Screening Children in Post-apocalypse Film and Television [Hardcover]

This collection examines the childs role in contemporary post-apocalyptic films and television.. By exploring the function of child characters within a dystopian framework, this volume illustrates how traditional notions of childhood are tethered to sites of adult conflict and disaster, a connection that often works to reaffirm the rightness of past systems of social order.Debbie Olsonis associate professor at Missouri Valley College.

The apocalyptic story that can't be toldthat would not sell books or moviesis that humans are doomed and that, because of their greed and folly, will join the thousands of species that have already gone extinct. Thus, this collection, edited by Olson, searches for sources of hope in contemporary film. Can art point the way, or is the apocalyptic film merely a way of acknowledging collective fear while clinging to various fantasies of transcendence? Varieties of hope are the dominant theme of this volume, and that hope is literally embodied by children surviving disasters of nuclear war, global pandemics, environmental meltdown, etc. These nine rich essays explore the iconography of children: as religious icons, or under the protection of an anthropomorphic Mother Nature, or symbols of past cultural apocalypses due to colonialism and its ongoing effects, or even as an image of survival through evolution into a post-human existence. Especially good is Olson's closing essay in this collection, which posits children as symbols of the death of innocence. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. Choice Reviews

Debbie Olson has contributedso muchto the study of representations of childhood in the cultural imagination as both a writer and editor, so much, in fact, that this book is her second edited collection on the post-apocalyptic child in fictional narratives. However, this study feels especially urgent: the daily impact of climate change as well as the recent Covid-19 pandemic have rlã,