Stories of Childhood: Evolving Portrayals in Books and Films

Anxieties about the negative effects of films have often obscured their many signal accomplishments, or the pleasure and insight that they so often provide. Stories of Childhood analyzes and situates our frequent fear of media, as well as a reflexive idealization of the printed page that so often accompanies that fear. For all the sky-is-falling claims to the contrary, this study posits that books and films are actually quite spectacularly complementary, illustrating its thesis by a thoroughgoing survey of what they have taught us about the nature of childhood. The range is considerable: idealizations from the Bible, the Victorians and the Biograph films of D.W. Griffith; dire modernist descriptions of original sin, or naturalist elaborations of corrupting environment and heredity; conciliatory syntheses that acknowledge both naughty and nice, while treasuring both in equal measure.