How Children are Portrayed in Litertature and Film

Although literature and film have made great strides in the way it represents diverse populations, it still has only come so far.

In the novels we’ve read for this class and the accompanying films we’ve watched, children are represented in very much the same way, with one exception. The stand out novel would be Peter Pan. In the novel the children are referred to as “heartless” and downright selfish for their adventure to Neverland. Their adventure is put into context by the adult narrator instead of understood. The narrator tells us of the hardships the children left their poor, loving parents with. Their disappearance has caused their father to live his life, regardless of any social stigma it may carry, in a dog kennel. The mother stays up sleepless nights to wait for the children to return and her heart remains broken while she waits. All the while the children are having a merry time off in Neverland, not losing any sleep over whether their parents are okay at all. In essence the narrator comments on the most important part of childhood, but the rarely mentioned part, the selfishness of it.

In many novels, the parent’s feelings are either discarded as mean or not mentioned at all. In Alice, do her parents worry? We wouldn’t know, nobody mentions it. In fact, in the Tim Burton film, she is downright rude to the man that purposes to her. Given, it was the right thing for her not to marry him, she had no right to just run out on him, he was probably just as forced into the situation as she was (if I remember correctly, I last saw the film a couple of weeks ago).

Many novels and films seek to romanticize childhood and portray children as innocent angels. In Peter Pan, the children kill, yes, actually murder pirates; in fact, it is the most convincing reason the boys go to Neverland with Peter. Of course none of this is shown in the film version we watched for class. Why? Are children just too corruptible?  Can children’s minds simply read this information, but if shown on screen would it be too much? That is a different issue entirely, so I will get back on point.

Novels, down to how the children cry when far away from home like Alice or Oz don’t give children enough credit. Immediately after entering these strange portals, the children immediately want to find a way home. In Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, they do stay a while after their mission is done, but it seems they always end up at home and are happy about it. Is this re-enforcing that children should never wander far from home? Or that they should only let imaginations run so far? Are these books about imagination and magical worlds just anti-imagination books parading around in disguise?

I would have to answer a resounding yes. In all the books, including Peter Pan, the happy ending is the children ending up at home. They right whatever wrong they must in the other world, but must return home never to return to the magical world again (with some exceptions). If any of these children’s lives were really that bad, why would they want to return? In Oz Dorothy was an orphan and lived a harsh life in the plains of Kansas. I would rather stay in Oz, she and the scarecrow do joke about this in the novel, but that is all it is, a joke. She is conscientious child that doesn’t want her aunt and uncle to have to go into mourning because it would cost them too much money, but other than that, why does she miss her old life? Why is she miserable when she is in the Emerald City? As a child, I’d probably have to be drug out of there. The only film that represents a pro imagination stance is Pan’s Labyrinth. Ofelia has a reasonable pull to stay with her mother and unborn brother, but has a reasonable pull to disappear into her magical world as well. When her mother is gone, she logically wants to retreat into her other world, in which she eventually does. That makes sense, that film treats her as a person with logic, emotion and complexity.  Why do other films not treat children this way?

My answer would have to be because children’s novels and films seek to not only teach children a moral lesson, but to enforce gender stereotypes. In Peter Pan, Wendy goes to Neverland, not on the promise of adventure like her brothers, but because of mermaids and motherhood. In Alice, she attempts to escape school and in Oz she accidently ends up in a magical place. Each return to realize they never should have gone in the first place, their home is all they need (in the 1939 Wizard of Oz film, not the novel).  With new films on the rise such as Kick Ass (which was first a comic) and Hanna, they seek to change the young female stereotype. In Kick Ass, Hit Girl is a young assassin with no moral qualms with killing. Hanna (although I have not seen the film, only the trailers) it seems follows that same archetype, not only that, but a line in the trailer explicitly says, “Well sometimes children are bad people too” just hits my point home. These two films subvert the typical child/female depiction and seek to give greater complexity to these characters. Instead of portraying children as innocent beings with a deep desire to stay at home, these films seek to push the boundaries of portraying children. They are shown not only as adventurists, but morally questionable and pushing the envelope is what creating film and literature is all about.