The Child in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema

Contributions by Eduardo Barros-Grela, María Bobadilla Pérez, Tarah Brookfield, Jennifer Brown Trinity College Dublin, Glen Donnar, Aryak Guha, Mark Heimermann, James M. Hodapp, Frank Jacob, Cassandra L. Jones, Betül Atesçi Koçak, Eric D. Miller, Debbie Olson, Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon Edited by Debbie Olson

Publication date:

06 March 2015

Length of book:

244 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

235x162mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780739194287

The child in many post-apocalyptic films occupies a unique space within the narrative, a space that oscillates between death and destruction, faith and hope. The Child in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema interrogates notions of the child as a symbol of futurity and also loss. By exploring the ways children function discursively within a dystopian framework we may better understand how and why traditional notions of childhood are repeatedly tethered to sites of adult conflict and disaster, a connection that often functions to reaffirm the “rightness” of past systems of social order. This collection features critical articles that explore the role of the child character in post-apocalyptic cinema, including classic, recent, and international films, approached from a variety of theoretical, methodological, and cultural perspectives.

Introduction, Debbie Olson
Chapter 1: Monstrous Conceptions: Reading Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979) and Anton Leader’s Children of the Damned (1963), Aryak Guha
Chapter 2: Sustenance for the Body and the Soul: Children as a Vision of the Future of Humanity, and a Reflection of Past Sins in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema, Jennifer Brown
Chapter 3: Perpetual Horizons: Reproductive Futurity in Post-Apocalyptic Films, Mark Heimermann
Chapter 4: The Child is my Warrant: Virtue, Violence and The Road’s Radical Humanism, Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon
Chapter 5: Space and Children in Post-Apocalyptic Film: The Road and Les Temps du Loup, Eduardo Barros-Grela and María Bobadilla Pérez
Chapter 6: When Disney Went Apocalyptic: The Symbolism of Apocalyptic Images in a Post-9/11 World, Eric D. Miller
Chapter 7: Children of Hope: Portrayal of Children in Post-Apocalyptic Films after 9/11, Betül Ateşçi Koçak
Chapter 8: “Until the world deserves them”: Representations of children in The Day After, Testament, and Threads, Tarah Brookfield
Chapter 9: Emperor Tomato Ketchup: The Child as the Dictator of Mankind, Frank Jacob
Chapter 10: The Specter of the Postcolonial Child and Faux Long Takes in Cuarón’s Children of Men, James M. Hodapp
Chapter 11: Persistently Ambivalent: Children, Race, Sexuality, and a Post-Apocalyptic Hollywood Interracial Future, Glen Donnar
Chapter 12: “Not the Little Blonde Innocent You Picture”: Race and “Innocent” Girlhood in The Hunger Games Fandom, Cassandra L. Jones

This edited collection brings childhood studies into an important conversation with a dominant genre of recent years: post-apocalyptic cinema. Olson unites a group of international scholars who examine some expected films (The Road and The Children of Men), but also some unexpected ones (The Omega Man, I Am Legend, Dawn of the Dead, and Daybreakers). The result is a diverse and fascinating examination of how, as Olson puts it, ‘the Child . . . defines the lost past/present and becomes a motivational, almost sacred image to spur on reclamation of the future.’