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Adapting American Adulthood
Rebecca Rowe
£90.00Oct 2026
Children’s Film and Television
Radical Children's Film and Television
£24.99
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Published 31 December 2026
About this book
An exploration of radical children’s film and television from around the world
- Winner of the Best Edited Collection at the 2026 BAFTSS Awards
- Fills a major gap in existing scholarship by addressing radical traditions of children’s film and television
- Case studies from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Albania, Japan, Argentina and Australia
- Offers an interdisciplinary perspective, with textual approaches to film and television complemented by chapters exploring aspects of the media industries, as well as fandom and participatory culture
- Features chapters by many world-renowned experts in children’s film and television
There is a long history of radical children’s film and television which subverts political orthodoxies and challenges aesthetic conventions, often beneath a cloak of innocence. However, these rich traditions of radical screen content for children have received remarkably little attention.
This volume redresses the balance. With contributions from leading authorities in the field and reference to both iconic and neglected media from around the world, this book sheds light on film and television for children that seeks to make a critical intervention in culture and society.
It also investigates the subversive uses of children’s media culture by individuals, communities of fandom, political groups, and creative practitioners. In so doing, it represents a major addition to existing scholarship in the field of children’s film and television.
Reviews
What an exciting collection: scholarly yet accessible, international in focus and also drawing from outstanding contributors from all over the world, dealing with controversial subjects but doing so in a balanced way. This book is an essential reference for anyone interested in transformative children’s culture, past and present.
Radical Children’s Film and Television is a unique and vital contribution to children’s screen studies in part because it sharpens and clarifies the concepts of radical form, content, and appropriation in the ongoing discussion of media made for child audiences. In an era where authoritarianism’s cruelty is made most visible upon the dead or the maimed and emaciated bodies of children from Gaza to the Sudan, Radical Children’s Film and Television demonstrates through its historical depth and global contexts that the radical potentiality of children’s media cannot be stifled by the closed fists of authoritarian brute force and that innocence is but a weapon too often wielded in the hands of guilty adults.
This book boldly extends the idea of political film and television into the unexpected, and yet immediately convincing, realm of children’s programming. Far from exhausting its topic the extensive range of contributions establishes the importance of radicalism as a key term for future investigation of children’s film and television production.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction - Noel Brown
Part I: Questions of Theory and Practice
1. Is a Radical Children’s Film and Television Possible? - Noel Brown
2. What is Radical Television for Children? A Transnational and Historical Exploration from Left to Right - Helle Strandgaard Jensen
3. Revolt in a Boarding School: Aesthetic and Political Radicalism in the French Children’s Film Zéro de conduite (Zero for Conduct) by Jean Vigo - Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
4. The Problem of Audience: The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., Dr. Seuss and the Children’s Film - Adrian Schober
5. What do you Mean, ‘Horrible’? The Radicalism of Horrible Histories - Máire Messenger Davies
Part II: Subversive Social Commentary
6. Dick and Dom in da Place/Space to Be: ‘Bogies’ as Situationist-Carnival - Richard Berger and Ashley Woodfall
7. Children’s Films and Cosmology - Ian Wojcik-Andrews
8. Worlds Apart: Growing Pains and Radical Politics in Xhanfise Keko’s Pas Gjurmëve - Jonida Gashi
9. ‘No, there will never be a dictatorship again in Argentina’: Remembering the Dictatorship (1976–1983) and Empowering the Child Citizen in Argentinian Animation - Vladimir Cotal San Martin and Georgia Aitaki
Part III: Manifestos for Change
10. Radical Rodents and Suffering Hounds in Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH and Martin Rosen’s The Plague Dogs - Helena Bacon and Adam Whybray
11. ‘How Far Would You Go?’: Conceptualising Extremist Youth Activism in International Screen Adaptations of The Third Wave Social Experiment - Carla Plieth
12. (Re)orientations for Living with Toxicity in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Teresa Humphrey and Cory Jobb
Part IV: Radical Experiments
13. Breaking Taboos: Swedish Children’s TV in the Radical Era of the 1970s - Malena Janson
14. Welshness, Class and Sexuality: A Thematic Reading of The Owl Service (1970) - Robert Shail
15. Animated Traumas: The Films of Anita Killi - Ole Christoffer Haga
16. Assemblages of Wonder and Ecologies of Sound in Bluey and Summer Camp Island - Penni Russon
Part V: Audiences, Participation and Appropriation
17. Do Babies and Toddlers Need Radical Films and TV? - Cary Bazalgette
18. A Message Movie (Un)Suitable for Children? Public Debates About the Politics and Audiences of Avatar (2009) - Peter Krämer
19. From Courage the Cowardly Dog to the Creepypasta: Formal Destabilisation and Direct Address in Children’s Horror Television - Bence Bardos
20. F is for Friends, G is for Gay: Bert, Ernie, and the Radical Potential of Childhood’s Queer Friendships - Ryan Bunch
21. Children’s Film Festivals as Potential Spaces for Radical Content/Consumption - Barbora Kyas and Noel Brown
Afterword - Kimberley Reynolds
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