ISSN 2414-8385 (Online) ISSN 2414-8377 (Print European Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies May-August 2018 Volume 3. Issue 3 34 Children and Cinema: Moving Images of Childhood Angela Bushati Freie Universitat, Berlin, Germany Abstract The idea of childhood has been part of the moving images experience since the appearance of cinema. Through the lenses of cinema, childhood is deconstructed as presenting branching pathways, underlining its complexity and the mysteriousness of it. The ongoing experience of childhood on screen serves as a tool to reflect on the anatomy and contour of cinema, as well as its understanding. On the other hand, cinema has been used as a tool to reflect on the notion of childhood and as an apparatus that challenges the power relations that exist between adults and children. The aim of this paper is to present an overview of how the institution of cinema contributes or opposes the notion of naturalness of childhood imposed by adults or the normative perception of what a child should be. In a lot of movies the child is “othered” leaving as a result an ambiguous space between the child and cinema, where childhood is not anymore strictly defined. Keywords: childhood, cinema, power relations, otherness, normativity Introduction In the recent decades there is an immense interest in the field of childhood studies and media anthropology in deconstructing the ideology that stands behind the notion of childhood and its representations. Childhood constitutes an important structural component of our society. According to Ariès (1962), childhood is a socially constructed concept and it is relatively modern. Cinema, as well as childhood, can be considered as an institution of the modern culture that uses the image of the child, and therefore represents the social construction of childhood. The mechanisms of cinema have been able to somehow challenge the representations and visions of childhood through fluctuating in time, space and narrative. The figure of the child has been used everywhere on our screens and therefore turning cinema “into a valuable – in fact, potentially overwhelming - resource for reflecting on the cultural histories of childhood in the twentieth century” (Lebeau, 2008:12). Throughout the 19th century, the child was watched, written about and wanted. Animated versions of “Ginx Baby” and “Child Pictures” were one of the first confrontation between childhood and cinema (Lebeau, 2005:10). In the early 1900s, the figure of the child and infant was proliferated in moving pictures such as “Child life”, one of the first genres of Victorian film and one of the first contributions of the ongoing project of visualizing childhood, of giving image to the child (Lebeau, 2005:8). The myth of childhood shapes our epoch and ways of thinking on many levels. Cinema itself transfers and brings into life the dimensions of the myth, and our modern commitments to the idea of the child are indivisible from its representation or portrayal in visual form. (Lebeau, 2005:10) The social construction of naturalness of childhood in cinema Cinema has put the child in the landscape of vision and it can be a powerful instrument to reflect and know the child. From its early encounters with cinema many of the common tropes of childhood are children who need to be protected, who are innocent, immature etc. Many of these characteristics given by adult pre-conceptions about what childhood is or should be construct the notion of “ normative childhood” . Baudrillard (1994) talks about the notion of simulacra which refers to a world of images and signs that refer to other images and signs which have no reference in the real world. Many notions related to childhood are therefore constructed through images and signs. Cinema is also part of it. For example, childhood has often been depicted, even in cinema, as presenting a futuristic adult project or in a state of becoming, rather than being. Olson & Scahill (2012: 9) note that the images of “normative childhood” creates a tale that is often characterised or haunted by the spectre of its own failure.