Family Films in Global Cinema: The World Beyond Disney

275 Pages·2015·7.231 MB·English

by  Noel Brown (editor), Bruce Babington (editor)

FAMILY FILMS
IN GLOBAL CINEMA
The World Beyond Disney
EDITED BY NOEL BROWN AND BRUCE BABINGTON
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First published in 2015 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed worldwide by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
Registered offi ce: 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
Copyright Introduction and Editorial Selection © 2015 Noel Brown and Bruce Babington
Copyright Individual Chapters © 2015 Bruce Babington, Holly Blackford, Benita Blessing,
Noel Brown, James M. Curtis, Alessandro Constantino Gamo, Natalie Kononenko,
Peter Krämer, Mirian Ou, Fran Pheasant-Kelly, Jeffrey Richards, Adrian Schober, Tom Ue
The right of Noel Brown and Bruce Babington to be identifi ed as the editors of this work has
been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof,
may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher.
Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any
omissions will be rectifi ed in future editions.
References to websites were correct at the time of writing
ISBN: 978 1 78453 008 2
eISBN: 978 0 85773 567 6
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Typeset by Newgen Publishers, Chennai
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
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Contents
Illustrations vii
Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
General Editor’s Introduction xiii
Introduction: Children’s Films and Family Films 1
Noel Brown and Bruce Babington
Part 1 Questions of Identity
1. Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls: Babe and
Babe: Pig in the City 19
Bruce Babington
2. ‘A fi lm specially suitable for children’: The Marketing
and Reception of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 37
Peter Krämer
3. ‘Why Can’t They Make Kids’ Flicks Anymore?’:
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and the
Dual-Addressed Family Film 53
Adrian Schober
4. ‘This is Halloween’: The History, Signifi cance and
Cultural Impact of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare
Before Christmas 69
James M. Curtis
Part 2 The Child and the Family
5. Sabu, the Elephant Boy 87
Jeffrey Richards
6. The Classical Hollywood Family on Screen: Living with
Father and Remembering Mama 103
Bruce Babington
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vi Family Films in Global Cinema
7. The Railway Children and Other Stories: Lionel Jeffries
and British Family Films in the 1970s 120
Noel Brown
8. ‘Luke, I am your father’: Toys, Play Space and Detached
Fathers in Post-1970s Hollywood Family Films 137
Holly Blackford
Part 3 Cinema and State
9. ‘Films to Give Kids Courage!’: Children’s Films in
the German Democratic Republic 155
Benita Blessing
10. Post-Soviet Parody: Can Family Films about Russian
Heroes be Funny? 171
Natalie Kononenko
11. A Brief History of Indian Children’s Cinema 186
Noel Brown
Part 4 National Identities
12. Brazilian Children’s Cinema in the 1990s: Tensions
Between the National-Popular and the International-
Popular 207
Mirian Ou and Alessandro Constantino Gamo
13. Narrative, Time and Memory in Studio Ghibli Films 223
Tom Ue
14. Dark Films for Dark Times: Spectacle, Reception
and the Textual Resonances of the Contemporary
Hollywood Fantasy Film 239
Fran Pheasant-Kelly
Select Filmography 256
Select Bibliography 258
Index 261
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Illustrations
0.1 O ur Gang’s children as group protagonist 11
0.2 T he solitary child. The transcendental ending of
The Red Balloon 12
1.1 Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell) with friend and
colleague in Babe 23
1.2 Babe surveys Pig in the City’s Metropolis 31
2.1 In the future world of 2001: A Space Odyssey, parents
going into space can stay in touch with their children 42
2.2 The StarChild has the Earth at its feet and its future
is wide open 46
3.1 Director Mel Stuart posing with his cast of
Oompa-Loompas on the set of Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory 56
3.2 An unhinged Wonka (Gene Wilder), during the
nightmare boat ride in the S.S. Wonkatania 65
4.1 Producer Tim Burton posing with the models of the
Pumpkin King and Sally 71
4.2 Jack recovers his ‘true’ identity of the Pumpkin King
after being shot from the skies in his ‘Sandy Claws’
persona 77
5.1 Kala-Nag gently places Toomai (Sabu) on his back
in Elephant Boy 90
5.2 Sabu as Mowgli in Korda’s Technicolor production
of The Jungle Book) 96
6.1 Husband–Father (William Powell) and Wife–Mother
(Irene Dunne) in Life with Father 111
6.2 Mama (Irene Dunne) oversees the family fi nances in
I Remember Mama 116
7.1 The central family, happily reunited at the climax of
The Railway Children 126
7.2 The central child fi gure (Scott Jacoby) in a rare joyful
moment with Roger (Jean-Pierre Cassel) and Chris
(Britt Ekland) in Baxter! 130
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viii Family Films in Global Cinema
8.1 Daniel (Robin Williams) spontaneously plays
puppeteer and transforms the ‘dry’ dinosaur show,
a symbol for reinvigorating ‘extinct’ traditional father
roles 141
8.2 Night at the Museum’s Larry (Ben Stiller) expresses
anxiety about paternal obsolescence through night
play with a dinosaur-turned-pet 149
9.1 ‘Moor’ (Alfred Müller) discussing the role of workers
with neighbourhood children during a stroll through
downtown London 159
9.2 Janni (Bettina Hohensee) learning her lines as the
‘Prince’ for the fi lm within the fi lm in The Coward 165
10.1 The three heroes – Dobrynia Nikitych, Ilia Muromets
and Alesha Popovych – from the fi lm Tri Bogatyria i
Samakhanskaia Tsaritsa 173
10.2 The evil enemy Tugarin Zmei (Tugarin the Dragon) 180
11.1 The modern, urban Indian nuclear-style family unit
in Masoom 194
11.2 Jadu, the benign, very Hollywood-esque Extra-
Terrestrial of Koi...Mil Gaya 198
12.1 Nutty Boy (Samuel Costa) engaged in outdoor play 215
12.2 Nutty Boy and his friends playing in the cave,
Nutty Boy 2’s cinematic non-space 219
13.1 Seita and Setsuko, the child protagonists/victims
of Grave of the Firefl ies 228
13.2 The steampunk-inspired iconography of Howl’s
Moving Castle 234
14.1 The destruction of the Hometree in Avatar 246
14.2 The destructive capabilities of the Driller in
Transformers: Dark of the Moon 248
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Contributors
Holly Blackford is Professor of English at Rutgers University-
Camden, where she teaches and publishes criticism on American
and children’s literature. Her books include Out of this World: Why
Literature Matters to Girls (2004), Mockingbird Passing: Closeted Traditions
and Sexual Curiosities in Harper Lee’s Novel (2011), The Myth of Persephone
in Girls’ Fantasy Literature (2012) and edited volume 100 Years of Anne
with an ‘e’: The Centennial Study of Anne of Green Gables (2009).
Benita Blessing is University Assistant Professor in the Faculty
of Philosophy and Education at the University of Vienna. She has
published and presented widely on European history, knowledge
and information dissemination, childhood and educational stu dies,
gender and media. She is the author of The Antifascist Classroom:
Denazifi cation in Soviet-occupied Germany, 1945–1949 (Palgrave, 2006),
and is currently completing a book on East German children’s fi lms.
Alessandro Constantino Gamo is Professor of Brazilian Cinema
and Documentary at Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFS-
Car). He holds an MA and a PhD in Multimedia from Universidade
Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), and a BA in Sociology from Uni-
versidade de São Paulo (USP). He is a member of SOCINE (Brazil-
ian Society for Cinema and Audiovisual Studies) and has published
a book on Jairo Ferreira’s fi lm criticism.
James M. Curtis is a doctoral candidate at the University of
Southern Mississippi, pursuing a PhD in English Language and
Literature (with emphasis on children’s literary and cultural studies).
His primary focus is psychoanalytical and gender studies approaches
to children’s literature and fi lm. His most recent work, “We Have a
Great Task Ahead of Us!”: Child-Hate in Roald Dahl’s The Witches’
was published in Children’s Literature in Education (2013).
Natalie Kononenko is Professor and Kule Chair of Ukrainian
Ethnography in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural
ix
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x Family Films in Global Cinema
Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of the award-
winning Ukrainian Minstrels: And the Blind Shall Sing (1998) and Slavic
Folklore: A Handbook (2007). Her interests include folk narrative,
digital humanities, folklore and fi lm, and Diasporic communities.
Kononenko has done fi eldwork in Ukraine and Turkey and among
the Ukrainian Diaspora in Canada and Kazakhstan.
Peter Krämer is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University
of East Anglia. He is the author of A Clockwork Orange (Palgrave,
2011), 2001: A Space Odyssey (BFI, 2010) and The New Hollywood: From
Bonnie and Clyde to Star Wars (Wallfl ower Press, 2005), and the co-
editor of Screen Acting (Routledge, 1999) and The Silent Cinema Reader
(Routledge, 2004). He has published more than 60 essays in aca-
demic journals and edited collections.
Mirian Ou has an MA in Image and Sound (Film and Media studies)
from Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar), São Paulo, and
a BA in Audiovisual (Cinema and Television) at Universidade de
São Paulo (USP). She researches the production and the poetics of
children’s fi lms, in particular those made in Brazil. She is a member
of SOCINE (Brazilian Society for Cinema and Audiovisual Studies)
and has published extensively on the subject in various Brazilian
journals.
Fran Pheasant-Kelly is MA Course Leader, Reader in Film and
Television Studies and Co-Director of the Film, Media, Discourse
and Culture Research Centre at the University of Wolverhampton.
Her research centres on fantasy, 9/11, abjection, and space, which
form the basis for two books: Abject Spaces in American Cinema:
Institutional Settings, Identity, and Psychoanalysis in Film (I.B.Tauris,
2012) and Fantasy Films Post 9/11 (Palgrave, 2013).
Jeffrey Richards is Professor of Cultural History at Lancaster
University. His books include The Age of the Dream Palace (1984;
reprinted 2010), Films and British National Identity (1997), Hollywood’s
Ancient Worlds (2008) and Cinema and Radio in Britain and America
1920–60 (2010).
Adrian Schober has a PhD in English from Monash University,
Australia, and is the author of Possessed Child Narratives in Literature
and Film: Contrary States (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). He has published
widely on the child fi gure in journals such as Literature/Film Quarterly,
Senses of Cinema and The Journal of Popular Culture. He also serves on
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Contributors xi
the editorial board of Red Feather: An International Journal of Children’s
Visual Culture.
Tom Ue is Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada Doctoral Fellow and Canadian Centennial Scholar at
University College London, where he researches Shakespeare’s
infl uence on the writing of Henry James, George Gissing and Oscar
Wilde. He is editor of a World Film Locations: Cities of the Imagination
collection on Toronto (Intellect, 2014), and is currently writing
a monograph project on legal theory and the British novel in the
nineteenth century.
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