Individualization and the Inward Turn in Children's Cinema

What can we learn about society by watching movies for kids? This paper argues that contemporary children's cinema allows us an insight into the ongoing societal process of individualization. By looking at the transformation of the heroes in films for children, we can understand some developments in the contemporary politics of the self.

The paper looks at the nature of conflicts and challenges that the heroes and heroines are facing in high-profile movies for children, such as Frozen (1 and 2), Inside Out (1 and 2) and others. It argues that an inward turn has taken place over the past decades: children's movies are increasingly less build around a conflict between a protagonist and an (external antagonist). Rather, the antagonist has been internalized: more often than ever before, heroes and heroines of contemporary children's cinema are facing an internal conflict. Rather than overcoming an enemy, they must overcome themselves. Inner demons, past failures and one's own feelings are there to conquer, accept and overcome.

What does this tell us about society outside of the movies? The paper uses concepts from Richard Sennett's work on intimacy, and from several other scholars studying modern self (Jennifer Silva, Jodie Dean etc.) to argue that the inward turn in movies copies a similar turn in and across western societies, where people are increasingly expected to show and perform a highly authentic version of the self, and where responsibility for one's own life is individualized to the point where, in the seeming absence of external constraints, the only "enemy" is one's self alone.