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{en} Debbie C. Olson, Black Children in Hollywood Cinema: Cast in Shadow (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)

Abstract

"This book explores cultural conceptions of the child and the cinematic absence of black children from contemporary Hollywood film. Debbie Olson argues that within the discourse of children's studies and film scholarship in relation to the conception of "the child," there is often little to no distinction among children by race--the "child" is most often discussed as a universal entity, as the embodiment of all things not adult, not (sexually) corrupt. Discussions about children of color among scholars often take place within contexts such as crime, drugs, urbanization, poverty, or lack of education that tend to reinforce historically stereotypical beliefs about African Americans. Olson looks at historical conceptions of childhood within scholarly discourse, the child character in popular film and what space the black child (both African and African American) occupies within that ideal."--

Contents

Dedication; Acknowledgments; Contents; List of Figures; Chapter 1: Introduction; Notes; Chapter 2: Establishing the Discourse of the Child; US Childhoods; Children and Non-children in the Popular Imagination; Innocence and Modern Visualization of Black Children; Childhood Spaces and Race; The Black Child Image in Modern Popular Culture; Black Children in American Film Scholarship; The Black Child in American Film; Notes; Chapter 3: African American Girls in Hollywood Cinema; Mammy and Jezebel; Monstrous Mammies in Lee Daniels' Precious; Pickaninnies of the Southern Wild.; "Just Some Black Girl's" Butter; Conclusion; Notes; Chapter 4: Boys in Black and the Urban Ghetto Child; Black Boys and the Discourse of Crime; Blaxploitation Films and the New Negro Child; The Reimagined African (American) Savage; Fresh and the New (Old) "Baad Nigga"; Conclusion; Notes; Chapter 5: Soldier Bo(d)y: The Transnational Circulation of the African (American) Savage Child Image; African Childhood in Hollywood; Invisible Children and the Cinematic Reach of the White Savior; The White (African) Perspective; Black ChildSoldiers in Black Savage Bodies; Conclusion; Notes.; Chapter 6: The Black Child Star; Jaden Smith and the Transnational Black Child Star; Jaden in the Jungle; Towards a Black Child Hero?; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Select Filmography; Index.

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