Kidding Around: The Child in Film and Media

249 Pages·2014·1.33 MB·English

by  Alexander N. Howe

Kidding Around

Kidding Around
The Child in Film and Media
Edited by Alexander N. Howe and Wynn Yarbrough
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2014
© Alexander N. Howe and Wynn Yarbrough, and contributors, 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN: 978-1-6235-6054-6
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Representations and Renegotiations: Childhood and Its
Uses Wynn Yarbrough and Alexander N. Howe 1
Part 1 Rites of Passage and Impasse
1 Betwixt and Between: The Child in M. Night Shyamalan’s Films
Kevin A. Wisniewski 11
2 The Monstrous Masculine: Abjection and Todd Solondz’s
Happiness Adam P. Wadenius 33
3 Only a Child: Spectacles of Innocence in the Lolita Films Brian Walter 51
Part 2 Childhood as Text
4 The “Rubbing Off” of “Art and Beauty”: Child Citizenship, Literary
Engagement, and the Anglo-American Playground and Play Center
Movement Michelle Beissel Heath 71
5 “The Studio World Surprised and Disturbed Ruth”: The Diffident
Stage Mother and the Difficult Child in a Post-War Novel by Noel
Streatfeild Sally Sims Stokes 95
6 Building a Mystery: Relative Fear and the 1990s Autistic
Thriller Chris Foss 119
7 Pundit Knows Best: The Self-Help Boom, Brand Marketing, and
The O’Reilly Factor for Kids Michelle Ann Abate 139
Part 3 Disney and Its Progeny
8 Power to the Princess: Disney and the Creation of the Twentieth-
Century Princess Narrative Bridget Whelan 167
vi Contents
9 Surreal Estate: Building Self-Identity in Monster House
Michael Howarth 193
10 The Wild and the Cute: Disney Animation and Environmental
Awareness David Whitley 211
Conclusion: Criticism and Multicultural Children’s Films Iris Shepard
and Ian Wojcik-Andrews 223
Notes on Contributors 233
Index 237
Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank the Provost’s Office at the University of the
District of Columbia for generously supporting the conference that generated
the essays collected in this volume. A special thanks is also due to Deirdre
Evans-Pritchard for her tireless efforts organizing the film festival that accom-
panied the original conference.
We are grateful to the following publishers for granting permission to reprint
these essays in the current volume:
Chapter 2, “The Monstrous Masculine: Abjection and Todd Solondz’s
Happiness,” by Adam Wadenius, originally appeared in Widescreen 1, no. 1 2009.
Chapter 7, “Pundit Knows Best: The Self-Help Book, Brand Marketing and
The O’Reilly Factor for Kids,” first appeared in Michelle Ann Abate’s Raising Your
Kids Right: Children’s Literature and American Political Conservativism (Rutgers,
2010).
A prior version of Chapter 8, “Power to the Princess: Disney and the
Creation of the 20th Century Princess Narrative,” by Bridget Whelan, appeared
in the journal Interdisciplinary Humanities in the Spring of 2012.

Introduction: Representations and
Renegotiations: Childhood and Its Uses
Wynn Yarbrough and Alexander N. Howe
University of the District of Columbia
As scholarship of media evolves in the second decade of this new millennium,
intersections with traditional modes of criticism have produced rich and
often divided conversations. Contemporary media theory has left the “high”
Humanist binaries of “natural” and “commercial” art far behind, and inquiries
that combine cultural theory and discussions of consumption and marketing
have become de rigueur. And yet academic analysis of children and media,
particularly in the US, remains in the initial stages of reconciling the interac-
tions of audience, message, and marketing.
A necessary point of intersection to open the examination of children’s media
is the field of children’s literature. Here, scholars have been studying children’s
works from the perspectives of gender and thematic criticism, semiotics,
cultural studies, new historicism, commercial marketing, and a host of other
avenues of inquiry. Journals like The Lion and the Unicorn and the Children’s
Literature Association Quarterly have offered a platform for analyzing the
sociological, cultural, and political mechanisms driving a vast array of media
(e.g. fiction, film, TV programs, poetry, illustrations, and new media) desig-
nated for children. In many ways, these journals, and organizations like the
Children’s Literature Association, have “legitimized” the field of scholarship
known as “children’s literature,” even though the organization and the confer-
ences, journals, and books it produces examine all sorts of children’s media.
The chapters collected in this volume continue these ongoing discussions
surrounding children’s media.
The study of children and media is not without its pitfalls, and we are wise
to remember Marcia Kinder’s comments in her Kids’ Media Culture—a work
that discusses toys, games, TV shows, film, and other child-targeted media
alike—regarding the ethical entanglements that await any critical discussion of
children’s media: