Introduction: Cinemas of Boyhood Part II
2016; Berghahn Books; Volume: 9; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.3167/bhs.2016.090101
ISSN2375-9267
Autores Tópico(s)Gender, Feminism, and Media
ResumoWe are proud to present a second set of essays on the topic of boyhood in cinema, adding to those that appeared in issue 8.2 of this journal.Again, the range of interests is eclectic, further illustrating the diverse concerns that boyhood's representation evinces in movies and all media.My introductory comments in the previous issue focused on the compelling research about boyhood that has provoked so much discussion in the field over the past two decades, from political sociology and pop psychology to specific studies of the representation of boys in cinema.Given the scope of films discussed in this issue, from Britain and India as well as from silent Hollywood and so-called new Hollywood in the 1980s, I direct my overview to relevant films about boyhood, and to the young actors in them, that have instigated cogent analyses such as those presented here.Peter Lee's article on the gendered evolution, as it were, of Jackie Coogan in the 1920s brings out many relevant historical tensions about how boyhood has been negotiated on-and off-screen during this decade.Lee points out that Coogan was not the first boy star-he names "Vitagraph Boy" Kenneth Casey, to whom we could add Ben Alexander, John Tansey, Raymond Hackett, and Gordon Griffith-but Coogan became the most famous of his era.He was followed in the next decade by Jackie Cooper who, for his title role in Skippy (1931) when he was barely nine years old, became the first child ever nominated for an Academy Award, and who then went on to greater fame in The Champ (1931), The Bowery (1933), and Treasure Island (1934).Coogan and Cooper, alas, became sad paradigms of child stars whose notoriety would soon fade as they entered adolescence, a fate that befell the most famous child star of the 1930s, Shirley Temple, as well as successors such as Bobby Driscoll and Claude Jarman, Jr., who each won great acclaim in hit films of 1946, respectively, Song of the South and The
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