ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes how children, and especially boys, are constructed as “savage” in relation to warlike toys and representations that narrate particular versions of conflict, such as war and terrorism. The chapter uses Action Man toys as a case study that is contextualized against a wider background of other toys, television programs, and films. Action Man is most familiar as a 12-inch costumed toy figure, but the brand also extends into related media representations such as television programs, comics and advertising. The chapter focuses increasingly on the specifics of Action Man representations produced from the 1960s to the 1990s,1 prefacing this detailed discussion with some examples of transmedia texts aimed at children in film and television. While critical work on screen media for children has developed sophisticated analytical tools, this chapter suggests that making the toy a central object of analysis allows for insights into representations of the gendered body that are particularly useful for work on the child-savage analogy. Some of the cultural meanings of war toys, warlike play and representations of war that can be analyzed from this perspective include their role in the construction of masculine identity, their representation of particular wars and warlikeness in general, and their relationship to consumer society (Bignell 1996). This complex of meanings exhibits many of the contradictions that inhabit the construction of “the child” in general, set out in the Introduction to this volume. These meanings include what is savage and unruly, but also an emphasis on rules and hierarchy. The often extreme masculinity of war toys and games is countered by an aesthetic of spatial disposition, collecting and sometimes nurturing that is more conventionally feminine. Such interdependent but apparently opposed meanings can also be seen in the construction of the child as untainted by adult corruption yet also savage, or as in need of adult guidance yet also offering a model of innocence and purity that adults are expected to admire. Children, and especially boys, are constructed as “savage” in relation to warlike toys and representations.
