Weekly summary

To wrap up this week, we’ve considered some ways in which we can define, delimit and problematise the category of ‘children’s films’.

In particular, we have explored some ways in which Studio Ghibli’s films meet, fall short of, transgress or transcend those definitions.

If you are interested in reading more about children’s film, here are some of the works I would recommend and have drawn on in this session:

• Bazalgette, Cary and Terry Staples. (1995). ‘Unshrinking the Kids: Children’s Cinema and the Family Film’. In Front of the Children: Screen Entertainment and Young Audiences. Ed. Cary Bazalgette and David Buckingham. London: BFI.

• Clements, Jonathan. (2013). Anime: a history. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

• Denison, Rayna. (2015). Anime: a critical introduction. London: Bloomsbury.

• Lamarre, Thomas. (2009). The anime machine: a media theory of animation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

• Lamerichs, Nicolle. (2013). ‘The cultural dynamic of doujinshi and cosplay: Local anime fandom in Japan, USA and Europe’. Participations, 10.1, 154-176.

• Propp, Vladimir. (1928). Morphology of the Tale. Leningrad.

• Streete, Douglas. (1983). Children’s Novels and the movies. NY: F. Ungar.

Next week, we travel from the silver screen in Japan to the small screen in the UK, to see how pictures of youth are constructed around children’s education on reality television.