Audience and Aetonormativity in Picturebook to Film Adaptations

Children's Books on the Big Screen ◽

10.14325/mississippi/9781496828644.003.0004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 87-112

Author(s):

Meghann Meeusen

Keyword(s):

Adult Child ◽

Film Adaptations ◽

Power Structures ◽

Adult Roles ◽

The Lorax

Chapter four suggests that the polarization of adult/child binaries in picturebook adaptations consistently highlights adult roles and presence within the story more than in the source, often foregrounding adult characters and featuring adults learning lessons from children. The chapter uses The Lorax and Jumanji to reveal how dual audience works differently in picturebooks and film, highlighting how these films seem to overturn adult/child binaries, placing children in increased power positions for a time, but eventually reestablish aetonormative power structures. The chapter ends by examining Spike Jonze’s controversial adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, a film that emphasizes a common ideology that results from binary polarization in picturebook adaptation, wherein adults are portrayed as feeling powerless despite their seeming position of power.

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The Need for a Theory of Children’s and YA Adaptation

Children's Books on the Big Screen ◽

10.14325/mississippi/9781496828644.003.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 3-28

Author(s):

Meghann Meeusen

Keyword(s):

Film Adaptations ◽

Power Structures ◽

The Face ◽

Key Terms ◽

Critical Movement

Serving primarily as an introduction, chapter one has two functions: explaining binary polarization and suggesting why scholars will benefit from thinking about children’s adapted film in a new way. This first chapter defines key terms, describing how film adaptations widen the divide between concepts to rework power structures. Chapter one explores why, even in the face of a critical movement away from fidelity-based studies, scholars are still drawn to hierarchical approaches, and in particular, why there may exist a particularly strong pull toward this kind of study in children’s and YA criticism. As such, chapter one not only articulates the text’s theory of children’s and YA adaptation, but also explains the need for such an approach.

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Struggling with/against the unintentional reproduction of power structures in participatory research: Using reconstructive horizon analysis

Action Research ◽

10.1177/1476750319837324 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 18 (2) ◽

pp. 171-193 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Meagan Call-Cummings ◽

Melissa Hauber-Özer ◽

Karen Ross

Keyword(s):

Action Research ◽

Participatory Action Research ◽

Participatory Research ◽

Ethic Of Care ◽

Adult Child ◽

Research Process ◽

Power Structures ◽

Participatory Action ◽

Validity Claims ◽

Global North

Shared power and democratic decision making are core epistemological commitments of participatory action research. Scholars who engage in participatory action research with youth seek to share ownership and disrupt adult/child or knower/learner binaries traditional in the Global North, in which adults are the active agents who own and transfer knowledge to children, who remain in a passive role. Yet, we have noticed during several of our projects with youth that, despite our best efforts, these knower/learner binaries can be reproduced with younger coresearchers as we exhibit care in the form of protection and provision of security. In this article, we examine three scenes from our recent youth participatory action research projects using reconstructive horizon analysis to surface and explore backgrounded validity claims that highlight the tensions between our efforts to democratize the research process and our commitment to an ethic of care for those with whom we engage in participatory knowledge production. We suggest that explicit attention to these tensions as part of the inquiry process is important for making participatory research with youth a more equitable endeavor and to build the validity of such work.

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Death, genre, and gender in the graphic novel 'I kill giants'

Genero : časopis za feminističku teoriju i studije kulture ◽

10.5937/genero2125001j ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-36

Author(s):

Irena Jovanović

Keyword(s):

Literary Criticism ◽

Social Power ◽

Adult Child ◽

Adolescent Literature ◽

Point Of View ◽

Graphic Novel ◽

Structural Elements ◽

Power Structures ◽

Heroic Narrative ◽

And Gender

This paper analyzes the heroic narrative in the graphic novel for children and youth I Kill Giants. Since the central theme of the novel is the heroine's dealing with the loss of a parent, the analysis relies on recent research on the topic of death in children's and adolescent literature that emphasizes a close connection between this topic and gender representation/construction. Dealing with the death of loved ones and the awareness of the inevitability of one's own death in children's literature is often presented as part of the growing-up process in which heroines acquire knowledge about their position within social power structures. The paper focuses on the main structural elements of the heroic narrative, such as overcoming obstacles through action, triumphing over the enemy, perseverance, and commitment to the goal as the main features of the hero's character. From the point of view of feminist literary criticism, the paper aims to show that progressiveness in terms of gender construction, apart from the inclusion of a female character in the position of a hero, requires redefining most of the main structural elements of this predominantly male genre. These changes in the graphic novel I Kill Giants have undermined clear boundaries within the binary oppositions: male-female, private-public, civilized-wild, realistic-fantastic, rational-emotional, adult-child, showing significant possibilities for these types of interventions within the genre framework of the heroic narrative.

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