Directed by Richard Donner and written by David Seltzer, The Omen (1976) is perhaps the best in t... more Directed by Richard Donner and written by David Seltzer, The Omen (1976) is perhaps the best in the devil-child cycle of movies that followed in the wake of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. Released to a highly suggestible public, The Omen became a major commercial success, in no small part due to an elaborate pre-sell campaign that played and preyed on apocalyptic fears and a renewed belief in the Devil and the supernatural. Since polarising critics and religious groups upon its release, The Omen has earned its place in the horror film canon. It's a film that works on different levels, is imbued with nuance, ambiguity and subtext, and is open to opposing interpretations. Reflecting the film's cultural impact and legacy, the name 'Damien' has since become a pop culture byword for an evil child. Adrian Schober's Devil's Advocate entry covers the genesis, authorship, production history, marketing and reception of The Omen, before going on to examine the overarching theme of paranoia that drives the narrative: paranoia about the 'end times'; paranoia about government and conspiracy; paranoia about child rearing (especially, if one strips away the layer of Satanism); and paranoia about imagined threats to the hardening right-wing Establishment from liberal and post-countercultural forces of the 1970s.
Edited Collection for the Routledge Advances in Television Studies series , 2022
This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the public consumption of ... more This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the public consumption of changing ideas about children, childhood, and national identity, via a critical examination of programs that prominently feature children and youth in international television. The chapters connect relevant cultural attitudes within their respective countries to an analysis of children and/or childhood in international children’s programming. The collection addresses how international children’s programming in global and local context informs changing ideas about children and childhood, including notions of individual and citizen identity formation. Offering new insights into childhood and television studies, this book will be of great interest to graduate students, scholars, and professionals in television studies, childhood studies, media studies, cultural studies, popular culture studies, and American studies.
Edited Collection for the Routledge Advances in Television Studies series, 2018
Whether center stage or in the background, children have been a key part of the American televisi... more Whether center stage or in the background, children have been a key part of the American television landscape ever since the mass-production of TV sets. But, while there have been other works that address the nexus between children and television, usually within an empirical framework, none offers the scope of the present collection. This collection adopts a more wide-ranging approach, by presenting chapters that offer “snapshots” of how television in the American cultural landscape has (re)imagined children and childhood across decades since the post-war era. From different perspectives and disciplines, these chapters explore how individual programs have been a significant conduit for the public consumption of changing ideas about children and childhood, and how relevant events, attitudes and anxieties in American culture connect to these programs. This includes both children’s programming and programs that prominently feature children.
Programs include: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Bewitched, Sesame Street, the productions of Sid and Marty Krofft, The Cosby Show, Roseanne, Modern Family, Bob's Burgers, The Legend of Korra.
Edited collection for the Children and Youth in Popular Culture series, Lexington Books, 2016
To say that children matter in Steven Spielberg's films is an understatement. Think of the posses... more To say that children matter in Steven Spielberg's films is an understatement. Think of the possessed Stevie in Something Evil (TV), Baby Langston in The Sugarland Express, the alien-abducted Barry in Close Encounters, Elliott and his unearthly alter-ego in E.T, the war-damaged Jim in Empire of the Sun, the little girl in the red coat in Schindler’s List, the mecha child in A.I., the kidnapped boy in Minority Report, and the eponymous boy hero of The Adventures of Tintin. (There are many other instances across his oeuvre). Contradicting his reputation as a purveyor of ‘popcorn’ entertainment, Spielberg’s vision of children/childhood is complex. Discerning critics have begun to note its darker underpinnings, increasingly fraught with tensions, conflicts and anxieties. But, while childhood is Spielberg’s principal source of inspiration, the topic has never been the focus of a dedicated collection of essays. The essays in Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg therefore seek to address childhood in the full spectrum of Spielberg’s cinema. Fittingly, the scholars represented here draw on a range of theoretical frameworks and disciplines—cinema studies, literary studies, audience reception, critical race theory, psychoanalysis, sociology, and more. This is an important book for not only scholars but teachers and students of Spielberg's work, and for any serious fan of the director and his career.
A stimulating and original collection. A range of distinguished scholars have been assembled to reflect on the representation of childhood in Spielberg's work, and collectively they challenge the frequent critical accusations of sentimentality, illuminating instead the sensibility of a director whose work has always shown an unusual sensitivity to the traumas and dangers of childhood and how children (and adults) cope with this sense of anxiety and loss. An important contribution to Spielberg studies.
— Neil R. Sinyard, Emeritus Professor of Film Studies, University of Hull, UK
Adrian Schober and Debbie Olson’s collection Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg testifies to the potency of the child figure in Spielberg’s films. The essays in this collection reveal that Spielberg’s depictions of childhood are shaped by social anxieties about the safety of children, their complicated relations with adults, and the pressures that affect modern families. The collection will generate lively discussions of Spielberg’s films across studies of children’s literature, childhood and popular cinema.
— Clare Bradford, Alfred Deakin Professor at Deakin University
The possessed child made a spectacular impact in the 1970s with The Exorcist, which was a literar... more The possessed child made a spectacular impact in the 1970s with The Exorcist, which was a literary, cinematic, cultural and social phenomenon. The book and film helped spawn an entire generation of possessed youngsters throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In the first full-length study of this image, Adrian Schober argues that the possessed child is first and foremost an American phenomenon that may be traced to certain religious and cultural factors in the United States.
In this thought-provoking analysis of the shifting cultural perceptions of the 'good' and 'evil' child, Schober revisits such American classics as The Scarlet Letter and The Turn of the Screw, while examining its more contemporary face in books and films such as The Exorcist and E.T.. He compares these American representations with those from other national contexts, as well as its treatment in the field of children's literature. The book adopts a unique interdisciplinary approach, which offers new insights by examining the possessed child trope within a broad historical and cultural perspective.
REVIEW:
In 1689, the Reverend Cotton Mather watched four children of a Boston family exhibit “strange fits” such that, at times, “their Heads would be twisted almost round; and … they would roar exceedingly”. (pp. 38-39) In 1971, William Peter Blatty wrote his novel The Exorcist, an instant best-seller and the basis of his screenplay for the blockbusting William Friedkin movie two years later.
Adrian Schober treats all of these events with seriousness and scholarly insight, befitting his book‘s origin in a doctoral thesis for Monash University, Australia. One advantage for writers who employ “the possession motif”, he notes, is that “it casts the child as both good and evil, innocent and corrupt, victim and villain” (p. 16) - thereby raising timeless questions about whether any of us can really “know ourselves”. Henry James seems to have deliberately incorporated that ambiguity into his groundbreaking tale of possession and pre-pubescent sexuality The Turn of the Screw (1898), going so far as to tease the reader with the possibility that the “ghosts” reported by the two children actually emanate from the hysterical mind of their repressed governess. James called his tale an “irresponsible little fiction” (p. 61) but in fact it pioneered techniques later used by audience-implicating filmmakers like Friedkin and Robert Wise and Alfred Hitchcock, not to mention an entire concept of how society regards (or disregards) childhood sexuality, as set out in James Kincaid’s book Erotic Innocence (1998), cited several times by Schober.
Underpinning Schober’s study is his concern to trace religious and Romantic attitudes to the child (both in life and in fiction), which historically have tended to be opposed. In particular, Roman Catholicism and Puritanism regarded the child with suspicion, as inheriting Original Sin and being like a “little devil” in need of taming (and baptism). The Romantics, post-Rousseau, on the other hand, almost deified the child - whose potential to be “father of the man” in thought and deed became their special study and concern. To the notion of original sin, the Romantics opposed “original innocence” (p. 5), although poet William Blake wisely saw that in practice both such “contrary states” (the subtitle of Schober’s book) might be allowed. “Without contraries is no progression,” he wrote. He meant that, in the growing child, and healthy adult, rationality and energy need each other if the soul or psyche is not to be flabby and undernourished. Here were pre-echoes of Freud and James, and of most of the texts that Schober examines so revealingly.
This remarkable and shrewd book covers territory that is both basic and thought-provoking. Its chapters range across sophisticated literary works like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and James’s The Turn of the Screw, to Hollywood films like The Exorcist and Wise’s Audrey Rose (1977) - the latter adapted by Frank De Felitta from his earnest 1975 “shocker” about reincarnation - to Englishman James Herbert’s 1983 novel Shrine (which in effect transposes Lourdes to South East England, but which Schober finds “pretentious” and “melodramatic“ - pp. 118-19), to children’s tales like William Mayne’s IT (1977) and Australian author Victor Kelleher’s Del-Del (1991). I commend Schober both for his capacity to contextualise these works in their Zeitgeist (for example, the New Age thinking of the late 1960s onwards, coinciding with the Vietnam war, student revolt, changing sexual mores, and Women’s Liberation - chapter on The Exorcist, p. 67) and to spot non sequiturs, as when he shows how Audrey Rose’s pretence at reconciling Christian understanding of resurrection with Eastern philosophy’s concept of reincarnation is “tantamount to doublethink”. (p. 93)
A formidable yet readable book, highly recommended.
Reviewed by Ken Mogg, scholar, author of The Alfred Hitchcock Story (1999; 2008), and editor of the 'MacGuffin' website.
This chapter considers the religious and political implications of the continuing story of Damien... more This chapter considers the religious and political implications of the continuing story of Damien’s rise – and fall – over the two sequels that form the ‘Damien’ trilogy: Damien: Omen II (Don Taylor, 1978) and The Final Conflict (Graham Baker, 1981). These sequels offer some revisions to the original, as well as foundational American myths. Damien: Omen II depicts Damien as an adolescent being groomed for the world of big business. The Final Conflict depicts Damien as an adult embarking on a career in American politics. In the last film, insistent parallels are drawn between the Christ and the Antichrist. Damien here takes after the reinterpreted Lucifer of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, while his sadomasochistic creed owes much to poet William Blake’s theory of contraries and inversions. Additionally, the made-for-TV Omen IV: The Awakening (1991) is briefly addressed as a late entry in the series.
This short account of Australian children’s cinema takes as its starting point a certain anti- au... more This short account of Australian children’s cinema takes as its starting point a certain anti- authoritarian streak in the national character that has helped define Australia’s identity: the larrikin streak. In analysing this streak across a range of films from the silent to post-war eras to the Australian film revival of the 1970s and 1980s, this chapter argues that larrikinism— and a larrikin childhood in particular— speaks directly to questions of history, nation, and identity. This throws into sharp relief so- called aspects of the Australian character, or mystique— what historian Russel Ward famously termed the Australian Legend. Combining film history with textual analysis and an analysis of critical and commercial reception, this chapter seeks to chart a course for the larrikin children’s film in Australia.
Children, Youth, and International Television, 2022
Produced with an eye to the international market, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo (1968-1970) was a high... more Produced with an eye to the international market, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo (1968-1970) was a highly successful Australian children’s television program, sold to over 80 countries including the hard-to-crack United States. At the height of its popularity, it had a global viewing audience of 300 million per week. In many ways, it was reactionary, a product of its time. Yet it was also part of a shift in ideological values in Australian society and culture in the late 1960s on two important fronts: in its articulation of an eco-consciousness that rode the new wave of the Australian environment movement, and also in its ground-breaking portrayals of Aboriginality that responded to a growing Aboriginal awareness. In this chapter, I argue that the series bespoke a complex idealism on these fronts. In appealing to the better part of human nature, it gave viewers something to aspire to when reality lagged behind ideals.
A milestone in Australian television history, the series about the adventures of the eponymous ma... more A milestone in Australian television history, the series about the adventures of the eponymous marsupial left a significant mark not only on the national imagination but also around the world. Fifty years after the airing of the show's final episode, Adrian Schober speaks to cast members Tony Bonner and Ken James, and asks them to reflect on their time on the show as well as its groundbreaking themes, contemporaneous cultural impact and legacy.
I interview legendary game show comperes Tony Barber and Philip Brady about their respective care... more I interview legendary game show comperes Tony Barber and Philip Brady about their respective careers and the genre's persistence in Australia today.
In conversation with television luminary Philip Brady on the rise and recession of Australian var... more In conversation with television luminary Philip Brady on the rise and recession of Australian variety shows, particularly the beloved In Melbourne Tonight.
An in-depth account of the 1966 goodwill promotional visit to Australia by three cast members of ... more An in-depth account of the 1966 goodwill promotional visit to Australia by three cast members of the British television serial, Coronation Street. The tour is richly instructive, offering a particular frame in which to explore the power of the youthful medium of television in Australia, the impact of British and American television imports, the post-war migrant experience and the vagaries of taste. The purpose of this article is two-fold: first, to historically reconstruct the tour using a multiplicity of sources, notably newspapers, magazines, television guides and photographs held at the State Library of Victoria, as well as eyewitnesses to the event, and second, to unpack the factors that led to the show’s becoming such a phenomenon before finally falling out of favour with Australian audiences.
Red Feather: an International Journal of Children in Popular Culture, 2018
In this paper, I argue that the national designations of the children in the two film treatments ... more In this paper, I argue that the national designations of the children in the two film treatments of Roald Dahl's 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' were not inevitable and arose out of a variety of decisions and factors. In unpacking how these stereotypes and discourses of national identity intersect with childhood, as well as notions of class and gender, I touch on other possibilities in the children’s representations, particularly in light of politically correct movements in children’s literature, film and culture.
Children and childhood feature prominently in the eponymous fifth dimension of Rod Serling’s land... more Children and childhood feature prominently in the eponymous fifth dimension of Rod Serling’s landmark anthology series The Twilight Zone (1959-1964). Of the 156 episodes in the series, a total of 19 feature either “Children/Child Protagonist[s]” or the theme of “Returning to Childhood.” Even though the series was never the Nielsen ratings winner CBS hoped it would be – it would later find an audience through syndication – it was immediately embraced by critics and, tellingly, children. One avid watcher of the series was a young Steven Spielberg. For me, the most compelling of Serling’s TV children are the ones constructed as lost and damaged: the victims of abuse, exploitation, separation and/or neglect. In this chapter, I show how the series not only made capital out of the medical and media “rediscovery” of child physical abuse in the early 1960s but how it shone a light on other forms of maltreatment, with perspicacious foresight. Despite the fantastical and even esoteric orientation of the series, it hit upon some real-world concerns.
Directed by Richard Donner and written by David Seltzer, The Omen (1976) is perhaps the best in t... more Directed by Richard Donner and written by David Seltzer, The Omen (1976) is perhaps the best in the devil-child cycle of movies that followed in the wake of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. Released to a highly suggestible public, The Omen became a major commercial success, in no small part due to an elaborate pre-sell campaign that played and preyed on apocalyptic fears and a renewed belief in the Devil and the supernatural. Since polarising critics and religious groups upon its release, The Omen has earned its place in the horror film canon. It's a film that works on different levels, is imbued with nuance, ambiguity and subtext, and is open to opposing interpretations. Reflecting the film's cultural impact and legacy, the name 'Damien' has since become a pop culture byword for an evil child. Adrian Schober's Devil's Advocate entry covers the genesis, authorship, production history, marketing and reception of The Omen, before going on to examine the overarching theme of paranoia that drives the narrative: paranoia about the 'end times'; paranoia about government and conspiracy; paranoia about child rearing (especially, if one strips away the layer of Satanism); and paranoia about imagined threats to the hardening right-wing Establishment from liberal and post-countercultural forces of the 1970s.
Edited Collection for the Routledge Advances in Television Studies series , 2022
This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the public consumption of ... more This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the public consumption of changing ideas about children, childhood, and national identity, via a critical examination of programs that prominently feature children and youth in international television. The chapters connect relevant cultural attitudes within their respective countries to an analysis of children and/or childhood in international children’s programming. The collection addresses how international children’s programming in global and local context informs changing ideas about children and childhood, including notions of individual and citizen identity formation. Offering new insights into childhood and television studies, this book will be of great interest to graduate students, scholars, and professionals in television studies, childhood studies, media studies, cultural studies, popular culture studies, and American studies.
Edited Collection for the Routledge Advances in Television Studies series, 2018
Whether center stage or in the background, children have been a key part of the American televisi... more Whether center stage or in the background, children have been a key part of the American television landscape ever since the mass-production of TV sets. But, while there have been other works that address the nexus between children and television, usually within an empirical framework, none offers the scope of the present collection. This collection adopts a more wide-ranging approach, by presenting chapters that offer “snapshots” of how television in the American cultural landscape has (re)imagined children and childhood across decades since the post-war era. From different perspectives and disciplines, these chapters explore how individual programs have been a significant conduit for the public consumption of changing ideas about children and childhood, and how relevant events, attitudes and anxieties in American culture connect to these programs. This includes both children’s programming and programs that prominently feature children.
Programs include: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Bewitched, Sesame Street, the productions of Sid and Marty Krofft, The Cosby Show, Roseanne, Modern Family, Bob's Burgers, The Legend of Korra.
Edited collection for the Children and Youth in Popular Culture series, Lexington Books, 2016
To say that children matter in Steven Spielberg's films is an understatement. Think of the posses... more To say that children matter in Steven Spielberg's films is an understatement. Think of the possessed Stevie in Something Evil (TV), Baby Langston in The Sugarland Express, the alien-abducted Barry in Close Encounters, Elliott and his unearthly alter-ego in E.T, the war-damaged Jim in Empire of the Sun, the little girl in the red coat in Schindler’s List, the mecha child in A.I., the kidnapped boy in Minority Report, and the eponymous boy hero of The Adventures of Tintin. (There are many other instances across his oeuvre). Contradicting his reputation as a purveyor of ‘popcorn’ entertainment, Spielberg’s vision of children/childhood is complex. Discerning critics have begun to note its darker underpinnings, increasingly fraught with tensions, conflicts and anxieties. But, while childhood is Spielberg’s principal source of inspiration, the topic has never been the focus of a dedicated collection of essays. The essays in Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg therefore seek to address childhood in the full spectrum of Spielberg’s cinema. Fittingly, the scholars represented here draw on a range of theoretical frameworks and disciplines—cinema studies, literary studies, audience reception, critical race theory, psychoanalysis, sociology, and more. This is an important book for not only scholars but teachers and students of Spielberg's work, and for any serious fan of the director and his career.
A stimulating and original collection. A range of distinguished scholars have been assembled to reflect on the representation of childhood in Spielberg's work, and collectively they challenge the frequent critical accusations of sentimentality, illuminating instead the sensibility of a director whose work has always shown an unusual sensitivity to the traumas and dangers of childhood and how children (and adults) cope with this sense of anxiety and loss. An important contribution to Spielberg studies.
— Neil R. Sinyard, Emeritus Professor of Film Studies, University of Hull, UK
Adrian Schober and Debbie Olson’s collection Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg testifies to the potency of the child figure in Spielberg’s films. The essays in this collection reveal that Spielberg’s depictions of childhood are shaped by social anxieties about the safety of children, their complicated relations with adults, and the pressures that affect modern families. The collection will generate lively discussions of Spielberg’s films across studies of children’s literature, childhood and popular cinema.
— Clare Bradford, Alfred Deakin Professor at Deakin University
The possessed child made a spectacular impact in the 1970s with The Exorcist, which was a literar... more The possessed child made a spectacular impact in the 1970s with The Exorcist, which was a literary, cinematic, cultural and social phenomenon. The book and film helped spawn an entire generation of possessed youngsters throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In the first full-length study of this image, Adrian Schober argues that the possessed child is first and foremost an American phenomenon that may be traced to certain religious and cultural factors in the United States.
In this thought-provoking analysis of the shifting cultural perceptions of the 'good' and 'evil' child, Schober revisits such American classics as The Scarlet Letter and The Turn of the Screw, while examining its more contemporary face in books and films such as The Exorcist and E.T.. He compares these American representations with those from other national contexts, as well as its treatment in the field of children's literature. The book adopts a unique interdisciplinary approach, which offers new insights by examining the possessed child trope within a broad historical and cultural perspective.
REVIEW:
In 1689, the Reverend Cotton Mather watched four children of a Boston family exhibit “strange fits” such that, at times, “their Heads would be twisted almost round; and … they would roar exceedingly”. (pp. 38-39) In 1971, William Peter Blatty wrote his novel The Exorcist, an instant best-seller and the basis of his screenplay for the blockbusting William Friedkin movie two years later.
Adrian Schober treats all of these events with seriousness and scholarly insight, befitting his book‘s origin in a doctoral thesis for Monash University, Australia. One advantage for writers who employ “the possession motif”, he notes, is that “it casts the child as both good and evil, innocent and corrupt, victim and villain” (p. 16) - thereby raising timeless questions about whether any of us can really “know ourselves”. Henry James seems to have deliberately incorporated that ambiguity into his groundbreaking tale of possession and pre-pubescent sexuality The Turn of the Screw (1898), going so far as to tease the reader with the possibility that the “ghosts” reported by the two children actually emanate from the hysterical mind of their repressed governess. James called his tale an “irresponsible little fiction” (p. 61) but in fact it pioneered techniques later used by audience-implicating filmmakers like Friedkin and Robert Wise and Alfred Hitchcock, not to mention an entire concept of how society regards (or disregards) childhood sexuality, as set out in James Kincaid’s book Erotic Innocence (1998), cited several times by Schober.
Underpinning Schober’s study is his concern to trace religious and Romantic attitudes to the child (both in life and in fiction), which historically have tended to be opposed. In particular, Roman Catholicism and Puritanism regarded the child with suspicion, as inheriting Original Sin and being like a “little devil” in need of taming (and baptism). The Romantics, post-Rousseau, on the other hand, almost deified the child - whose potential to be “father of the man” in thought and deed became their special study and concern. To the notion of original sin, the Romantics opposed “original innocence” (p. 5), although poet William Blake wisely saw that in practice both such “contrary states” (the subtitle of Schober’s book) might be allowed. “Without contraries is no progression,” he wrote. He meant that, in the growing child, and healthy adult, rationality and energy need each other if the soul or psyche is not to be flabby and undernourished. Here were pre-echoes of Freud and James, and of most of the texts that Schober examines so revealingly.
This remarkable and shrewd book covers territory that is both basic and thought-provoking. Its chapters range across sophisticated literary works like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and James’s The Turn of the Screw, to Hollywood films like The Exorcist and Wise’s Audrey Rose (1977) - the latter adapted by Frank De Felitta from his earnest 1975 “shocker” about reincarnation - to Englishman James Herbert’s 1983 novel Shrine (which in effect transposes Lourdes to South East England, but which Schober finds “pretentious” and “melodramatic“ - pp. 118-19), to children’s tales like William Mayne’s IT (1977) and Australian author Victor Kelleher’s Del-Del (1991). I commend Schober both for his capacity to contextualise these works in their Zeitgeist (for example, the New Age thinking of the late 1960s onwards, coinciding with the Vietnam war, student revolt, changing sexual mores, and Women’s Liberation - chapter on The Exorcist, p. 67) and to spot non sequiturs, as when he shows how Audrey Rose’s pretence at reconciling Christian understanding of resurrection with Eastern philosophy’s concept of reincarnation is “tantamount to doublethink”. (p. 93)
A formidable yet readable book, highly recommended.
Reviewed by Ken Mogg, scholar, author of The Alfred Hitchcock Story (1999; 2008), and editor of the 'MacGuffin' website.
This chapter considers the religious and political implications of the continuing story of Damien... more This chapter considers the religious and political implications of the continuing story of Damien’s rise – and fall – over the two sequels that form the ‘Damien’ trilogy: Damien: Omen II (Don Taylor, 1978) and The Final Conflict (Graham Baker, 1981). These sequels offer some revisions to the original, as well as foundational American myths. Damien: Omen II depicts Damien as an adolescent being groomed for the world of big business. The Final Conflict depicts Damien as an adult embarking on a career in American politics. In the last film, insistent parallels are drawn between the Christ and the Antichrist. Damien here takes after the reinterpreted Lucifer of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, while his sadomasochistic creed owes much to poet William Blake’s theory of contraries and inversions. Additionally, the made-for-TV Omen IV: The Awakening (1991) is briefly addressed as a late entry in the series.
This short account of Australian children’s cinema takes as its starting point a certain anti- au... more This short account of Australian children’s cinema takes as its starting point a certain anti- authoritarian streak in the national character that has helped define Australia’s identity: the larrikin streak. In analysing this streak across a range of films from the silent to post-war eras to the Australian film revival of the 1970s and 1980s, this chapter argues that larrikinism— and a larrikin childhood in particular— speaks directly to questions of history, nation, and identity. This throws into sharp relief so- called aspects of the Australian character, or mystique— what historian Russel Ward famously termed the Australian Legend. Combining film history with textual analysis and an analysis of critical and commercial reception, this chapter seeks to chart a course for the larrikin children’s film in Australia.
Children, Youth, and International Television, 2022
Produced with an eye to the international market, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo (1968-1970) was a high... more Produced with an eye to the international market, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo (1968-1970) was a highly successful Australian children’s television program, sold to over 80 countries including the hard-to-crack United States. At the height of its popularity, it had a global viewing audience of 300 million per week. In many ways, it was reactionary, a product of its time. Yet it was also part of a shift in ideological values in Australian society and culture in the late 1960s on two important fronts: in its articulation of an eco-consciousness that rode the new wave of the Australian environment movement, and also in its ground-breaking portrayals of Aboriginality that responded to a growing Aboriginal awareness. In this chapter, I argue that the series bespoke a complex idealism on these fronts. In appealing to the better part of human nature, it gave viewers something to aspire to when reality lagged behind ideals.
A milestone in Australian television history, the series about the adventures of the eponymous ma... more A milestone in Australian television history, the series about the adventures of the eponymous marsupial left a significant mark not only on the national imagination but also around the world. Fifty years after the airing of the show's final episode, Adrian Schober speaks to cast members Tony Bonner and Ken James, and asks them to reflect on their time on the show as well as its groundbreaking themes, contemporaneous cultural impact and legacy.
I interview legendary game show comperes Tony Barber and Philip Brady about their respective care... more I interview legendary game show comperes Tony Barber and Philip Brady about their respective careers and the genre's persistence in Australia today.
In conversation with television luminary Philip Brady on the rise and recession of Australian var... more In conversation with television luminary Philip Brady on the rise and recession of Australian variety shows, particularly the beloved In Melbourne Tonight.
An in-depth account of the 1966 goodwill promotional visit to Australia by three cast members of ... more An in-depth account of the 1966 goodwill promotional visit to Australia by three cast members of the British television serial, Coronation Street. The tour is richly instructive, offering a particular frame in which to explore the power of the youthful medium of television in Australia, the impact of British and American television imports, the post-war migrant experience and the vagaries of taste. The purpose of this article is two-fold: first, to historically reconstruct the tour using a multiplicity of sources, notably newspapers, magazines, television guides and photographs held at the State Library of Victoria, as well as eyewitnesses to the event, and second, to unpack the factors that led to the show’s becoming such a phenomenon before finally falling out of favour with Australian audiences.
Red Feather: an International Journal of Children in Popular Culture, 2018
In this paper, I argue that the national designations of the children in the two film treatments ... more In this paper, I argue that the national designations of the children in the two film treatments of Roald Dahl's 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' were not inevitable and arose out of a variety of decisions and factors. In unpacking how these stereotypes and discourses of national identity intersect with childhood, as well as notions of class and gender, I touch on other possibilities in the children’s representations, particularly in light of politically correct movements in children’s literature, film and culture.
Children and childhood feature prominently in the eponymous fifth dimension of Rod Serling’s land... more Children and childhood feature prominently in the eponymous fifth dimension of Rod Serling’s landmark anthology series The Twilight Zone (1959-1964). Of the 156 episodes in the series, a total of 19 feature either “Children/Child Protagonist[s]” or the theme of “Returning to Childhood.” Even though the series was never the Nielsen ratings winner CBS hoped it would be – it would later find an audience through syndication – it was immediately embraced by critics and, tellingly, children. One avid watcher of the series was a young Steven Spielberg. For me, the most compelling of Serling’s TV children are the ones constructed as lost and damaged: the victims of abuse, exploitation, separation and/or neglect. In this chapter, I show how the series not only made capital out of the medical and media “rediscovery” of child physical abuse in the early 1960s but how it shone a light on other forms of maltreatment, with perspicacious foresight. Despite the fantastical and even esoteric orientation of the series, it hit upon some real-world concerns.
This paper revisits the arguments of Lester Asheim's classic 1953 essay, 'Not Censorship but Sele... more This paper revisits the arguments of Lester Asheim's classic 1953 essay, 'Not Censorship but Selection,' and argues that political correctness may represent the most serious and insidious form of censorship in current library policy and practice.
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Books by Adrian Schober
Adrian Schober's Devil's Advocate entry covers the genesis, authorship, production history, marketing and reception of The Omen, before going on to examine the overarching theme of paranoia that drives the narrative: paranoia about the 'end times'; paranoia about government and conspiracy; paranoia about child rearing (especially, if one strips away the layer of Satanism); and paranoia about imagined threats to the hardening right-wing Establishment from liberal and post-countercultural forces of the 1970s.
Programs include: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Bewitched, Sesame Street, the productions of Sid and Marty Krofft, The Cosby Show, Roseanne, Modern Family, Bob's Burgers, The Legend of Korra.
A stimulating and original collection. A range of distinguished scholars have been assembled to reflect on the representation of childhood in Spielberg's work, and collectively they challenge the frequent critical accusations of sentimentality, illuminating instead the sensibility of a director whose work has always shown an unusual sensitivity to the traumas and dangers of childhood and how children (and adults) cope with this sense of anxiety and loss. An important contribution to Spielberg studies.
— Neil R. Sinyard, Emeritus Professor of Film Studies, University of Hull, UK
Adrian Schober and Debbie Olson’s collection Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg testifies to the potency of the child figure in Spielberg’s films. The essays in this collection reveal that Spielberg’s depictions of childhood are shaped by social anxieties about the safety of children, their complicated relations with adults, and the pressures that affect modern families. The collection will generate lively discussions of Spielberg’s films across studies of children’s literature, childhood and popular cinema.
— Clare Bradford, Alfred Deakin Professor at Deakin University
In this thought-provoking analysis of the shifting cultural perceptions of the 'good' and 'evil' child, Schober revisits such American classics as The Scarlet Letter and The Turn of the Screw, while examining its more contemporary face in books and films such as The Exorcist and E.T.. He compares these American representations with those from other national contexts, as well as its treatment in the field of children's literature. The book adopts a unique interdisciplinary approach, which offers new insights by examining the possessed child trope within a broad historical and cultural perspective.
REVIEW:
In 1689, the Reverend Cotton Mather watched four children of a Boston family exhibit “strange fits” such that, at times, “their Heads would be twisted almost round; and … they would roar exceedingly”. (pp. 38-39) In 1971, William Peter Blatty wrote his novel The Exorcist, an instant best-seller and the basis of his screenplay for the blockbusting William Friedkin movie two years later.
Adrian Schober treats all of these events with seriousness and scholarly insight, befitting his book‘s origin in a doctoral thesis for Monash University, Australia. One advantage for writers who employ “the possession motif”, he notes, is that “it casts the child as both good and evil, innocent and corrupt, victim and villain” (p. 16) - thereby raising timeless questions about whether any of us can really “know ourselves”. Henry James seems to have deliberately incorporated that ambiguity into his groundbreaking tale of possession and pre-pubescent sexuality The Turn of the Screw (1898), going so far as to tease the reader with the possibility that the “ghosts” reported by the two children actually emanate from the hysterical mind of their repressed governess. James called his tale an “irresponsible little fiction” (p. 61) but in fact it pioneered techniques later used by audience-implicating filmmakers like Friedkin and Robert Wise and Alfred Hitchcock, not to mention an entire concept of how society regards (or disregards) childhood sexuality, as set out in James Kincaid’s book Erotic Innocence (1998), cited several times by Schober.
Underpinning Schober’s study is his concern to trace religious and Romantic attitudes to the child (both in life and in fiction), which historically have tended to be opposed. In particular, Roman Catholicism and Puritanism regarded the child with suspicion, as inheriting Original Sin and being like a “little devil” in need of taming (and baptism). The Romantics, post-Rousseau, on the other hand, almost deified the child - whose potential to be “father of the man” in thought and deed became their special study and concern. To the notion of original sin, the Romantics opposed “original innocence” (p. 5), although poet William Blake wisely saw that in practice both such “contrary states” (the subtitle of Schober’s book) might be allowed. “Without contraries is no progression,” he wrote. He meant that, in the growing child, and healthy adult, rationality and energy need each other if the soul or psyche is not to be flabby and undernourished. Here were pre-echoes of Freud and James, and of most of the texts that Schober examines so revealingly.
This remarkable and shrewd book covers territory that is both basic and thought-provoking. Its chapters range across sophisticated literary works like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and James’s The Turn of the Screw, to Hollywood films like The Exorcist and Wise’s Audrey Rose (1977) - the latter adapted by Frank De Felitta from his earnest 1975 “shocker” about reincarnation - to Englishman James Herbert’s 1983 novel Shrine (which in effect transposes Lourdes to South East England, but which Schober finds “pretentious” and “melodramatic“ - pp. 118-19), to children’s tales like William Mayne’s IT (1977) and Australian author Victor Kelleher’s Del-Del (1991). I commend Schober both for his capacity to contextualise these works in their Zeitgeist (for example, the New Age thinking of the late 1960s onwards, coinciding with the Vietnam war, student revolt, changing sexual mores, and Women’s Liberation - chapter on The Exorcist, p. 67) and to spot non sequiturs, as when he shows how Audrey Rose’s pretence at reconciling Christian understanding of resurrection with Eastern philosophy’s concept of reincarnation is “tantamount to doublethink”. (p. 93)
A formidable yet readable book, highly recommended.
Reviewed by Ken Mogg, scholar, author of The Alfred Hitchcock Story (1999; 2008), and editor of the 'MacGuffin' website.
Papers by Adrian Schober
Adrian Schober's Devil's Advocate entry covers the genesis, authorship, production history, marketing and reception of The Omen, before going on to examine the overarching theme of paranoia that drives the narrative: paranoia about the 'end times'; paranoia about government and conspiracy; paranoia about child rearing (especially, if one strips away the layer of Satanism); and paranoia about imagined threats to the hardening right-wing Establishment from liberal and post-countercultural forces of the 1970s.
Programs include: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Bewitched, Sesame Street, the productions of Sid and Marty Krofft, The Cosby Show, Roseanne, Modern Family, Bob's Burgers, The Legend of Korra.
A stimulating and original collection. A range of distinguished scholars have been assembled to reflect on the representation of childhood in Spielberg's work, and collectively they challenge the frequent critical accusations of sentimentality, illuminating instead the sensibility of a director whose work has always shown an unusual sensitivity to the traumas and dangers of childhood and how children (and adults) cope with this sense of anxiety and loss. An important contribution to Spielberg studies.
— Neil R. Sinyard, Emeritus Professor of Film Studies, University of Hull, UK
Adrian Schober and Debbie Olson’s collection Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg testifies to the potency of the child figure in Spielberg’s films. The essays in this collection reveal that Spielberg’s depictions of childhood are shaped by social anxieties about the safety of children, their complicated relations with adults, and the pressures that affect modern families. The collection will generate lively discussions of Spielberg’s films across studies of children’s literature, childhood and popular cinema.
— Clare Bradford, Alfred Deakin Professor at Deakin University
In this thought-provoking analysis of the shifting cultural perceptions of the 'good' and 'evil' child, Schober revisits such American classics as The Scarlet Letter and The Turn of the Screw, while examining its more contemporary face in books and films such as The Exorcist and E.T.. He compares these American representations with those from other national contexts, as well as its treatment in the field of children's literature. The book adopts a unique interdisciplinary approach, which offers new insights by examining the possessed child trope within a broad historical and cultural perspective.
REVIEW:
In 1689, the Reverend Cotton Mather watched four children of a Boston family exhibit “strange fits” such that, at times, “their Heads would be twisted almost round; and … they would roar exceedingly”. (pp. 38-39) In 1971, William Peter Blatty wrote his novel The Exorcist, an instant best-seller and the basis of his screenplay for the blockbusting William Friedkin movie two years later.
Adrian Schober treats all of these events with seriousness and scholarly insight, befitting his book‘s origin in a doctoral thesis for Monash University, Australia. One advantage for writers who employ “the possession motif”, he notes, is that “it casts the child as both good and evil, innocent and corrupt, victim and villain” (p. 16) - thereby raising timeless questions about whether any of us can really “know ourselves”. Henry James seems to have deliberately incorporated that ambiguity into his groundbreaking tale of possession and pre-pubescent sexuality The Turn of the Screw (1898), going so far as to tease the reader with the possibility that the “ghosts” reported by the two children actually emanate from the hysterical mind of their repressed governess. James called his tale an “irresponsible little fiction” (p. 61) but in fact it pioneered techniques later used by audience-implicating filmmakers like Friedkin and Robert Wise and Alfred Hitchcock, not to mention an entire concept of how society regards (or disregards) childhood sexuality, as set out in James Kincaid’s book Erotic Innocence (1998), cited several times by Schober.
Underpinning Schober’s study is his concern to trace religious and Romantic attitudes to the child (both in life and in fiction), which historically have tended to be opposed. In particular, Roman Catholicism and Puritanism regarded the child with suspicion, as inheriting Original Sin and being like a “little devil” in need of taming (and baptism). The Romantics, post-Rousseau, on the other hand, almost deified the child - whose potential to be “father of the man” in thought and deed became their special study and concern. To the notion of original sin, the Romantics opposed “original innocence” (p. 5), although poet William Blake wisely saw that in practice both such “contrary states” (the subtitle of Schober’s book) might be allowed. “Without contraries is no progression,” he wrote. He meant that, in the growing child, and healthy adult, rationality and energy need each other if the soul or psyche is not to be flabby and undernourished. Here were pre-echoes of Freud and James, and of most of the texts that Schober examines so revealingly.
This remarkable and shrewd book covers territory that is both basic and thought-provoking. Its chapters range across sophisticated literary works like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and James’s The Turn of the Screw, to Hollywood films like The Exorcist and Wise’s Audrey Rose (1977) - the latter adapted by Frank De Felitta from his earnest 1975 “shocker” about reincarnation - to Englishman James Herbert’s 1983 novel Shrine (which in effect transposes Lourdes to South East England, but which Schober finds “pretentious” and “melodramatic“ - pp. 118-19), to children’s tales like William Mayne’s IT (1977) and Australian author Victor Kelleher’s Del-Del (1991). I commend Schober both for his capacity to contextualise these works in their Zeitgeist (for example, the New Age thinking of the late 1960s onwards, coinciding with the Vietnam war, student revolt, changing sexual mores, and Women’s Liberation - chapter on The Exorcist, p. 67) and to spot non sequiturs, as when he shows how Audrey Rose’s pretence at reconciling Christian understanding of resurrection with Eastern philosophy’s concept of reincarnation is “tantamount to doublethink”. (p. 93)
A formidable yet readable book, highly recommended.
Reviewed by Ken Mogg, scholar, author of The Alfred Hitchcock Story (1999; 2008), and editor of the 'MacGuffin' website.