ABSTRACT

This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the public consumption of changing ideas about children, childhood, and national identity, via a critical examination of programs that prominently feature children and youth in international television.

The chapters connect relevant cultural attitudes within their respective countries to an analysis of children and/or childhood in international children’s programming. The collection addresses how international children’s programming in global and local context informs changing ideas about children and childhood, including notions of individual and citizen identity formation.

Offering new insights into childhood and television studies, this book will be of great interest to graduate students, scholars, and professionals in television studies, childhood studies, media studies, cultural studies, popular culture studies, and American studies.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction: The child in international television

New perspectives

part I|80 pages

Cultural evolution

chapter 1|21 pages

Migration, youth, and Australian television

Production, policy, and audiences

chapter 2|19 pages

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo

Idealism, “Reality” and 1960s Australian children's television

chapter 3|18 pages

I Know I Can Make it New

Degrassi, youth television, and the work of staying relevant

chapter 4|20 pages

TV horror-fantasy for children as transnational genre

Round the Twist, generic subversions, and quality Australian children's television

part II|60 pages

Television programming and national identities

chapter 5|20 pages

Children's maritime television in Britain

Environment, representation, and identity

chapter 6|20 pages

“Thunderbirds are go!”

Ideology and representation in the Cold War era

chapter 7|18 pages

A socialist school story

The Czechoslovak television series “My všichni školou povinní” 1

part III|46 pages

Televisual style and national identities

chapter 8|20 pages

Aardman's animal farm

“loaded” livestock and illustrative aesthetics in Shaun the Sheep (2007–)

chapter 9|24 pages

The sound of Norwegian children's television

Narrating the nation, childhood, and the welfare state