1st Edition

Children, Youth, and International Television

Edited By Debbie Olson, Adrian Schober Copyright 2022
    256 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the public consumption of changing ideas about children, childhood, and national identity, via a critical examination of programs that prominently feature children and youth in international television.

    The chapters connect relevant cultural attitudes within their respective countries to an analysis of children and/or childhood in international children’s programming. The collection addresses how international children’s programming in global and local context informs changing ideas about children and childhood, including notions of individual and citizen identity formation.

    Offering new insights into childhood and television studies, this book will be of great interest to graduate students, scholars, and professionals in television studies, childhood studies, media studies, cultural studies, popular culture studies, and American studies.

    Introduction

    Debbie Olson

    Part One: Cultural Evolution

    1. Migration, Youth and Australian Television: Production, Policies, and Audiences

    Kyle Harvey

    2. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo: Idealism, ‘Reality’ and 1960s Australian Children’s Television

    Adrian Schober

    3. I Know I Can Make it New: Degrassi, Youth Television, and the Work of Staying Relevant

    Andrea Ruehlicke

    4. TV Horror for Children as Transnational Genre: Round the Twist, Generic Subversions, and Quality Australian Children’s Television

    Jessica Balanzategui

    Part Two: Television Programming and National Identities

    5. Children’s Maritime Television in Britain: Environment, Representation and Identity

    Mark Fryers

    6. "‘Thunderbirds are Go!’: Ideology and Representation in the Cold War Era

    Fran Pheasant-Kelly

    7. A Socialist School Story: The Czechoslovak television series "My všichni školou povinní"

    Martina Winkler

    Part Three: Televisual Style and National Identities

    8. Aardman’s Animal Farm: "Loaded" Livestock and Illustrative Aesthetics in Shaun the Sheep (2007-2015)

    Christopher Holliday

    9. The Sound of Norwegian Children’s Television: Narrating the Nation, Childhood and the Welfare State

    Ingeborg Lunde Vestad

    Part Four: Child Agency

    10. Representations of Childhood and "Modes of Address" in Palestinian and Pan-Arab Programs for Children

    Feryal Awan

    11. From Quinceañera to Miss XV: Coming of Age in Mexican Screen Melodrama

    Sofia Rios

    12. Gender, Ideology and Latin American Children's Animated Television

    Milton Fernando Gonzalez-Rodriguez

    Biography

    Debbie Olson is Associate Professor of English at Missouri Valley College, Marshall, Missouri. 

    Adrian Schober is a Teacher Librarian at Caroline Chisholm Catholic College, Melbourne.