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Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors: The Child Villains of Horror Film
Citation
Lennard, D, Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors: The Child Villains of Horror Film, SUNY Press, Albany, NY, USA, pp. 195. ISBN 978-1-4384-5329-3 (2014) [Authored Research Book]
Copyright Statement
Copyright 2014 State University of New York
Official URL: http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5921-bad-seeds-and-holy...
Abstract
Despite their absence as viewers, children tum up a great deal in horror
films. Steered diligently from the shadier shelves of video stores
and libraries by watchful protectors, how could children know that they
haunt iconic classics like The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976) as well
as marginal B pictures like Beware! Children at Play (1989) or Whisper
(2007)? As mainstay villains of a type of film produced and consumed
largely behind their backs, children are oblivious to the true weight and
hyperbole of their representation on film, to the fantastical expressions of
unease they inspire. With unquestioning zeal, adults reiterate and reinscribe
their role as custodians of the child's proper knowledge, often with
a resolution that sees childhood besieged by sex and violence everywhere.
Children are unaware of what a burden they present because we are of
a mind to plead ignorance ourselves-forever reconstructing a child to
be, above all, protected. As in an obsessive ritual, we assure and reassure
ourselves with visions of the innocent child: the little wonder, the beautiful
victim, the curie-pie rebel whose diminutive insurrections come more
as flattery of our power than a challenge to it. Over the last sixty years,
however, the horror film has played out the most stunning tantrums of
mistrust. It has offered a unique domain where, with a nervous I-can'thelp-
but-look daring, adults raise the dust ruffle of the cinema curtain
to discover the child they have always feared.
Item Details
Item Type: | Authored Research Book |
---|---|
Keywords: | cinema, horror film, children, media |
Research Division: | Language, Communication and Culture |
Research Group: | Cultural studies |
Research Field: | Screen and media culture |
Objective Division: | Culture and Society |
Objective Group: | Communication |
Objective Field: | The media |
UTAS Author: | Lennard, D (Dr Dominic Lennard) |
ID Code: | 98223 |
Year Published: | 2014 |
Deposited By: | Academic Division |
Deposited On: | 2015-02-06 |
Last Modified: | 2017-10-30 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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