Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and FictionIn our current era of helicopter parenting and stranger danger, an unaccompanied child wandering through the city might commonly be viewed as a victim of abuse and neglect. However, from the early twentieth century to the present day, countless books and films have portrayed the solitary exploration of urban spaces as a source of empowerment and delight for children. Fantasies of Neglect explains how this trope of the self-sufficient, mobile urban child originated and considers why it persists, even as it goes against the grain of social reality. Drawing from a wide range of films, children’s books, adult novels, and sociological texts, Pamela Robertson Wojcik investigates how cities have simultaneously been demonized as dangerous spaces unfit for children and romanticized as wondrous playgrounds that foster a kid’s independence and imagination. Charting the development of free-range urban child characters from Little Orphan Annie to Harriet the Spy to Hugo Cabret, and from Shirley Temple to the Dead End Kids, she considers the ongoing dialogue between these fictional representations and shifting discourses on the freedom and neglect of children. While tracking the general concerns Americans have expressed regarding the abstract figure of the child, the book also examines the varied attitudes toward specific types of urban children—girls and boys, blacks and whites, rich kids and poor ones, loners and neighborhood gangs. Through this diverse selection of sources, Fantasies of Neglect presents a nuanced chronicle of how notions of American urbanism and American childhood have grown up together. |
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Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction Pamela Robertson Wojcik No preview available - 2016 |
Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction Pamela Robertson Wojcik No preview available - 2016 |
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adult African American Andy Annie’s apartment argues baby Billy black children boys Buddy Champ character child star childhood children’s literature cinema city streets Comics contemporary context Cool World Cressey culture Dead End Kids Depression Dickens Dink discourse Donald Duke Duke’s Eloise emphasizes encounters End Kids films fantasy of neglect father feminism fiction figure film’s gang ghetto girls Golly Gray Hamilton happiness Harlem Harriet the Spy helicopter parenting Hunger Games imaginary imagine immigration innocence Jane Withers Junior Brown Katniss Kids films Kramer Linda Little Fugitive Little Orphan Annie lives Lutie male Mary Poppins maternal middleclass mobility motherhood nanny narratives neighborhood novel Oskar parents Petry play poverty rejecting mother representations role scenes sense Sesame Street sexual Shirley Temple shows social story strangers Temple’s films texts trope twentiethcentury urban child urban children urban space vernacular modernism Withers woman women York