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While there has been a significant outpouring of scholarship on
Steven Spielberg over the past decade, his films are still
frequently discussed as being paternalistic, escapist, and reliant
on uncomplicated emotions and complicated special effects. Even
those who view his work favorably often see it as essentially
optimistic, reassuring, and conservative. James Kendrick takes an
alternate view of Spielberg's cinema and proposes that his
films--even the most popular ones that seem to trade in easy
answers and comforting, reassuring notions of cohesion and
narrative resolution--are significantly darker and more emotionally
and ideologically complex than they are routinely given credit for.
"Darkness in the Bliss-Out" demonstrates, through close analysis of
a wide range of Spielberg's films, that they are only reassuring on
the surface, and that their depths embody a complex and sometimes
contradictory view of the human condition.
To say that children matter in Steven Spielberg's films is an
understatement. Think of the possessed Stevie in Something Evil
(TV), Baby Langston in The Sugarland Express, the alien-abducted
Barry in Close Encounters, Elliott and his unearthly alter-ego in
E.T, the war-damaged Jim in Empire of the Sun, the little girl in
the red coat in Schindler's List, the mecha child in A.I., the
kidnapped boy in Minority Report, and the eponymous boy hero of The
Adventures of Tintin. (There are many other instances across his
oeuvre). Contradicting his reputation as a purveyor of 'popcorn'
entertainment, Spielberg's vision of children/childhood is complex.
Discerning critics have begun to note its darker underpinnings,
increasingly fraught with tensions, conflicts and anxieties. But,
while childhood is Spielberg's principal source of inspiration, the
topic has never been the focus of a dedicated collection of essays.
The essays in Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg therefore
seek to address childhood in the full spectrum of Spielberg's
cinema. Fittingly, the scholars represented here draw on a range of
theoretical frameworks and disciplines-cinema studies, literary
studies, audience reception, critical race theory, psychoanalysis,
sociology, and more. This is an important book for not only
scholars but teachers and students of Spielberg's work, and for any
serious fan of the director and his career.
To say that children matter in Steven Spielberg's films is an
understatement. Think of the possessed Stevie in Something Evil
(TV), Baby Langston in The Sugarland Express, the alien-abducted
Barry in Close Encounters, Elliott and his unearthly alter-ego in
E.T, the war-damaged Jim in Empire of the Sun, the little girl in
the red coat in Schindler's List, the mecha child in A.I., the
kidnapped boy in Minority Report, and the eponymous boy hero of The
Adventures of Tintin. (There are many other instances across his
oeuvre). Contradicting his reputation as a purveyor of 'popcorn'
entertainment, Spielberg's vision of children/childhood is complex.
Discerning critics have begun to note its darker underpinnings,
increasingly fraught with tensions, conflicts and anxieties. But,
while childhood is Spielberg's principal source of inspiration, the
topic has never been the focus of a dedicated collection of essays.
The essays in Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg therefore
seek to address childhood in the full spectrum of Spielberg's
cinema. Fittingly, the scholars represented here draw on a range of
theoretical frameworks and disciplines-cinema studies, literary
studies, audience reception, critical race theory, psychoanalysis,
sociology, and more. This is an important book for not only
scholars but teachers and students of Spielberg's work, and for any
serious fan of the director and his career.
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