ERIC Number: EJ1349310
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022-Sep
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
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EISSN: EISSN-2043-6106
Available Date: N/A
"Play with Me or I'll Break Your Arm": Giant Babies, Philosophy, and Images
Global Studies of Childhood, v12 n3 p224-234 Sep 2022
With the "Donald Trump Baby Balloon" as a provocation, this work utilizes philosophy as a method and cinema-as/in-philosophy to multi-modally interrogate the particular images of giant babies. Deleuze and Guattari's conceptions of molarity and molecularity and Bakhtin's conception of grotesque bodily images are put to work alongside several cinematic portrayals of giant babies and their social material contexts, including the animated fantasy "Spirited Away," the family comedy "Honey, I Blew Up the Kid," the independent short "Las Palmas," and the Disney-Pixar superhero franchise "Incredibles." Within this constellation of images and texts, the giant baby emerges as a specific entanglement of developmentalism, humanism, and neoliberalism. Furthermore, the ways in which images of giant babies materialize particular notions of monstrosity, consumption, and destruction might disrupt some commonsense notions of time and bodies. This kind of destabilization of concepts furthers the argument for employing a philosophical, cinematic axiology within the realm of childhood studies.
Descriptors: Human Body, Infants, Visual Aids, Films, Humanism, Neoliberalism, Philosophy, Physical Characteristics
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
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Language: English
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