Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction

by Pamela Robertson Wojcik

In our current era of helicopter parenting and stranger danger, an unaccompanied child wandering through the city might commonly be viewed as a victim of abuse and neglect. However, from the early twentieth century to the present day, countless books and films have portrayed the solitary exploration of urban spaces as a source of empowerment and delight for children. 

 

Fantasies of Neglect explains how this trope of the self-sufficient, mobile urban child originated and considers why it persists, even as it goes against the grain of social reality. Drawing from a wide range of films, children’s books, adult novels, and sociological texts, Pamela Robertson Wojcik investigates how cities have simultaneously been demonized as dangerous spaces unfit for children and romanticized as wondrous playgrounds that foster a kid’s independence and imagination. Charting the development of free-range urban child characters from Little Orphan Annie to Harriet the Spy to Hugo Cabret, and from Shirley Temple to the Dead End Kids, she considers the ongoing dialogue between these fictional representations and shifting discourses on the freedom and neglect of children. 

 

While tracking the general concerns Americans have expressed regarding the abstract figure of the child, the book also examines the varied attitudes toward specific types of urban children—girls and boys, blacks and whites, rich kids and poor ones, loners and neighborhood gangs. Through this diverse selection of sources, Fantasies of Neglect presents a nuanced chronicle of how notions of American urbanism and American childhood have grown up together. 

 

256 pages, Paperback

Published September 19, 2016

About the author

Pamela Robertson Wojcik is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Film, TV and Theater and Concurrent Professor in Gender Studies and American Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Reviews

[Sally Sugarman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that makes the reader think both while reading and after having read it. In each of the five chapters the author focuses on a different topic. The time period is from the 1930s to the present. The Dead End Kids deal with some of the economic and class differences as a result of The Great Depression. There was diversity in the gangs, as with the Our Gang comedies. The boys use the city streets as a playground. In the chapter on the films about girls, the author looks at Shirley Temple, Jane Withers and Orphan Annie as exemplars of the focus on the child who is orphaned and alone, but who is able to negotiate the city and to interact successfully with adults of various classes. The economic conditions of the Depression result in girls of pluck finding ways to survive through their resourcefulness. Unlike the boys, they do not operate in groups or gangs. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the girls find adults who help them and who they also help. During the first years of the twentieth century the White House Conferences on Children focused on disadvantaged children, but in the 1950s, the focus shifted to white middle class children. The author provides clear examples how the media representations shift with the times. Moving away from the economic conditions that fragmented families during the Depression, the focus was on the mother who was destructive either by being over protective or neglectful. We can see how the psychological theories change according to the times while also influencing the attitudes. Women who want to be more than mothers are demonized as in Krame vrs Kramer. Wojcik provides two fine examples of how the media reflects changes in society in the remake of The Champ and in the difference between the books and the film of Mary Poppins. The chapter on the African-American child in the city shows how the poor, but particularly the black poor, are held responsible for their own problems, exempting society from any responsibility. The issues the book raises in terms of racism, sexism and the distraction of the media. The way in which fear is sued to control not only children, but their mothers. The independent children pictured in the thirties films and book are displaced by the over-regulated children who see strangers as dangers. They are restricted without the opportunity to make mistakes, to learn by playing on their own and exploring spaces. This is valuable as most books analyzing popular culture are since they show how our entertainment reflects and shapes our ideas. Seeing the changes in the treatment and ideas about children in the city over time is particularly useful. Looking at popular culture is another way to understand our history. Not that popular culture is accurate, but the ways in which it distracts its audiences provides a perspective on what is happening in economic and social terms, issues that our educational system usually downplays. As with African-American children and with mothers of all races, it is the individual and not the system that causes the problems according to the so-called experts. However, books like this make it clear that we need to look more broadly at the problems we face in understanding and helping families.