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The
Child in FIlm
Price: $24.95
Subtitle: Tears,
Fears, and Fairy Tales
Author:
Karen Lury
Subject: Film
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-4896-8
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-4895-1
Pages:
220 pages, 25
photographs
Publication Date: September 2010
Series:
Rutgers
Series in Childhood Studies
Description:
Ghastly and ghostly children, “dirty little white girls,” and
the child as witness and as victim have always played an important part
in the history of cinema, as have child performers. Yet the disruptive
power of the child in films made for an adult audience has been a
neglected topic. The Child in Film
examines popular films including Taxi
Driver, Man on Fire,
and contemporary Japanese horror, as well as “art house” productions
such as Mirror, La Jetée, and Pan’s Labyrinth, and questions why
the figure of the child has such a significant impact on the visual
aspects and storytelling potential of cinema.
Karen Lury argues that the child as a liminal yet powerful agent has
allowed filmmakers to play adventurously with cinema’s formal
conventions, with far-reaching consequences. She reveals how a child’s
relationship to time allows it to disturb conventional
master-narratives and explores how the concern for and investment in
the child actor conceals the reality of film acting and the skills of
the child performer. She addresses the expression of child sexuality,
and questions existing assumptions as to who children “really are.”
About the Author:
Karen Lury is an
associate professor of film and television studies at the University of
Glasgow. She is the author of British
Youth Television: Cynicism and Enchantment and Interpreting Television, and an
editor of the international film and television studies journal, Screen.
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Price: $24.95
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