Children's Films Research Articles

Evil Children in Film and Literature: Notes Toward a Genealogy

When I sent out a call for essays on evil children in film and literature, never in my wildest nightmares did I imagine that I would end up encountering—to quote Obi Wan Kenobi—such a “wretched hiv...

Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children's Films (review)

Reviewed by: Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children's Films Kathy Merlock Jackson (bio) Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children's Films. By M. Keith Booker. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010. In Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children's Films, University of Arkansas English professor M. Keith Booker revisits familiar material. The author of Drawn to Television: Prime Time Animation from The Flintstones to Family Guy and May Contain Graphic Material: Comic Books, Graphic Novels, and Film, Booker understands animation and the child audience and lends his expertise to uncovering the subtext of the Disney oeuvre. In his "Personal Prologue," Booker writes, "I am, among other things, a professional academic film scholar and, yes, I should admit up front that I am an unrepentant leftist egghead intellectual. But I'm also a dad, and I've come to understand that the complexities and responsibilities associated with being a parent to kids who watch movies need to be dealt with by all parents, eggheads or not, and of whatever political persuasion" (xiii). The persona of Booker as intellectual-father permeates his analysis. Often written in first person, the book provides a highly personal reading of Booker's and his three sons' responses to Disney films and particular elements in them, such as music, magic, racial and gender roles, humor, or effects. The book is divided into five chapters. In the first, Booker considers the feature animated films that Walt Disney oversaw, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Jungle Book (1967), released the year after Disney's death. In the second, he assesses the studio's output after Disney, including "the virtual wasteland in the production of children's animated film" (37) until the release of The Little Mermaid in 1989 sparked a renaissance. The third chapter addresses Disney's relationship with Pixar and foray into digital animation, and the fourth considers Disney's competitors, especially DreamWorks, which Booker regards as farther to the left than Disney and slightly more subversive. Booker concludes with a chapter titled "The Politics of Children's Film: What Hollywood Is Really Teaching Our Children." Throughout, he emphasizes that children's films can have a "profound effect at the level of promoting certain fundamental attitudes and basic expectations concerning what the world is like and how one should live in it" (175). Much of the book consists of Booker's synopses of films and his and sons Benjamin's, Skylor's, and Adam's opinions of them, but the book is [End Page 324] most interesting when it delves into ideology. Booker traces many Disney themes: innocence, finding one's place, finding a mate, friendship, maturation and responsibility, the importance of naturalness and authenticity, and the fleeting nature of childhood. He notes that Disney differs from Pixar in its emphasis on magic over technology and from DreamWorks in its advocacy of destiny over choice. "[T]he most consistent ideological message embedded in children's film," Booker writes, "has to do with the promotion of an individualist mind-set…. not particularly surprising, given that individualism is probably the central constitutive component of the official ideology of the United States as a nation and of capitalism as a system" (175). Booker presents a literate interpretation of the values inherent in the animated feature films children watch, augmenting his work with a useful bibliography and filmography. While one cannot disregard the role that these popular films and the messages that they send play in a child's life, Booker's argument would be strengthened by placing animated films in a larger cultural context, relating them to live-action films, television, books, computer games, and other media, as well as related issues in childrearing and education. Films do not function in a vacuum but rather reinforce the lessons that children receive from other cultural influences. Booker ends his study with a call for parents to actively watch films with their children, ask pertinent questions, discuss values, and encourage critical thinking. One cannot argue with this sound advice. Kathy Merlock Jackson Kathy Merlock Jackson is professor and coordinator of communications at Virginia Wesleyan College, where she teaches courses in media studies and children...

Disney, Pixar, and the hidden messages of children's films

This work is a wide-ranging survey of American children's film that provides detailed analysis of the political implications of these films, as well as a discussion of how movies intended for children have come to be so persistently charged with meaning. * Provides chapter-by-chapter coverage of films from different studios, including two chapters on Disney, one on Pixar, and one on films from other studios (with a special focus on Dreamworks) * Offers bibliographical listings of both printed works cited and films cited in the text * Includes a comprehensive index

Constrained emancipation: the career of Ethyle Batley, Britain's pioneering woman film director

Ethyle Batley (1876–1917) was England's first woman film director. She began acting in films in 1910, and between 1912 and 1916, working with her husband, Ernest Batley, and their daughter, Dorothy, she wrote, produced, directed and/or starred in sixty-four films. Although she initially specialized in children's films, most of which featured her daughter, she eventually worked in a range of genres, including war and sporting subjects. While most of her films were unpretentious program pictures directed at the open market, Batley's importance as a writer, director and studio production head deserves re-examination.

The Ideology of the Mermaid

This article argues that introducing undergraduates to literary criticism and theory can be most effectively accomplished through the teaching of children's literature, fantasy literature, and Disney films alongside traditional literary criticism. We discuss a series of assignments we use in Pursuits of English, our department's introductory theory and criticism course.

Children's film as an instrument of moral education

This paper explores two philosophical treasures that we often neglect: the moral faculties of children and the pedagogic virtues of film. My thesis consists of three primary claims: (1) when properly educated, children are capable of thinking critically about ethical issues; (2) moral edification ought to have the dual aims of developing this capacity and educating the emotions; and (3) given these aims, the children's film genre is a surprisingly apposite tool for aiding the moral instruction of pre‐adolescents. I advance arguments for positions (1), (2) and (3), while considering objections to each view. I conclude the paper by illustrating how one film, the 2007 Disney Production, Bridge to Terabithia, exemplifies the instructional virtues enumerated in (2).

Margarita Barskaia and the emergence of Soviet children's cinema

Margarita Barskaia was the wife of Petr Chardynin—the. legendary film-maker of pre-Revolutionary cinema, and a pioneer of children's cinema. This cluster of documents brings together articles written by Barskaia for the leading newspapers of the time, as well as letters from her private archive, in which she tries to move forward the formation of a children's film studio. The cluster contains an article by Natalia Riabchikova about the history of films for children in the Soviet Union, followed by articles from 1929, which highlight the need for a cinema for children and Barskaia's involvement in this debate. Natalia Miloserdova offers a survey of Barskaia's life and her career, which is followed by two letters from the private archive of Margarita Barskaia, which show her involvement in the formation of the children's studio at the highest level. In all her endeavours, she pleads for the formation of a production unit, not a large studio—which. is what would happen with the establishment of Soiuzdetfil'm in 1936. Finally, this cluster presents some reviews of Barskaia's three films: Who's More Important, What's More Necessary, an agitational film that has only recently been identified as Barskaia's first film; Nikolai Izvolov describes how the film was identified. Lev Kassil's review of Torn Boots is indicative of the high praise that Barskaia received for her work. A report on the shooting of Father and Son from 1936 is also highly positive of Barskaia's methods, while the review of the same film, published in May 1937, reflects the campaign against Barskaia that would destroy her career and her life.

Children's Film as Social Practice

In his paper "Children's Film as Social Practice," J. Zornado argues that the animated feature is a genre distinct in its own right, and, although overlooked by film criticism up to now, deserves rigorous, scholarly attention. Zornado employs the term "iconology" to develop a foundation for a critical methodology indebted to Althusser, Foucault, and Lacan as well as contemporary film criticism. Iconology of the animated feature film is the study of the meaning systems of the dominant culture and the ways in which such systems are inscribed into all kinds of social practice geared, specifically, to seduce and inform the mind of the child. Zornado analyses Pixar's Monsters, Inc. (2001), elaborating it as an example of an iconological reading of an animated feature and he argues that Monsters, Inc. encodes ideologies of hegemonic power relations and while at first seeming to criticize and to reveal the corrupting nature of hegemonic power relations; thus, the film's narrative works ultimately to confirm the status quo in which the child, like the Other, must learn to accept his/her objectified and exploited status as "natural" and "inevitable."

Fascism and Family Entertainment

Since the late eighties, children's animation films have been fused more explicitly than ever before into family entertainment. Video stores offer sections with “family features;” Disney and Dream ...

Animating Grandma: The Indices of Age and Agency in Contemporary Children's Films

Analysis of three animated children's films, each with heroic grandmothers motivating their plotlines, suggests a shift in the representational politics mediating older women to child audiences. The films function as critiques, reflections, and mechanisms of contemporary capitalism's available sociocultural locations for older women, modelled through varying degrees of subversive performance. Interrogating the agency potential of housework, nurture and extreme sports, this article assesses the role and function of the “Granny trope” in contemporary children's media.

J. M. Barrie Gets the Miramax Treatment: Finding (and Marketing) Neverland

This article uses the DVD material for the Miramax film Finding Neverland to explore the marketing of children's films. Miramax is a subsidiary of Disney, and Finding Neverland's DVD marketing aligns it with Disney's brand image. The main DVD featurette reinterprets Finding Neverland and its stars according to an unspoken template: child-centered fantastic spectacle that supports wish-fulfillment and firmly excludes death or unhappiness. The template fits clumsily, yet such blatant reinterpretation inadvertently reveals key features of Disney/Miramax's marketing strategies for family films. More broadly, this case study suggests scholars should take corporate brand identities and synergistic business models into account when examining the conception and marketing of children's films.

Study on the Style of Representations of Folktales in North Korean Films for Children

Study on the Style of Representations of Folktales in North Korean Films for Children

Rethinking Genre Theory

Rethinking Genre Theory Film Genre: and Beyond, by Barry Langford, Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Barry Langford correctly contends that while has become an increasingly contested concept in scholarship, the film continues to dominate much of Hollywood's annual output. To add to his point, at the time of this review, the top-grossing films in the United States include two horror films, a sports film, an action/adventure film, a historical drama, two teen films- one a musical and another a college comedy-and, finally, an animated children's film. While genre theory has traditionally focused on the formation of such Classical categories as the Western, the gangster, the romantic comedy, the horror, and the combat film, the need for a redefined understanding of genre-one which accounts for the post-Classical emergence of the notoriously difficult to define science-fiction and blockbuster action that make up the bulk of multiplex fare every summer- is more necessary than ever. Langford's Film Genre successfully addresses this growing need by working through the question of how the academic and industrial concept of genre emerges, and convincingly promoting an evolutionary model that focuses on genre formation as a process rather than as constant and internally consistent. Instead of decrying the post-Classical impulse toward genre blending and bending as a threat to traditional notions of genre theory, Langford effectively demonstrates that these impulses have been a key feature of genre since the beginning of narrative film. Langford carefully balances his critique of the constantly evolving generic categories between two audiences. On one hand, he pitches his discussion toward students who might be coming to an understanding of genre for the first time, and on the other, he successfully navigates the various and sometimes competing assertions of genre scholars. More specifically, Film Genre extends and revises the expert's sense of genre by pointing to the prescient need to reformulate rigid conceptions of genre films as being only systematic, routinized, and internally consistent productions intended for mass audiences. Langford divides his book into three major sections. First, he traces the emergence of four Classical genres-the Western, the musical, the war/combat film, and the gangster film-and provides significant examples of how scholarship and the industry have shaped the ways in which audiences have come to understand the key signifiers of each. The second section focuses on what he refers to as transition genres of the horror and science-fiction film, clarifying how each contributes to the destabilization of the categories described in the first section. Finally, the third section explores contemporary post-Classical genres like noir, the action blockbuster, and other complex forms like documentary, the Holocaust film, and pornography in order to demonstrate how the mutability of generic form has been a constant and consistent feature of narrative film. Each chapter, moreover, includes a discussion that goes beyond Hollywood to explore how other national cinemas have treated the specific genres under consideration. Lastly, each chapter provides a case-study of a specific analyzed within the matrix of scholarly approaches employed by the author throughout the book, which makes Film Genre especially useful for students. Langford's approach to Film Genre allows him to successfully achieve the important goals of extending the pioneering work of genre theorists like Thomas Schatz, Rick Altman, and Steve Neale, and providing an accessible explanation of Hollywood's historical relationship with the genre film. Langford's flexible definition of genre depends heavily on reinvestigating the significance of melodrama to narrative film. Identifying what he refers to as the melodramatic modalities of genres, Langford's theory helps to clarify why genre films often fail to fully satisfy the rules of their form. …

Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900-2001: Screening the Word by S. Hutchings A. Vernitski (review)

320 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 the depths' (p. I2). Frequently the decisions of the censors were so petty, absurdand counterproductivethat one is almost inclined to wonder whether there were vrediteli (wreckers)at work. Certainly,written and oral attackson 'unacceptable'productsmade many Soviet citizens try much harder to read, see or listen to them. However, with the police at their disposal,the political authoritiesseemed not to mind. 'It is evident that the determiningfeature of totalitariancensorshipis that for it thefactitselfofbanning is more important thanthe contents of theworkbanned' (p. 17). The study of censorship in Russia and the USSR is now something of a growth industry,but an enormous amount of work still needs to be done e.g., on Glavlit'sBulletins (and see also, concerning gaps in research on prerevolutionaryRussiancensorship ,N. G. Patrusheva'sarticlein Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 30, I998). This well-translatedbooklet will, I hope, stimulate more Western scholars to work in this fascinating field. Several of Bliurn's other works,plus much more researchon the subject,are now also available on-line at an excellent new site mastermindedin Nizhnii Novgorod: . Blium is stillhard at work, and it is good to know that the number and qualityof his admirersand disciplesaroundthe world are on the rise. Department ofSlavonic Studies MARTIN DEWHIRST University of Glasgow Hutchings, S. and Vernitski,A. (eds).Russian andSoviet FilmAdaptations ofLiterature ,I900-200I: Screening theWord.BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon Series on Russian and East European Studies, i8. RoutledgeCurzon, London and New York, 2005. Xi + 228 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?6o.oo. IN 2002 the University of Surrey hosted an internationalconference on tlhe relationship between Russian literature and cinema. This volume contains twelve of the papers, revisedby their competent and knowledgeableauthors; most of them expand or modify our perception of that complex relationship. Under the broad canopy of nation and myth, four categories structurethe book: three essays deal with 'manufacturingthe myth' in pre-revolutionary Russian cinema through I953; four explore 'the myth in retreat' during the Thaw; three investigatethe mythology of nation in specificfilm contexts;two 'reinterpretthe myth' via post-Soviet films. EditorsStephen Hutchingsand Anat Vernitskiintroducethe genre of adaptation . They make a few careless errors:Iulii Raizman was a director, not a critic (p. ii), Petrov's I937 film PetertheGreat is not an example of the 'later Stalin period' (p. I5), whilst indulging in some irritatinglyopaque language: 'avoidingformalistessentialismat the cost of skirtingcontent-ledreductionism (assimilatingboth adaptationsand their sources to a diffuse,Marxist-inspired concept of culturesof consumption)'(p. 4). These detract from an otherwise appropriateand useful theoretical frameworkand a credible explanation of adaptation'scentralitywithin Russian cinema. REVIEWS 32I Given that centrality, most of the editors' choices make good sense: the films discussed fuelled either the creation or the unraveling of national myth. Thus, Rachel Morley devotes her essay to Evgenii Bauer, whose prerevolutionaryadaptationsstandhead and shouldersabove their (mostlypedestrian )peers. Morley persuasivelyargues for Bauer's'reworking'(herword) of nineteenth-centurytexts, especially Gogol' and Dostoevskii, in his masterful ChildoftheBig Cil e (I9I4). Jeremy Hicks tracesthe curiousevolution of Chapaev from fact, during the Civil War, to quasi-documentary,in Furmanov's 1923 narrative, to outright myth, in the Vasil'ev Brothers' 1934 film. Stephen Hutchings examines the major genre of children's films, paying particular attention to the screen versions of TimurandHis Gang(I94I) and Sonof the Regiment (1946), both essentialbuilding blocks in the Soviet child's ideological education. Apart from a few peculiarlyinappropriatereferencesto Balladofa Soldier, Hutchings, like Hicks, adroitly links the movies with the ideological imperativesof the period. The volume then leaps to the Thaw. The omission of late Stalin-eraadaptationsis unfortunate:an analysisof them or of theirabsencewould have been relevant. Of the four 'thaw' essays, two on Kozintsev's Shakespearefilms and on Askoldov's Commissar, based on Vasilii Grossman'sI934 story 'In the Town of Berdichev' examine familiarif worthy subjects.David Gillespie could have done more with Kozintsev's 'coded' commentary on the Soviet political scene, and Graham Roberts both overstates Grossman'ssubversive intent in the story and forces on Commissar a mother/whore dichotomy (the Jewish Maria versusthe Red commissarVavilova)that I, for one, do not find in the film. (A not-so-trivialerror, given the film'sJewish theme: Grossman was of courseJewish, Askoldovis not.) Julian Graffycomparesthe filmversionsof Aksenov'searlynovels, Colleagues and My...

Little Friends: Children's Film and Media Culture in China. Stephanie Hemelryk Donald

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsLittle Friends: Children's Film and Media Culture in China. Stephanie Hemelryk Donald T. E. WoronovT. E. Woronov Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 55Jan., 2006 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/20066165 Views: 9Total views on this site Copyright The China JournalPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Kitchen Cinema: Early Children's Film Shows in London's East End

Kitchen Cinema: Early Children's Film Shows in London's East End

Child's play: The political imaginary of international relations and contemporary popular children's films1

Many scholars in International Relations (IR) have drawn from popular films to examine various problématiques that have informed the discipline's main theorisations. As Cynthia Weber remarks, popular films are powerful because they engage in the very ‘serious political work’ of mythologising the ‘truths’ and ‘realities’ which provide the foundation for many of IR's main theoretical envisionings of our world. To date, however, children's films have received very little attention. For the purpose of this paper, three have been isolated: Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998) and Rescue Heroes: The Movie (2003). Children's films, it can be argued, help to craft and restore certain perspectives for each new generation of young minds during the crucial years when the world is being textualised for the first time. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to read these films as working towards producing and sustaining the power/knowledge that seeks to defend contemporary forms of world order while concurrently extending and disseminating the rule of these forms of world order through the medium of children's popular cinema. 1. This paper stems from a series of questions posed to me by my two oldest sons, Alexandre and Nicolas. Their questions were prompted by their recent awakening to various dimensions of our contemporary political imaginary and the massive violence it can tolerate. Making sense of this world in terms other than those presented to them in the films they enjoy motivates my writing both here and elsewhere. I would like to thank my colleague and friend Miguel de Larrinaga for his insightful comments, most notably with regard to his layered reading of Toy Story. I would also like to express my appreciation to the participants of the Cultural Studies Group at Saint Mary's University for their comments and suggestions when the first draft of this paper was presented to them on 26 March 2004. Finally, I am grateful to the reviewers of this journal for helping me clarify my analysis. As always, any errors or omissions remain mine.

The ecological and consumption themes of the films of Hayao Miyazaki

Films are an underutilized media to explore and amplify the many messages of ecological economics. While a few popular films and videos have effectively addressed environmental themes, this commentary argues that they have an even greater role to play in the educational process in order to reach a broader audience and help it to rethink its role in the world's ecosystems. Hayao Miyazaki, the masterful animator from Japan, is singled out to offer ample material in many of his popular and children's films to stimulate such critical thinking on the systemic problems addressed by ecological economics.

Music in Children's Films

About music in Swedish children's films and its representation and construction of childhood, gender and ethnicity.

Whose story is it? Sindbad the sailor in literature and film

Sindbad the Sailor is one of the most popular stories in the world. It has been recast continuously in children's stories, Hollywood films, Arabic poetry and modern American and Arabic fiction. In its travel across cultures, historical eras, genres and media, the story has always managed to transform itself into something that is simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. This article looks at the workings of the narrative, which effect such transformations and, more particularly, at the role of ideology, genre ideology and subjectivity in driving narrative and shaping story. It traces the transformations of Sindbad the Sailor in Hollywood films and contemporary American and Arabic fiction then rereads the Nights story, relating the sources of change to the culture that produced each version.