Children are being represented as criminals in British films and as troubled and disturbed in American films...

anybody agree or disagree ??
If you have any views please post back!...

like home alone? yes i agree and whats the one with arnie schwarznegger in?

the first thing that springs to mind is children and their roles in horror films. for example the exorcist, the ring, carrie, which are all american films, and portray children as crazed demonic horror figures.
Cant think of any examples right now of british though, but its a start!

You forgot about the omen.

quote:

Originally posted by dramaqueen_claire:
Children are being represented as criminals in British films and as troubled and disturbed in American films...

anybody agree or disagree ??
If you have any views please post back!...

The vast majority of british and hollywood movies portray children in a totally conventional role; sickeningly sweet, wide eyed and innocent.

The reason why horror movies portray scary or evil children is because they
employ what Freud called "Das Unheimliche" or
The Unhomely/uncanny, meaning that they take something which is familiar and cosy and comforting and turn it upside down or make it alien or threatening and thus the evil mother or evil child is frightening. For this same reason many horror movies have been set in quiet suburban settings. The "Alien" in the
the Alien series of films takes the principle of Unheimliche to its extreme conclusion by creating a female monster that penetrates and
lays eggs inside men that then kill their host as they are being born thus the Alien represents sex,birth and motherhood turned upside down into death and killing.

Haha You do have some strange ideas... Alien actaully represents an alien in outer space that kills people!

Yeah well wisher I think you read a bit too much into alien.

Not just me; lots of critics have written about the Freudian subtexts in the Alien(s)
movies. I won't even go into what HR Geiger based his design for the Alien on (for fear that I might get banned from the forum)

I also have read that Alien is about birth trauma, if you watch the film there are a lot of references to birth.

In my opinion its the minority of films where children are seen as "Wide-eyed" and "innocent". In the few that are like this, they are aimed at young children and are shown as some kind of role model. American films use children to show demonic behaviour so that they can scare people. Actors like Dakota Fanning are seen in horror films more than any other as this is the genre that is most popular, simply because the audience loves to watch something out of the ordinary, so children acting normal and innocent isn't as popular anymore...