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Article
Unless Someone Like You Cares a Whole Awful Lot: Apocalypse as Children’s Entertainment
Science Fiction Film and Television
Document Type
Article
Language
eng
Publication Date
4-1-2017
Publisher
Liverpool University Press
Disciplines
Abstract
This article explores an unusual subset of children’s narrative, the apocalyptic environmentalist text, and argues that such texts perform the perverse ideological work of shifting blame for ecological crisis from its perpetrators (the parents’ generation) to its victims (the child who is now called upon to act). These texts transform the drama of innocence and experience that is paradigmatic of children’s narrative by destroying the child’s innocence through their very transmission, by informing them of a dire crisis they then become obliged to repair. The article’s primary examples are Captain Planet, The Lorax, WALL-E and The Butter Battle Book, only the last of which finds a way to clearly articulate crisis without also shifting blame.
Citation Information
Gerry Canavan. "Unless Someone Like You Cares a Whole Awful Lot: Apocalypse as Children’s Entertainment" Science Fiction Film and Television (2017) ISSN: 1754-3770 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/gerry-canavan/46/
Accepted version. Science Fiction Film and Television, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring 2017): 81-104. DOI. © 2016 Liverpool University Press. Used with permission.