ABSTRACT
Children's film has long been, and remains, a vital part of the media ecology for young people and adults alike. This chapter examines some of the key theoretical questions posed by children's films. It begins with a discussion of its privileged position within cultural and individual memory, before considering the thorny question of the “(im)possibility” of children's film, responding to Jacqueline Rose's famous assault on classical children's literature. Finally, the chapter discusses the way that children's film balances the imagined needs of the juvenile spectator (and those of grown-ups) with those of adult society, including the tendency to embed hierarchies of development from child to adult within the text, and to serve ideological, and not merely aesthetic, purposes.
