Premium
Childhood, Movement and Play: An Analysis of Child Agency and Heterotopia in Linha de Passe (2008) and Los colores de la montaña (2010)
Author(s) -
RANDALL RACHEL
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
bulletin of latin american research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.24
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1470-9856
pISSN - 0261-3050
DOI - 10.1111/blar.12295
Subject(s) - heterotopia (medicine) , agency (philosophy) , sociology , aesthetics , gender studies , art , psychology , social science , medicine , pathology
This paper draws on contemporary theoretical debates surrounding the significance of cinematic children in order to examine two recent Latin American films. The Foucauldian concept of ‘heterotopia’ is used to explore the abilities of child protagonists to produce spaces with which they interact both imaginatively and in the films' diegetic realities. Despite distinct urban and rural settings, these productions' staging of playful heterospaces and heterotemporalities permit brief moments of relief within otherwise harsh environments. Such spaces enable child characters to demonstrate an ‘agency’ that is denied their elders, whilst somewhat evading the symbolic ‘futurity’ with which children are often burdened.