Uses and Abuses of the Child Figure inSlumdogMillionaire and Vikus Swarup’sQ & A

Adaptation ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Snell
Keyword(s):  
Child Figure

Are You Really a Child?

2018 ◽  
pp. 65-95
Author(s):  
Natalia Dmitruk
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Sociological Discourse ◽  
Child Figure

A multitude of genres and types of characters, in Japanese comics and animated series, suggests many thought-provoking themes; i.e., questions about human nature. Many artists can see the answers to these questions in artificial humans – both cyborgs and androids. In this research, the author analyzes Japanese texts of popular culture in which artificial children are the protagonists of the stories. The author aims to compare a child figure in sociological discourse, considered there as vulnerable, to the representations in manga and anime, in which characters are created as children or technologically-modified prepubescents. In this chapter, the author presents ideas and culture associations for the concepts of android and cyborg. The chapter focuses also on analysis of the characters from Japanese comic books and animations – both androids and then cyborgs – according to transhumanistic and posthumanistic theories. The analysis results in a conclusion that a child figure is dehumanized in the context of cyborg and android child protagonists.

The Child Figure in English Literature

1979 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 70
Author(s):  
Kenneth Curry ◽  
Robert Pattison
Keyword(s):  
English Literature ◽  
Child Figure

scholarly journals Interrogating Masculinity through the Child Figure in Bombay Cinema

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Siddarth Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Male Child ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
The Many ◽  
Child Figure

Patriarchy is most often understood in relation to the position of women in society. I propose to interrogate patriarchy in relation to children – particularly the male child – as depicted in two major works of Bombay Cinema. The number and scope of critical engagements with the onscreen portrayal of the child figure are restricted, and in the light of this lack I interrogate the portrayal of the male child figure, with particular emphasis on the constructs of masculinity that always implicate the child. The paper will undertake a detailed analysis of these masculine constructs, which are significantly shaped and interrogated in the areas of family and educational institutions for the male child (See Kakar 1981, and Haywood and Mac an Ghaill, 2003). For case studies, I analyze two highly acclaimed contemporary movies of Bombay Cinema: "Taare Zameen Par" (by Aamir Khan, 2007) and "Udaan" (by Vikramditya Motwane, 2010). Both movies critique the many notions associated with manhood and masculinity by situating their arguments within the contexts of family and educational institutions. What makes these critiques even more significant is the resistance offered by the child figure to conventional masculine authority through the agency of imagination. With such agency, not only does the male child debunk the traditionally sanctioned interests and attitudes of men, but also brings about a reconfiguration of those behavioral co-ordinates that have till now dominated the domains of family and education. Using ideas from sociological, film, gender and psychoanalytical theories, I highlight the role of children in subverting the traditionally oppressive ideas associated with Indian masculinity.

scholarly journals An Unlikely Hero: Reconsidering Michael Endeʼs Momo as a Divine Child

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (22) ◽  
pp. 262-282
Author(s):  
Iva Simurdić ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Psychology ◽  
Child Characters ◽  
Initial Appearance ◽  
Carl Gustav Jung ◽  
Divine Child ◽  
Child Figure

The Divine Child was introduced by Carl Gustav Jung as an archetype closely linked to the process of individuation. Beyond the realm of analytical psychology, this peculiar child figure has been observed in myths and folklore and eventually evolved into a literary archetype known alternatively as das fremde Kind (the strange/alien child). Numerous child figures have since been regarded as representations of this archetype, with the titular character of Michael Ende’s novel Momo (1973) being one of them. While her initial appearance is evocative of the Divine Child, over the course of the story Momo has to accept her fate as the chosen one in a battle against a mysterious foe, ultimately finding herself in the role of the hero of the story. This paper examines the traits of both the archetype of the Divine Child, as well as that of the Hero – including a variation specific to child characters – with the goal of reconsidering if Momo is truly exemplary of the archetype of the Divine Child. This is done with particular regard to Christopher Vogler’s observation that literary archetypes are character functions, rather than fixed types, and as such this paper will discuss how Ende’s protagonist is ultimately an example of this fluidity of functions.

Erotohistoriography, Temporal Drag and the Interstitial Spaces of Childhood in Spanish Cinema

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Wright
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
Spanish Cinema ◽  
Mother And Child ◽  
Child Figure

This chapter studies the child figure as ‘the conduit for the exploration of the trauma and loss of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath of dictatorship in Spain’ in well-known films including El espíritu de la colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive (dir. Víctor Erice, 1973), Cría cuervos/Raise Ravens (dir. Carlos Saura, 1976), Secretos del corazón/Secrets of the Heart (dir. Montxo Armendáriz, 1997) and Pa negre/Black Bread (dir. Agustí Villalonga, 2010). In an analysis informed by queer theory, and in particular by Lee Edelman’s concept of reproductive futurism and Elizabeth Freeman’s erotohistoriography, the chapter focuses on sequences of intense intimacy (between mother and child, for example), transgressive kids’ games, and some traumatic events witnessed by children to explore the potential of the child figure as the key to queer the films’ version of history.

scholarly journals ‘What Will Sophie Mol Think?’: Thinking Critically about the Figure of the White Child in Arundhati Roy's the God of Small Things

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 280-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
White Child ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Indian Children ◽  
Small Things ◽  
Child Figure ◽  
The Ideal

This article explores the ways in which discourses of whiteness and childhood intersect in Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things to position the Indian children in the novel in inferior relation to the figure of the white child. Drawing the novel into discussions of the ideal of the universal child that shapes hegemonic educational and international development responses to children, the author suggests that the discursive dominance of such a child figure is radically disempowering for the child who is not contained within its boundaries. In The God of Small Things the Indian twins' experiences of ontology are consistently rendered invalid and inauthentic by the spectre of the white child, who appears as their British cousin, Sophie Mol. The author argues that the figuration of the child in this novel highlights the ways in which the universalism of the white child can work to exclude childhoods that exist outside this normative position. At the same time as it draws out the politics of exclusion, the novel can be seen to posit an alternative way of performing/enacting childhood subjectivity, which allows for multiplicity and the privileging of difference.

THE FELT FIGURE TEST ON MEASURES OF DISTANCE AND HEIGHT IN ISRAELI CHILDREN

1985 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Rabinowitz ◽  
Zamira Eldan
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Graders ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mother Figure ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Figure Test ◽  
Child Figure

A modified version of Kuethe's technique, measuring distances between figures and heights of figures, was employed to study the social schemata of 128 Israeli fifth-graders, 65 boys and 63 girls. Each subject was asked to place a self-figure, plus a fat her figure, or a mother figure, or all three figures, or a friend figure – four separate placements in all – on a sheet of paper. The subject was instructed to choose from three figures of differing heights, one adult figure and one child figure, for the above-mentioned placements. Results showed that the subjects placed child-child figures closer together than other configurations. The girls placed figures closer together, and chose taller figures to represent a friend than did the boys. There was, however, no difference between the sexes in their choice of adult figures.

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