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paisleygreen 's review for:
The 'evil Child' in Literature, Film and Popular Culture
by Karen J. Renner
The ‘Evil Child’ in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture, edited by Karen Renner, explores the literary and cultural significance of the recurring trope of the evil child. The introduction effectively lays out the argument that the trope is rarely about the child at all; rather, the presence of an evil child often has to do with anxieties about parenthood, humanity, and morality. Renner’s discussion of possessed and feral children was accessible, well-researched, and fascinating—I just wish there was a chapter by her to go more in depth on the topic.
The rest of the book is divided into several chapters, each dealing with its own manifestation(s) of evil children in film and literature. These topics range from the figure of the monstrous infant in horror films to hysteria in The Exorcist to the dark doppelgänger figure of Tom Riddle in the sixth Harry Potter book to unruly children featured in Supernanny. Each of these essays, beyond being united by a common topic, also share extremely readable prose, which can be rare in academic texts like these. Many rely on historical-cultural theories of childhood, especially the Romantic notions of childhood as innocence and the Lockean idea of the tabula rasa. This collection is heavy on psychological theories, most notably Freud (several essays) and terror management theory (“Monstrous Children as Harbingers of Mortality”), which makes sense given the focus on good/evil paradigms. I might have liked to see more essays going beyond religion, psychology, and parenthood to explore gender dynamics, race, or queer theory. Where the essays move away from psychoanalysis, they feel fresher and more interesting, as with the essay on Harry Potter and the essay on Rosemary's Baby and Alien. Regardless, what is collected here serves as a great introductory point to interdisciplinary horror criticism; it definitely piqued my interest in the topic, and I found myself thinking of applications to other horror books and films.
This book is slim, clocking in at just under 200 pages, but given the interesting subject matter and the readability of the essays, I wanted a tome. As Renner points out in her introduction, there is much more material to be covered, and I can only hope that there are more collected publications like this in the future (though I wouldn’t mind seeing a whole monograph from Karen Renner).
The rest of the book is divided into several chapters, each dealing with its own manifestation(s) of evil children in film and literature. These topics range from the figure of the monstrous infant in horror films to hysteria in The Exorcist to the dark doppelgänger figure of Tom Riddle in the sixth Harry Potter book to unruly children featured in Supernanny. Each of these essays, beyond being united by a common topic, also share extremely readable prose, which can be rare in academic texts like these. Many rely on historical-cultural theories of childhood, especially the Romantic notions of childhood as innocence and the Lockean idea of the tabula rasa. This collection is heavy on psychological theories, most notably Freud (several essays) and terror management theory (“Monstrous Children as Harbingers of Mortality”), which makes sense given the focus on good/evil paradigms. I might have liked to see more essays going beyond religion, psychology, and parenthood to explore gender dynamics, race, or queer theory. Where the essays move away from psychoanalysis, they feel fresher and more interesting, as with the essay on Harry Potter and the essay on Rosemary's Baby and Alien. Regardless, what is collected here serves as a great introductory point to interdisciplinary horror criticism; it definitely piqued my interest in the topic, and I found myself thinking of applications to other horror books and films.
This book is slim, clocking in at just under 200 pages, but given the interesting subject matter and the readability of the essays, I wanted a tome. As Renner points out in her introduction, there is much more material to be covered, and I can only hope that there are more collected publications like this in the future (though I wouldn’t mind seeing a whole monograph from Karen Renner).