ABSTRACT
The conclusion ties the key themes of the The Lost Child Complex in Australian Film together, by drawing on a cluster of contemporary events in mid-2018 that appeared in rapid succession, not merely as stories or reports about the potency of ‘the child’, but as allegories of the motivating archetypal energy beneath. These global experiences include the final episodes of season two’s dystopian television series The Handmaid’s Tale (2018), the Trump initiated child separations and detention of children at the Mexican border, the survival and rescue of Thailand’s ‘Wild Boars’ boys soccer team from the flooding caverns of the infamous Tham Luang Nang Non mountain cave, and the four-metre blimp of an infantile, nappy clad Donald Trump that flew over Parliament square in London as a form of peaceful protest to mark his UK visit. These events, along with the canon of lost child cinema in Australia, highlight the potency and magnetism of the inner child that plays beneath each image, myth, fantasy, trauma and political folly.
