American Children's Horror under Adult Supervision
Karolina Kostyra
gilbertalbertyna@gmail.comUniversity of Silesia in Katowice (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4983-9195
Abstract
The article concerns American children’s horror in relation to the young audience and to the adults: film critics, parents, and mature viewers. The audience of 1980s films and 1990s TV series is characterized as belonging to a particular age group (tweens, that is: almost teenagers) and representing a specific type of pop culture consumption (Gary Cross wittily described modern kids as “naughty” gremlin-like children). The presence of adults in the discourse on children’s horror is treated in the article as a creative obstacle. Children’s horror has repeatedly met with disfavour among adult commentators. The article is an attempt to enter the current of children’s horror research. More broadly, however, it falls within the scope of recent developments in film studies, focused on ‘recovering’ the heritage of the American popular cinema of the 1980s as a cinema that values childhood and supports children’s agency.
Keywords:
children’s horror, children’s culture, childhood studies, 1980s American horror, 1990s American televisionReferences
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Authors
Karolina Kostyragilbertalbertyna@gmail.com
University of Silesia in Katowice Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4983-9195
Cinephile, film scholar, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Culture Studies (University of Silesia in Katowice). Author of publications on teen films and coming-of-age narratives in cinema, including the book Wiosenna bujność traw. Obrazy przyrody w filmach o dorastaniu [Splendor in the Grass: Nature Images in Coming-of-Age Films] (2019). Co-editor of Final Girls – magazyn o kinie – an internet portal devoted to genre cinema.
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In issues from 105-106 (2019) to 119 (2022) all articles were published under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in „Kwartalnik Filmowy”, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
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