The Child in Film

The Child in Film
Author: Karen Lury
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2010-03-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0857711288

Ghastly and ghostly children, 'dirty little white girls', the child as witness and as victim, have always played an important part in the history of cinema, as have child performers themselves. In exploring the disruptive power of the child in films made for an adult audience across popular films, including "Taxi Driver" and Japanese horror, and 'art-house' productions like "Mirror" and "Pan's Labyrinth", Karen Lury investigates why the figure of the child has such a significant impact on the visual aspects and storytelling potential of cinema.Lury's main argument is that the child as a liminal yet powerful agent has allowed filmmakers to play adventurously with cinema's formal conventions - with far-reaching consequences. In particular, she reveals how a child's relationship to time allows it to disturb and question conventional master-narratives. She explores too the investment in the child actor and expression of child sexuality, as well as how confining and conservative existing assumptions can be in terms of commonly held beliefs as to who children 'really are'.

The Child in Time

The Child in Time
Author: Ian McEwan
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2011-02-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0795304099

A child’s abduction sends a father reeling in this Whitbread Award-winning novel that explores time and loss with “narrative daring and imaginative genius” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Stephen Lewis, a successful author of children’s books, is on a routine trip to the supermarket with his three-year-old daughter. In a brief moment of distraction, she suddenly vanishes—and is irretrievably lost. From that moment, Lewis spirals into bereavement that effects his marriage, his psyche, and his relationship with time itself: “It was a wonder that there could be so much movement, so much purpose, all the time. He himself had none at all.” In The Child in Time, acclaimed author Ian McEwan “sets a story of domestic horror against a disorienting exploration in time” producing “a work of remarkable intellectual and political sophistication” that has been adapted into a PBS Masterpiece movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). “A beautifully rendered, very disturbing novel.” —Publishers Weekly

The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema

The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema
Author: Jessica Balanzategui
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2018-12-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9048537797

This book illustrates how global horror film images of children re-conceptualised childhood at the beginning of the twenty-first century, unravelling the child's long entrenched binding to ideologies of growth, futurity, and progress. The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema analyses an influential body of horror films featuring subversive depictions of children that emerged at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and considers the cultural conditions surrounding their emergence. The book proposes that complex cultural and industrial shifts at the turn of the millennium resulted in potent cinematic renegotiations of the concept of childhood. In these transnational films-largely stemming from Spain, Japan, and America-the child resists embodying growth and futurity, concepts to which the child's symbolic function is typically bound. By demonstrating both the culturally specific and globally resonant properties of these frightening visions of children who refuse to grow up, the book outlines the conceptual and aesthetic mechanisms by which long entrenched ideologies of futurity, national progress, and teleological history started to waver at the turn of the twenty-first century.

The Child in Cinema

The Child in Cinema
Author: Karen Lury
Publisher: British Film Institute
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-09-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1844575128

This anthology is organised into five distinct sections which address the significance, qualities and characteristics speaking to the figure of the child in film. The 'child' is understood as a figure that refers to real children, representations of childhood, the memories of imagined and actual childhoods as well as more abstract or theoretical and historical conceptions of the child in relation to subjectivity and agency. Following an introductory essay by the editor, the first section, 'Working children', establishes perhaps the most familiar context for the child in film - Hollywood cinema - and provides examples of the child actor's labour observing a loose chronology - from the 1930s 'prodigies', to the 'juvenile' supporting actor in the 1940s, to the exceptional career of one of the most well known 'child stars' - Jodie Foster. In all these instances the child's 'work' and performance is scrutinised and assessed in relation to popular understandings of what and who children are in relation to specific historical and cultural contexts. In the second section, 'Relations and representations', the effect of the child on different film's constructions and representation of time and space are considered. How does each film represent how the child apparently 'sees' and experiences its world? How successfully - or not - are the peculiar relations of the child to space and time managed and mediated by either live action or animated film? In the third section, 'The child in history', three case studies of different national cinemas (Post-Yugoslavian, Tamil, Brazilian) offer analyses of how the figure of the child may enable film-makers to portray alternative versions of history, or 'ways of telling' history, that reach toward alternative understandings of political conflicts and the formation of national identities. In the fourth section, 'Subjectivity, performance and the voice of the child', each essay seeks to uncover how the child's subjectivity (their agency and sense of self) is mediated and performed in both fictional and non-fictional films while understanding that the child's 'interiority' is often understood to be both precarious and elusive. In the fifth and final section, 'The didactic and nostalgic child' the essays refer explicitly to the use and function of the child for cinema, and indicates how the study of cinema may be enhanced by looking beyond commercial film-making. In this section essays address didactic or educational films made to directly influence the behaviour of children (or their caregivers) and a number of avant-garde and video installations in which memories of childhood are used and re-staged.

The Child in Film

The Child in Film
Author: Karen Lury
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2010-03-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0857732226

Ghastly and ghostly children, 'dirty little white girls', the child as witness and as victim, have always played an important part in the history of cinema, as have child performers themselves. In exploring the disruptive power of the child in films made for an adult audience across popular films, including "Taxi Driver" and Japanese horror, and 'art-house' productions like "Mirror" and "Pan's Labyrinth", Karen Lury investigates why the figure of the child has such a significant impact on the visual aspects and storytelling potential of cinema.Lury's main argument is that the child as a liminal yet powerful agent has allowed filmmakers to play adventurously with cinema's formal conventions - with far-reaching consequences. In particular, she reveals how a child's relationship to time allows it to disturb and question conventional master-narratives. She explores too the investment in the child actor and expression of child sexuality, as well as how confining and conservative existing assumptions can be in terms of commonly held beliefs as to who children 'really are'.

The 'Evil Child' in Literature, Film and Popular Culture

The 'Evil Child' in Literature, Film and Popular Culture
Author: Karen J. Renner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317966740

The 'evil child' has infiltrated the cultural imagination, taking on prominent roles in popular films, television shows and literature. This collection of essays from a global range of scholars examines a fascinating array of evil children and the cultural work that they perform, drawing upon sociohistorical, cinematic, and psychological approaches. The chapters explore a wide range of characters including Tom Riddle in the Harry Potter series, the possessed Regan in William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, the monstrous Ben in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child, the hostile fetuses of Rosemary’s Baby and Alien, and even the tiny terrors featured in the reality television series Supernanny. Contributors also analyse various themes and issues within film, literature and popular culture including ethics, representations of evil and critiques of society. This book was originally published as two special issues of Literature Interpretation Theory.

The Children of Men

The Children of Men
Author: P. D. James
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2012-01-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307367711

The year is 2021. No child has been born for twenty-five years. The human race faces extinction. Under the despotic rule of Xan Lyppiat, the Warden of England, the old are despairing and the young cruel. Theo Faren, a cousin of the Warden, lives a solitary life in this ominous atmosphere. That is, until a chance encounter with a young woman leads him into contact with a group of dissenters. Suddenly his life is changed irrevocably as he faces agonising choices which could affect the future of mankind. NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

Childhood and Cinema

Childhood and Cinema
Author: Vicky Lebeau
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2008-05-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781861893529

Vicky Lebeau investigates how films use children to probe such themes as sexuality, death, imagination, the terrors of childhood, and hope.

The Highly Sensitive Child

The Highly Sensitive Child
Author: Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D.
Publisher: Harmony
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2002-10-08
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0767913906

A groundbreaking parenting guidebook addressing the trait of “high sensitivity” in children, from the psychologist and bestselling author of The Highly Sensitive Person whose books have sold more than 1 million copies With the publication of The Highly Sensitive Person, pioneering psychotherapist Dr. Elaine Aron became the first person to identify the inborn trait of “high sensitivity” and to show how it affects the lives of those who possess it. In The Highly Sensitive Child, Dr. Aron shifts her focus to the 15 to 20 percent of children who are born highly sensitive—deeply reflective, sensitive to the subtle, and easily overwhelmed. These qualities can make for smart, conscientious, creative children, but also may result in shyness, fussiness, or acting out. As Dr. Aron shows in The Highly Sensitive Child, if your child seems overly inhibited, particular, or you worry that they may have a neurodevelopmental disorder, such as ADHD or autism, they may simply be highly sensitive. And raised with proper understanding and care, highly sensitive children can grow up to be happy, healthy, well-adjusted adults. Rooted in Dr. Aron’s years of experience working with highly sensitive children and their families, as well as in her original research on child temperament, The Highly Sensitive Child explores the challenges of raising an HSC; the four keys to successfully parenting an HSC; how to help HSCs thrive in a not-so-sensitive world; and how to make school and friendships enjoyable. With chapters addressing the needs of specific age groups, from newborns to teens, The Highly Sensitive Child is the ultimate resource for parents, teachers, and the sensitive children in their lives.