Horror Films for Children

Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema

Dr Catherine Lester (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

232 Seiten

2021
Bloomsbury Academic (Verlag)
978-1-350-13526-0 (ISBN)

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Children and horror are often thought to be an incompatible meeting of audience and genre, beset by concerns that children will be corrupted or harmed through exposure to horror media. Nowhere is this tension more clear than in horror films for adults, where the demonic child villain is one of the genre’s most enduring tropes. However, horror for children is a unique category of contemporary Hollywood cinema in which children are addressed as an audience with specific needs, fears and desires, and where child characters are represented as sympathetic protagonists whose encounters with the horrific lead to cathartic, subversive and productive outcomes.

Horror Films for Children examines the history, aesthetics and generic characteristics of children’s horror films, and identifies the ‘horrific child’ as one of the defining features of the genre, where it is as much a staple as it is in adult horror but with vastly different representational, interpretative and affective possibilities. Through analysis of case studies including blockbuster hits (Gremlins), cult favourites (The Monster Squad) and indie darlings (Coraline), Catherine Lester asks, what happens to the horror genre, and the horrific children it represents, when children are the target audience?

Catherine Lester is Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Birmingham, UK. Prior to this, she was a teaching assistant and PhD candidate at the University of Warwick. Her primary teaching and research interests include children’s media, animation and the horror genre, both separately and the intersections between them.

Introduction
Chapter One: Frankenstein to Frankenweenie: the evolution of children’s horror in Hollywood cinema
Chapter Two: Children Behaving Badly: representing and addressing the horrific child in Gremlins
Chapter Three: No Grown-Ups Allowed: PG-13 and the horrific ‘Crazyspace’ of The Monster Squad
Chapter Four: ‘As normal as it could be’: ParaNorman and the normalization of the horrific child
Chapter Five: A ‘Child-Friendly’ Horror Aesthetic: challenging assumptions with Coraline
Chapter Six: Man of the House: gender, space and domestic violence in Monster House and The Hole
Conclusion: Expansions and Absences of Children’s Horror

Erscheinungsdatum	22.10.2021
Zusatzinfo	26 bw illus
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	508 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
	Kinder- / Jugendbuch
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Medienwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-350-13526-7 / 1350135267
ISBN-13	978-1-350-13526-0 / 9781350135260
Zustand	Neuware