The Children’s Film: Genre, Nation and Narrative
- Submitting institution
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Liverpool Hope University
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- NB35C
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Columbia University Press
- ISBN
- 9780231851114
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- June
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Although published as part of a series that is marketed as ‘a comprehensive series of introductory texts covering the full spectrum of film studies’, The Children’s Film: Genre, Nation and Narrative nonetheless constitutes a significant and original critical intervention in the emerging field of children’s film studies.
The introductory chapter sets out a framework for identifying children’s films based on contextual and paratextual manufacturing processes, including marketing and publicity materials, censorship and suitability ratings, critical reception, merchandising, and exhibition patterns (pp. 4–11).
This methodology is then applied diagnostically to a range of films, which are analysed in terms of their formal (narrative, thematic, ideological) commonalities. This constitutes the first extended discussion of children’s film as a discrete cinematic genre. It is argued that common features of children’s films include reaffirmations of family, friendship and community; the foregrounding of the experiences of children, adolescents and teenagers; the exclusion and/or the eventual defeat of disruptive social factions; the minimisation of what are viewed as adult-oriented representational elements; and an ending that is primarily upbeat, emotionally uplifting, morally unambiguous and supportive of the social status quo (pp. 11–16).
The book goes on to explore several other areas largely unaddressed in prior scholarship on children’s cinema, including the relation between pedagogy and pleasure; the appropriation of the genre for reasons of state propaganda; the tradition of children’s film as a site for expressions of regional and national identity; and the impact of Hollywood’s near-hegemony on national traditions of children’s cinema.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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