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Finding the Hidden Child: The (Im)Possibility of Children’s Films
This chapter presents a case study of the film Comedy Queen (2022) by Swedish film director Sanna Lenken. The case study includes an analysis of three key scenes from the film, an interview with the film director and an interview with a film curator who screened the film for young audiences. The broader context of the development of Swedish films for young audiences is described, alongside a brief account of some of the stereotypes, and absences in the ways girls have traditionally been represented. In conclusion, I make the case that Comedy Queen is an example of the way girls in Swedish children’s film have become both central protagonists and fully rounded and developed characters. I link this to the prioritisation of children’s film in Sweden and in doing so, I propose that there are important lessons to be learnt about providing support for feminist, women filmmakers, enabling them to make films with universal themes which feature girls at the centre of the narrative.
Children, Film and Literacy explores the role of film in children's lives. The films children engage in provide them with imaginative spaces in which they create, play and perform familiar and unfamiliar, fantasy and everyday narratives and this narrative play is closely connected to identity, literacy and textual practices. Family is key to the encouragement of this social play and, at school, the playground is also an important site for this activity. However, in the literacy classroom, some children encounter a discontinuity between their experiences of narrative at home and those that are valued in school. Through film children develop understandings of the common characteristics of narrative and the particular 'language' of film. This book demonstrates the ways in which children are able to express and develop distinct and complex understandings of narrative, that is to say, where they can draw on their own experiences (including those in a moving image form). Children whose primary experiences of narrative are moving images face particular challenges when their experiences are not given opportunities for expression in the classroom, and this has urgent implications for the teaching of literacy.
This article considers the intersection of girlhood, agency, and indigenousness through a reading of the internationally renowned film Whale Rider. I suggest that Whale Rider presents a double project that resymbolizes girlhood as it also produces a “decolonizing of the screen.” On the one hand the film resonates with what emerged in the 1990s as the assertion of “girl power” and the notion of a new, active, powerful and agentic femininity. On the other hand, the film mobilizes a re-articulation of these discourses of “new femininities” by “indigenizing the image” of the empowered girl.
The first critical study of Disney films.
How are children―and their parents―affected by the world's most influential corporation? Henry A. Giroux explores the surprisingly diverse ways in which Disney, while hiding behind a cloak of innocence and entertainment, strives to dominate global media and shape the desires, needs, and futures of today's children.
Peter Pan, Jacqueline Rose contends, forces us to question what it is we are doing in the endless production and dissemination of children's fiction. In a preface, written for this edition, Rose considers some of Peter Pan's new guises and their implications. From Spielberg's Hook, to the lesbian production of the play at the London Drill Hall in 1991, to debates in the English House of Lords, to a newly claimed status as the icon of transvestite culture, Peter Pan continues to demonstrate its bizarre renewability as a cultural fetish of our times.
Screening Gender on Children's Television offers readers insights into the transformations taking place in the presentation of gender portrayals in television productions aimed at younger audiences. It goes far beyond a critical analysis of the existing portrayals of gender and culture by sharing media professionals' action-oriented recommendations for change that would promote gender equity, social diversity and the wellbeing of children. Incorporating the author's interviews with 135 producers of children's television from 65 countries, this book discusses the role television plays in the lives of young people and, more specifically, in developing gender identity. It examines how gender images presented to children on television are intertwined with important existential and cultural concerns that occupy the social agenda worldwide, including the promotion of education for girls, prevention of HIV/AIDS and domestic violence and caring for 'neglected' boys who lack healthy masculine role models, as well as confronting the pressures of the beauty myth. Screening Gender on Children's Television also explores how children's television producers struggle to portray issues such as sex/sexuality and the preservation of local cultures in a profit-driven market which continually strives to reinforce gender segregation. The author documents pro-active attempts by producers to advance social change, illustrating how television can serve to provide positive, empowering images for children around the world. Screening Gender on Children's Television is an accessible text which will appeal to a wide audience of media practitioners as well as students and scholars. It will be useful on a range of courses, including popular culture, gender, television and media studies. Researchers will also be interested in the breadth of this cross-cultural study and its interviewing methodology.
Unshrinking the Kids: Children’s Cinema and the Family Film
- Cary Bazalgette
- Terry Staples
Récit fictionnel, récit factuel
- Gérard Genette
Directed by Nicky Caro. Film. Icon Film Distribution
- Whale Rider
Directed by Taika Waititi. Film. Piki Films
- Hunt For The Wilderpeople
Directed by Garth Jennings. Film. Optimum Releasing
- Son Of Rambow
Directed by Danny Boyle. Film. Pathé Pictures
- Millions