to jail,
they rarely kill them and, if they do, it is following much provocation and
is a central moral dilemma the main character has to solve. Perhaps this
film was Aaron’s first encounter with an anti-hero, a flawed character who
none-the-less we are asked to side with. Although usually he enjoyed high
octane action sequences with big body counts, Aaron was less confident
with this film because he could distinguish between the comic book style,
superhero-action-film-death, to prevent the baddie destroying the world,
and death that is given out as a punishment by the main protagonist. The
moral distinction made him uneasy with the film. Connor, however, had
encountered far more films where the narrative tension is built on a more
complex notion of morality than the polarised good and bad of many chil-
dren’s films; the shades of grey in more ambiguous texts. Children’s film
narrative shape children’s expectations of characters and events in stories
and, in certain contexts, when they encounter these rules being broken for
the first time, texts provoke strong reactions.
Like the other boys, when Aaron played Spiderman he wanted to be the
main character and he positioned himself as a fan:
I’m a big fan of Spiderman so I used to play that.
However, like Liam, he did not always get to be the main character and for
this reason he had to be resourceful. He described a character he made up
when playing Star Wars called Yoshi who is small like Yoda but has ‘better
moves’. During the interview I read this as part of the game negotiation
because more than one person wanted to be Yoda. Indeed, who you get
to be in a group-game that relates to films, appeared to be an interesting
indicator of social status. However, I also found many instances where the
children adapted the characters from films so that they could fulfil their
own pleasures and fantasies in the play. These character changes were highly
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110 Children, Film and Literacy
connected to identity and this was intricately connected to their own film
enthusiasms. So Aaron here chose to play Star Wars and opted to be Yoshi
because he liked to play this sort of character. He adds to the character,
giving him better fighting moves so that although he is a funny character,
he is now also able to take part in important and serious battles. Creating
these changes was also a way for Aaron to display his expertise in the world
of Star Wars. He made a character that he was confident could exist in the
fictional world and be taken seriously by other children playing the game.
Matilda
Matilda was very keen to be part of the project and approached me after
the first workshop to tell me about the Harry Potter corner she had at home.
As can be seen in the photograph, her corner was displayed carefully, with
images of the actor Daniel Radcliffe in role as Harry Potter. The images she
had chosen were in the style of some of the more sophisticated graphic
design for the films with creams and golds and ancient looking calligraphy
rather than the more child-like black and purple designs featured on some
of the Warner Bros. branding for the films.
Matilda had also chosen to separate these posters and photographs from
any of the other material in her room. This contrasts with Eve’s poster
wall that was, although very neat and carefully spaced, a mixture of all her
different interests (Figure 6.1).
Figure 6.1 Eve’s bedroom wall
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Identities in Practice 111
Her display was an opportunity to signal to friends and family that she
had what she saw as a special bond with the film and the characters. She
describes her strong emotional link to (plot spoiler) Harry’s loss of his godfa-
ther in book 5. She listed her favourite characters as Harry, ‘obviously’, then
Ron because he’s funny and then Hermione. She took some time to justify
why she did not like Hermione first, as if I would expect her to like the main
female character. Matilda put Hermione third because Hermione is bossy,
even though Matilda went on to acknowledge that Hermione is smart.
Interestingly, Abbey also said she took the role of Voldemort’s sister rather
than play at being Hermione. Furthermore, in her discussion of Ben 10
(Rouleau et al., 2005–Current) although she said she agreed to take the char-
acter of Gwen with her brother and cousins she actually thought Gwen was
rather sensible; a ‘tell off girl’ who was not someone she would like to be.
In this description Matilda astutely observes a character type often used in
films and programmes with a male lead who needs to be kept in check. In
both Ben 10 and Harry Potter Matilda did not find the female characters she
would like to be when playing games.
Matilda was an enthusiastic film and television viewer and had watched
all the recent children’s film releases such as Ice Age (Wedge, 2002) and Shrek
(Adamson and Jensen, 2001). She also asked me if I could recommend some
adventure films she could watch and she watched a variety of films I bought
in for her throughout the project, returning them and feeding back her
thoughts about them. In all the research activities Matilda displayed a high
degree of independence from the rest of the group and from her peers. By
which I mean she chose what she wanted to contribute because it interested
her rather than because it was what her friends were doing. At one point
when the group had decided to make what they described as realistic films,
she explained how she would go along with them but that really she would
have preferred some element of fantasy, ‘Fantasy is my middle name’, she
declared. This is also revealed in her enjoyment of the fantasy elements of
the Harry Potter books and films:
There’s magic about it so there’s stuff that’s not true like a griffin and
unicorns and magic and a three-headed dog.
Like Connor, Matilda openly displayed her enthusiasm for films in her inter-
view, for example, she laughed, inviting me to participate, while explaining
how funny it is that Hagrid called a three-headed dog Fluffy:
He called the dog Fluffy. He’s a three-headed dog and he called it Fluffy!
Matilda loves art and described herself as having lots of imagination and
throughout the research she drew pictures, diagrams and graphics exten-
sively to express her ideas and sometimes just to create new characters for
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112 Children, Film and Literacy
fun. For example, she drew a diagram showing that her friends like her
because she is funny and she likes drawing. She enjoyed talking about some
of the imaginative games she plays both on her own, and with others. The
games she plays on her own are intricate and sophisticated and based on
her own invented animated characters. They take place during car journeys,
for example, but are highly distinctive stories/games that link to her inter-
est in animals. Matilda asked me not to explain the full story to the rest of
the group, she said, ‘but don’t tell anyone’ and this echoed a point Connor
made about still playing with his Toy Story toys. Both children had strong
pleasure in playing imaginative games but were aware that not all of their
peers shared this pleasure and that some said that they have ‘grown out’ of
this sort of playing.
Matilda is the eldest of four children and also had very close links with her
two cousins so is always surrounded by other children. She was very keen
to emphasise that her dad is Australian and she was interested in Australian
culture. Mum helped her decide which films to watch and had allowed her
to watch an over 12 film Harry Potter which she told me about as if it was
of great significance that the rules had been negotiated so that she, was
allowed to watch a particular favourite.
In her photos she, like Abbey, highlighted the toys and objects of her
younger siblings. She carefully photographed their school bags that depict
a wide range of contemporary films, DVDs as well as of books. Another
photo shows Matilda doing her homework with a branded drinking bottle
nearby taken by her younger brother. There are also Nintendo DS games and
towards the end of the project Matilda listed playing with her DS as one of
three favourite activities with watching television and reading. Two other
films that are chosen for display are Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984) and The
Italian Job (Collinson, 1969) and Matilda was the only one of the group to
show films she said were favourites of her parents.
In her first interview Matilda claimed to be a tomboy, explaining that she
preferred boy films and programmes. In one picture she also placed a toy
Mr Incredible next to a toy Spiderman. Again Matilda is keen to display that
she is not a ‘girlie’ girl and that she enjoys action films and superheroes.
Children’s films often offer up a particular character for children to bond
with, but very often the main character is male. The girls do not choose to be
this main boy character but neither do they like the female characters enough
to choose to be them. They all reject Hermione in Harry Potter , for example.
In play all the children adapt and transform characters from favourite films
but this has particular implications for the girls. Matilda resisted and rejected
the female roles available to her in film and television texts.
The story of Ben 10 , who transforms into aliens with special powers, is
shown on Cartoon Network and at the time of the fieldwork this was the
only one series which Matilda and her brother had watched ‘endlessly’.
Matilda described her first viewing of the programme when mum was in
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Identities in Practice 113
hospital having her younger sister. She watched it and thought how much
her brother would like it. She told me this story to illustrate that she discov-
ered Ben 10 and shared it with her brother, not the other way around. She
also described watching as the boys played Pokémon and although she does
not say it, there was a hint that she might have liked to join in.
In her talk and play Matilda drew on many ideas from films and televi-
sion, which she blurred together, and had developed some strong individ-
ual tastes for fantasy and for action-orientated stories where the characters
might have magical powers or superhero-type qualities. As Matilda talked
about the texts she became immersed in them, remembering many details of
the stories and recalling her emotional reaction to certain scenes. Like Connor
she has a rich repertoire of moving image texts to draw on, and like Abbey
and Eve in her play she does not allow herself to be limited by the gender
roles offered in the texts she encounters.
Children have home experiences of media and storytelling and these
experiences are central to their developing literacy in the early years, (Marsh,
2003, 2004). Film can clearly be seen to contribute to this home experience
or what Robinson (1997) describes as developing ‘repertoires’ of textual expe-
riences which children draw on in their talk, in their play, in their encounters
with new texts and their production of new stories. Even the participant in
the group who had the least experience of film, Abbey, had recent knowl-
edge of contemporary film releases, had everyday objects and artefacts from
contemporary films in every area of the home, played games based on film
ideas and had developed a distinct preferences for adventure films, featuring
animals. The children’s engagements with film clearly impacted on their
practice and performance of identity and literacy.
Even in these brief accounts of the children’s individual engagements
with film it is possible to observe them reading film, actively, socially and
culturally and this is further demonstrated when the data is combined.
Film at home
Marsh’s (2005) description of the ‘narrative web’ of artefacts, toys and clothes
of one four-year-old child related to Winnie the Pooh as offering opportunities
to experience a favoured narrative text in different modes was clearly in evi-
dence in the children’s lives. Abbey and her siblings display a ‘narrative web’
of artefacts particularly in relation to Winnie the Pooh. Matilda had her Harry
Potter corner. Connor had every toy from the Toy Story films as well as the
Buzz Lightyear pyjamas. All the children in the group told of numerous ‘nar-
rative webs’ linked to different favoured films experienced at different ages
and these films, as Marsh (2005) also describes, clearly permeate family life.
These artefacts had also become important to developing family narratives
(Pahl, 2002) about identity. Connor tells a story about his captivation with
the Toy Story films. This is a story that has been told to him and retold by his
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114 Children, Film and Literacy
mum which he acts out for the camera. All the children shared experiences
of books, computer games, clothes, bags, bedding, pens and drinks bottles
which relate to films they have seen and particularly films which had become
favourites. There were objects parents bought as everyday items and there
were also toys used to play games related to films such as wands, figures and
soft toys bought as presents or treats. These had a special status, enabling
the children to play out their favourite films, but also enabling them to
signal their affiliation to a particular film. Popular culture artefacts enabled
the children to establish relationships, aligning themselves or distancing
themselves from others (Mishler, 1999). As these children approached Year
6 (about to move to secondary school) they admitted being embarrassed
about still having and playing with these toys, but the toys were clearly still
significant items that formed a part of their memory of childhood and were
included in their own narratives about themselves as children. These films
elicited strong affective responses from the children and contributed to their
developing preferences for other similar texts.
The family was also extremely important to the different ways the children
in the group engaged with film. For some of them parents were gate- keepers,
keen to limit their film-viewing, and not particularly enthusiastic film viewers
themselves. For others parents acted as advisors offering guidance, enabling the
child to make decisions about which films to watch. In the case of Eve this pro-
cess was taken extremely seriously and her mum in particular had attempted
to widen her experience and encourage her to watch older films as well as
contemporary choices. Like the parents in Marsh’s (2005) account, Eve’s mum
was positioning herself as an ‘expert navigator of popular and media culture’
(Marsh, 2005, p. 30). She was also extremely positive about the role of film in
relation to Eve’s developing literacy, making links between books and films as
well as other art forms. In the case of Connor, he had taken on this role for
himself, and had developed skill as a curator of his own experiences.
Parents clearly took up different roles in relation to film at different times.
So sometimes going to the cinema was a whole family experience; a treat
with a sense of occasion. Sometimes the parent was facilitating but not
taking part in the viewing experience. Sometimes the children asked to be
able to watch a new film and at other times the parents surprised the child
with an unknown film as a gift. For Aaron watching films was, for a time,
his main weekly time spent with his dad. For Connor, watching films was
a predominantly individual activity, although he had strong memories of
earlier shared experiences. For Liam, going to the cinema with friends was a
signal of increased independence.
Talk about film
In my preparation for my research I contemplated carefully how best to ena-
ble children to talk openly about their experiences of film. As discussed in
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Identities in Practice 115
my methodological rationale (Chapter 5), I was convinced that I needed to
develop a range of strategies to initiate talk about film. What I found in prac-
tice however, was that the children in the group were very easily able to talk
about film. They were used to talking about film because talking about film is
already an aspect of their social world; their ‘interpretive communities’ (Fish,
1980). To some degree I was able to re-create an opportunity for them to
share some of the ways they talk about film in their own lives. Although the
session was a filmed interview, each child’s enthusiasm about their own film
experiences led to a higher degree of spontaneity than I expected. So there
are a number of stories told that have clearly been told before, for exam-
ple Aaron’s Mum tapping at the window during a scary film and Connor’s
description of watching Toy Story are almost performances of stories that they
had clearly previously shared.
Each child also retold aspects of favourite films and this triggered mem-
ories of the film that they wanted to share. Matilda told me over five times
about Fluffy being a three-headed dog and each time she did, she collapsed
with laughter. When she retold the joke she found it freshly funny because
she was sharing it with someone who had also watched the films and remem-
bers why it is funny. These film memories or stories are clearly also expres-
sions of identity. Through their talk about film children are able to establish
who they are according to the sorts of films they like. They are also able to
position themselves according to what it is about the film they enjoyed, the
particular way they responded or the aspects or characters of the film they
most enjoyed. They are able to become opinion leaders who suggest films to
others or share their expertise about a particular film or type of film.
Bromley’s description of children drawing on films as part of a ‘collective
memory’, engaging in talk about films because the talk is a familiar dis-
course within which they are able to position themselves (Bromley, 1996,
p. 76), was also in evidence here. It was clear that talking about films was
something which happened often socially in school and that such talk
regularly led to playing out the fictional world of the films. Although Liam
points out that if you have not seen a particular film you can’t join in with
the conversation, Abbey develops strategies to ensure that she is made famil-
iar with the characters and plot and can join in, at least to some extent.
Like Matilda, Liam enjoys the humour in sharing a moment of a film that
he and others found very funny. He re-enacts this moment in the interview
and several times later in the research he recounts the same scene with the
same gestures and other members of his class join him. Again, this expe-
rience is similar to that described by a parent of a child with a particular
interest in Thomas the Tank Engine transcribed in Marsh’s research, (Marsh,
2005). In this case the parent supports the developing interest by talking
to the child about Thomas and buying related toys and taking the child to
see trains, for example. All the children in the research were able to draw
on their home experiences of talking about film into school social spheres.
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116 Children, Film and Literacy
They support each other in their enthusiastic recounting of particular
moments of pleasure developing their role in an ‘interpretive community’
(Fish, 1980) which extends when they get to school.
Children’s film also affords children opportunities to play and there was
evidence of the children using play about film to explore identities. The
Star Wars films offered important opportunities for collective play based
on key action sequences and drawing on the characters, narratives and the
many and various aspects of the fictional world that marked the text out
as distinct, fantasy or science fiction. This was an alternative world which
the children could enter whether or not they had seen the films. Play was
enriched if the children had experienced the films and these children were
more able to access the game and more able to be inventive within it. There
were clear leaders, those who knew most about the films, experts who could
develop spin off games and new characters. However, all of the children
could play Star Wars with some level of shared knowledge and pleasure.
Dyson (1997) observes that knowledge of superheroes can act as a ticket for
participation for some children and that in play some children have higher
status and are able to generate who will be each character and what they will
have to do. This was the case both for some of the children in this group and
also across a range of media texts, Star Wars (Lucas, 1977) for example being
a key source and role allocation being extremely important. Dyson observes
children use play about superheroes as a space for establishing themselves
in the social order. She argues that the children affiliate with others or resist
others either by distancing themselves from individuals or by negotiation.
The children in my research group reported similar moments where they had
either always wanted to be one character, Connor always wanted to be Buzz
Lightyear from Toy Story (Lasseter, 1995) and would not play unless he was
Buzz. Aaron and Liam were much more adept at adapting roles less popular
with others and investing them with characteristics that made them more
interesting for example Wookies and Yoda from the Star Wars films.
The children also clearly played games that were influenced by films but
did not have one key film as the source. They described fantasy games and
army action games and demonstrated that they knew the conventions of
these texts. Eve for example knew that the narrative of her game was to save
the world. Matilda knew that lizard robots were the bad guys, and Connor
understood that many children’s films take clear moral stances conveying
particular messages. Thus the children recognise films as having cultural
boundaries with familiar conventions and schemas they can draw on in
their own play and storytelling.
In their play the children also identify flaws in the texts available to them.
There are not enough girl characters and those that are available conform
to unappealing stereotypes. Hermione is too boring so no one wants to be
Hermione. Playing the films enables children to occupy roles that espe-
cially appeal to them that they create for themselves, even if those roles are
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Identities in Practice 117
actually absent in the film itself. Therefore the children can be seen to be
reading texts actively, not accepting elements of the texts which do not fit
with their own preferred identities.
The children as readers of film
By the age of 10 each child had a considerable repertoire of films to draw
on, which they had watched on video, television or DVD at home and at
the cinema. These were not only new releases but sometimes older films or
films outside of their usual experience. Children’s film-viewing is far from
homogenous and children have developed preferences which they use as
markers of identity and to help them read new texts.
The films we like, our memories and experiences of film, contribute
to our sense of identity. Children’s films in particular enable children to
explore identities through play and by signalling to others their belonging
to a group who like a particular film. Play based on film does not reflect an
indoctrination of particular ideologies (Tobin, 2000) for example, girls do
not opt to be the female characters suggested to them in films. Indeed both
boys and girls seek to transform the characters they adopt. Sometimes, this
is motivated by wanting to play a more interesting role, and sometimes this
is a chance to display knowledge of a particular film.
The imaginative spaces offered by film enabled the children to explore
fantasy identities (Buckingham and Sefton-Green, 1994) as well as those
closer to their own experiences (Robinson, 1997). Children develop affec-
tive relationships with particular significant children’s films and these films
shape children’s emerging tastes and preferences for new narrative texts.
Children create opportunities to play and participate in children’s films and
this reading of films is demonstrably active, social and cultural. These expe-
riences of film do not necessarily relate to the children’s orientation towards
literacy at school. Levy (2009) highlights a dissonance between children’s
abilities to read on-screen texts and their perception of themselves as readers
of print texts in school. Similarly, all of the boys in the group believed they
were not very good at writing and expressed a dislike of reading. In the next
chapter I will return to this issue in the light of children’s own storytelling
in written and oral form.
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