What is the child for Latin American cinema? This book aims to answer that question, tracing the common tendencies of the representation of the child in the cinema of Latin American countries, showing the place of the child in the movements, genres and styles that have defined that cinema and devoting sustained attention to representational trends and themes surrounding the child-figure characterising the period from the late 1990s to the 2010s, as well as to the experiments with film aesthetics precipitated by the child-figure, and the narrative and stylistic techniques at play in the creation of the childâs perspective. Whilst the bookâs chapters look in detail at films from the recent and contemporary period, this Introduction aims to place those analyses in a historical context, by examining earlier representations, in particular those of the mid-century movements of melodrama and the New Latin American Cinema .
Recent years have seen an increased interest in the place and meanings of the child on screen within theoretical and critical discourse, and the publication of important contributions on the relationship between the child and cinema. Vicky Lebeauâs Childhood and Cinema (2008) and Karen Luryâs The Child in Film: Tears , Fears and Fairytales (2010) are landmark studies that give sustained, in-depth attention to the topic and examine films from a number of global traditions, yet neither of these important works deals with any Latin American film. 1 , 2 Further, as is well documented, Latin American cinemas have undergone something of a renaissanceâan increase in output, popular appeal and critical acclaimâduring the period in question. 3 A not inconsiderable number of recent and contemporary filmsâincluding some very significant onesâfeature child protagonists, many of which are dealt with in this volume; from Walter Sallesâ Central do Brasil (Brazil, 1998) to Lucrecia Martelâs La ciĂ©naga (Argentina, 2001), AndrĂ©s Woodâs Machuca (Chile, 2004) and Mariana RondĂłnâs Pelo malo (Venezuela , 2013), film portrayals of children comprise some of the most striking material of recent and contemporary Latin American cinema.
The conjunction of new theoretical insights with new film material has given rise to a number of publications which deal specifically with the topic of the child in Latin American film, with which this book is in dialogue, and which, together with it, form a new branch of Latin American film studies. Chief amongst the contributors are Carolina Rocha and Georgia Seminet, whose two edited volumes (2012a, 2014) and one special issue (2012b) on this topic constitute a marvellous resource for researchers. More recently, Rachel Randallâs Children on the Threshold in Contemporary Latin American Cinema (2017) further defines the field, pinpointing a number of important theoretical concerns around nature , gender and agency , with specific reference to films from Brazil , Chile and Colombia . Rocha and Seminet point to an intensification of Latin American cinematic interest in children and young people, a âboomâ which they relate to âsocietyâs increased preoccupation for the safety and well-being of childrenâ (Rocha and Seminet 2012a, 12). As I will show in this Introduction, though, these groups have been prominent in Latin American film since the mid-twentieth century and have performed important roles congruent with the main ideological thrusts of the movements of melodrama and then militant filmmaking that defined cinema on the sub-continent during much of the twentieth century, the codes and tropes of which continue to inform contemporary filmmaking. This book shows how contemporary representations of the child are rooted in long-standing cultural imaginaries of childhood and Latin American cinematic traditions, whilst also showing how representations of the child are changing, especially in relation to their political meanings and aesthetic modes.
This book contains a particular focus on the pre-adolescent child, and this is partly due to the emergence of new theories and films as discussed above. It is also because, compared with the analysis of youth in Latin American film, the pre-adolescent child has received relatively little attention. 4 Of course, the two categories are not easily separable, and whether one counts as a child may depend on behaviour and activity, and in turn on class or ethnicity , as well as age. This is important in Latin America, where many lives do not conform to Western bourgeois familial models, and where, for example, many minors work. Sophie Dufays argues in a more philosophical vein that two criteria define the child on screen: the objective age category and the ârelationship that the child [âŠ] has with sexuality [âŠ] and death, that is, the two limits of his or her existenceâ (2014, 22). Some of the âchildâ characters I discuss in this book are approaching or commencing puberty, but generally I focus on younger children, and this is because I am particularly interested in the cultural idea(l) of the child and with the connotations and associations of this figure in the cultural imaginary, including innocence , authenticity , neutrality, amongst a range of other meanings, as they translate into the cinematic signifier âChildâ in Latin American film. In his book Centuries of Childhood, historian Philippe AriĂšs claimed that childhood is historically contingent (1996 [1962]). This has led to an understanding within the discipline of Childhood Studies of childhood as a construct that can be investigated alongside categories of gender , race and class, and that is constituted by the adult view of it as âotherâ. In her book The Case of Peter Pan, or The Impossibility of Childrenâs Fiction, Jacqueline Rose examines the ideology of childhood from Rousseau to Peter Pan, arguing that the cultural meanings of the category âChildâ can be understood as a âportion of adult desireâ (1984, xii), since the childâs association with nature and truthâwith instinct not the cerebral, with innocence not decayââcarries the weight of one half of the contradictions which we experience in relation to ourselvesâ (50). The meaning of the cinematic signifier âChildâ, as it pertains to the Latin American screen, is part of what this book seeks to elucidate, and, because it focuses almost exclusively on the role of the child in films addressed to adult audiences, 5 , 6 the question of the cinematic childâs meaning for and effect on the adult spectator underlies many of the analyses contained here.
The Child and Cinema: Theoretical Perspectives
In theoretical discussions of the child in film, there is likewise a strong focus on the adult spectatorâs desires , responses and feelings in relation to the on-screen child. In 1924, BĂ©la BalĂĄzs wrote an early account of the appeal of the child in film, which speaks to many later developments in film theory including the mediumâs indexical nature and questions of visual pleasure and voyeurism . For BalĂĄzs, âthe naturalness of [childrenâs] unconscious expressions and gesturesâ (2011 [1924], 61) makes looking at children deeply compelling. It gives us the âsense of eavesdropping on nature â (61), and âto watch children who imagine themselves unobserved is like a glimpse of Paradise lostâ (61). If, as later theorists would argue more comprehensively, the cinema produces and fulfils voyeuristic desires (Metz 1982 [1977]; Mulvey 1989 [1975]), then the presence of the child intensifies these, and it is especially, according to BalĂĄzs, the possibilities for close-ups that the medium affords, which are so effective at allowing the sense of âeavesdropping on nature â as close-up shots âbring their facial expressions and gestures so close to us that we can delight in them as a natural phenomenonâ (62). Continuing this emphasis on spectator-desire, AndrĂ© Bazinâs devoted a 1949 review of Germany, Year Zero to an analysis of cinematic treatments of the child, contrasting Rossel...
