rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Steven Spielberg's children
  name:
    name part: Williams, Linda Ruth
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: nju
    date issued: 2025
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: print
    form: regular print
    extent: vii, 307 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
  abstract: "Why has Steven Spielberg's work been so often identified with childhood and children? How does the director elicit such complex performances from his young actors? Steven Spielberg's Children is the first book to investigate children, childhood, and Spielberg's employment of child actors together and in depth. Through a series of lively readings of both the celebrated performances he elicits from his young stars in films such as E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and Empire of the Sun, as well as less discussed roles in films such as War of the Worlds, The BFG, and Jurassic Park, this book shows children to be key players in the director's articulation of childhood since the 1970s. Steven Spielberg's Children presents children and childhood in some surprising ways, not only analyzing boyhood and girlhood according to Spielberg, but considering children as alien, adult-children who refuse to grow up, and children who aren't even human. It discusses the way in which children have served to cast Spielberg as a sentimentalist, but also how they are more frequently framed as complex, cruel and canny. The child might be dangled as bait in an exploitation horror scenario (Jaws), might become the image of universal higher beings (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), or might be a young cultural creator like the director was himself (The Fabelmans), 'born with a camera glued to [his] eye'. The child, on both sides of the camera, is a resonant image, signifying all that adult culture wants it to be, yet resisting this through authorship of their own stories. The book also looks at his young actors in the long history of child stars in theatre and cinema, and how Spielberg's children have fared as performers and celebrities"--
  table of contents: "You are the child": Steven Spielberg and Peter Pan -- The lemonade stand of cinema: Spielberg's performing children -- Boyhood and the child's alien body: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind -- Real boys and synthetic children: A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Ready Player One -- Girl/daughter: War of the Worlds and The BFG -- Clever girls: resilience and relational girlhood in The Color Purple and Spielberg's Jurassic Park films -- War child: Empire of the Sun, Schindler's List, and War Horse -- Family finds a way: adult children, the nonhuman child, and chosen families -- Afterword: The Fabelmans
  note: Linda Ruth Williams.
  note: Includes bibliographical references and index.
  note: Includes filmography.
  subject:
    name:
      name part: Spielberg, Steven
      name part: 1946-
    topic: Criticism and interpretation
  subject:
    topic: Children in motion pictures
  subject:
    topic: Child actors
  subject:
    topic: Enfants au cinéma
  subject:
    topic: Enfants acteurs
  subject:
    topic: Child actors
  subject:
    topic: Children in motion pictures
  classification: PN1998.3.S65 W55 2025
  classification: 791.4302/33092
  identifier: 9780813571683
  identifier: 9780813571676
  identifier: 0813571677
  identifier: 0813571685
  identifier: 9780813571690
  identifier: 9780813575537
  identifier: 2024047499
  location:
    physical location: POD
  record info:
    record content source: DLC
    record creation date: 241009
    record change date: 20250914005505.6
    record identifier: in00005663179
    language of cataloging:
      language term: eng