Representations of The Child in Latin American Cinema

该项目展示了自1990年以来围绕儿童的话语变化如何影响了拉丁美洲的电影表现，那里的电影长期以来一直喜欢以儿童为中心的叙事。1989年《联合国儿童权利公约》重新引起了人们对代表拉丁美洲最贫困儿童的兴趣，关于这些儿童的现实主义电影激增，而在地区和国家层面上对失踪儿童和街头儿童等问题的公开辩论对电影制作产生了重大影响。该项目的中心思想是，儿童作为权利主体的话语建构已经产生了表征策略的转变，与传统使用儿童作为探索成人关注点的密码相比，制作了赋予儿童代理和经验特权的电影。该研究比较了阿根廷、巴西、哥伦比亚和墨西哥等国的电影。该研究询问了儿童在拉丁美洲电影中的代表性使用，在儿童视角的创造中发挥了哪些叙事和风格技巧，以及这些表现如何确认或破坏儿童作为“他者”的地位，借鉴了儿童研究，女孩研究和最近的电影理论。报告认为，不断变化的儿童代表政治是理解当代拉丁美洲国家与儿童传统上代表的问题之间关系的关键，其中包括现代性、民族、过去和未来。本研究包括四个章节：“边缘上的儿童”考察了20世纪90年代以边缘儿童为中心的拉丁美洲电影（如《西西里奥》，[Novoa, 1994]），除了表现儿童痛苦的伦理和情感和观众问题外，还关注了“问题”和“危险”儿童的话语结构；“童年和电影之旅”探索了描绘20世纪90年代末和21世纪初旅行儿童的电影，要么穿越国家领土（通常与寻找父亲有关，如在巴西中部[Salles， 1998]），而城市往返从根本上破坏了传统的身份叙事；“鬼魂与证人”讨论了像El niño pez （Puenzo, 2009）这样的电影，这些电影将儿童描绘成神秘或幽灵般的记忆地点和/或政治或个人创伤的见证人；“酷儿儿童与未来”提出了女孩在拉丁美洲电影中的出现，作为不受管制的欲望的主题，破坏了父权-异性恋矩阵和未来的象征，讨论了这些电影如何酷儿代表规范，如La niña santa （Martel 2004）。近年来，人们对电影中的儿童进行了大量研究，并提出了关于电影对儿童的使用以及他们对成人文化的看法的新问题。这项研究的背景是，人们对儿童与文化和政治的关系越来越感兴趣，而且各个学科的学者都认为，对现代文化中性别结构作用的那种审视，应该迫切地应用于儿童的研究，尤其是在拉丁美洲的研究中，尽管该大陆一半的人口未满18岁，但当代学术对儿童的研究很少。许多拉丁美洲电影都是关于儿童的，但与性别或种族等类别相比，儿童的角色在批评作品中很少受到关注。那里的研究往往集中在街头儿童身上，基本上是关于阶级而不是童年的。这项研究将看到儿童贫困和无家可归的表现以及其他儿童的表现，因此将处于一个独特的位置，询问（呼应勒博）拉丁美洲电影中的儿童是什么（不仅仅是强调社会边缘化的一种手段）；拉丁美洲电影对孩子的需求，这对于理解当代拉丁美洲国家的文化认同至关重要。

This project shows how shifting discourses around the child since 1990 have influenced their filmic representation in Latin America, where cinema has long been fond of child-centred narratives. The 1989 UN Convention on child rights led to renewed interest in representing the poorest children in Latin America, and an upsurge in realist films about such children, whilst public debates at regional and national levels over, for example, disappeared children and street children have influenced filmmaking significantly. At the project's centre is the idea that the discursive construction of the child as subject of rights has produced a shift in representational strategies, producing films which privilege child agency and experience by contrast with traditional uses of children as ciphers for exploring adult preoccupations. The study compares films from countries including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.The study asks what representational uses the child has in Latin American film, what narrative and stylistic techniques are at play in the creation of the child's perspective, and how these representations confirm or disrupt the child's status as 'other', drawing on work in childhood studies, girls' studies and recent film theory. It argues that a changing politics of child-representation is key to understanding contemporary Latin American countries' relationship to the issues children have traditionally represented, among them, modernity, nation, past and future. The study comprises four chapters: 'Children on the edge' examines Latin American films centring on marginal children in the 1990s (e.g. Sicario, [Novoa, 1994]), paying attention to the discursive construction of the 'problem' and the 'at risk' child in addition to the ethics of representing child suffering and questions of emotion and spectatorship; 'Childhood and cinematic journeys' explores films depicting travelling children in the late 1990s and early 2000s, either across the national territory (often linked to a search for the father, as in Central do Brasil [Salles, 1998]), whilst urban to-ing and fro-ing radically undermines conventional identity narratives; 'Ghosts and witnesses' discusses films like El niño pez (Puenzo, 2009) which figure children as uncanny or ghostly loci of memory and/or witnesses to political or personal trauma; and 'Queer children and the future' proposes the advent of the girl-child within Latin American film as subject of unregulated desire disruptive of the patriarchal-heterosexual matrix and symbol of the future, discussing how such films queer representational norms, as in La niña santa (Martel 2004).In recent years, significant work has been done on the child in film, and new questions generated about cinematic uses of the child and what they say about adult culture. This research is informed by the growing interest in children's relationship to culture and politics and the belief amongst scholars of various disciplines that the kind of scrutiny that has been applied to the structural role of gender in modern culture should with urgency be applied to that of childhood, especially in Latin American studies where the child is scarce in contemporary scholarship despite the fact that half the continent's population is under 18. Many Latin American films are about children, yet the role of the child has received scant attention in critical work by contrast with categories such as gender or race. What studies there are tend to focus on street children, and are essentially about class rather than childhood. This study will see representations of child poverty and homelessness alongside other representations of the child, and will therefore be in a unique position to ask (echoing Lebeau) what the child is for Latin American cinema (beyond simply a means to highlight social marginalization); what Latin American cinema wants of thechild, which is vital to an understanding of cultural identity in contemporary Latin American countries.