Children's Literature

Cultural narratives often depict children and old people as occupying similar life stages. Typically, these comparisons are rather unflattering, characterizing both age groups as dependent on the care of others, passive, physically weak, and voiceless. Other representations frame the elderly and the young as natural enemies. For instance, as Vanessa Joosen observes, discourses surrounding Brexit portrayed the elderly as selfish parasites intent on robbing resources from the youth. These troubling representations reflect pervasive ageism in Western culture, which often diminishes the agency of the very young and old.

Connecting Childhood and Old Age in Popular Media examines how popular media complicates, counters, or reinscribes dominant constructions of childhood and old age. Edited by Joosen, the collection originated during a 2015 workshop hosted by the Platform for a Cultural History of Children's Media at the University of Antwerp. The book features an introduction by Joosen and twelve essays that each explore the same central concept: popular culture inextricably links childhood and old age. The authors investigate how this metaphorical resemblance between the two age groups shapes representations of intergenerational conflict and interactions in a rich corpus of Western and Eastern Asian narratives. The examined texts span the mid-nineteenth century to the present day and include advertisements, books, films, and television shows. The interdisciplinary field of age studies guides all the readings, allowing the authors to provide nuanced socio-historical readings of the links between childhood and old age.

Joosen's introduction provides a succinct overview of shifting perceptions of childhood and old age throughout history. She traces the origins of the puer senex trope back to late antiquity. This literary motif collapses the elderly and youth into a single archetype, characterizing both age groups with similar features and levels of maturity. Along [End Page 238] with the puer senex, Joosen identifies three patterns that influence how narratives connect childhood and old age: affinity, conflict, and complementarity. Affinity refers to the perceived strengths, weaknesses, and values shared by children and the elderly. Conflict-oriented media centers on intergenerational competition and struggles. Complementary narratives frame the old and young as united by their differences. The collected essays explore how these three patterns and the puer senex manifest in media featuring children, as well as how they shape popular constructions of old age and youth. By focusing on these archetypes, Joosen contends, "these chapters make it clear how age is always enacted and acquires meaning in interdependence with other stages in life" (21). In other words, the authors regard childhood and old age as performative roles that map onto each other in sometimes harmful but often insightful and provocative ways.

The collection loosely groups the twelve chapters into three clusters organized by medium: literature, film, and television. The opening cluster comprises five chapters organized by the analyzed texts' publication dates. The first three chapters provide helpful historical context for the rest of the collection by centering pre-twentieth-century children's literature. In "United by God and Nature: Johanna Spyri's Heidi and Her Relationship with the Elderly," Ingrid Tomkowiak examines how God and religion strengthen complementary intergenerational relationships between Heidi and her elderly caretakers. Next, Mayajo Murai's "Happily Ever After for the Old in Japanese Fairy Tales" offers one of the strongest analyses in the collection. Murai juxtaposes representations of the elderly and youth in Japanese and Western fairy tales. She contends that "[w]hereas the elderly are cast in a supporting role to the coming-of-age plot of the Grimm tales, Japanese fairy tales cast the old as protagonists, who go through adventures themselves and attain eternal bliss when their kindness toward the magical child is finally rewarded" (58). Murai speculates that contemporary transcultural influences between the two cultural traditions could help audiences imagine new relationships between the elderly and youth. Rounding out the historical literature section, Elisabeth Wesseling's "Vitalizing Childhood Through Old Age in Hector Malot's Sans famille: An Intersectional Perspective" analyzes how gender politics and naturalism influence intergenerational relationships in Malot's 1878 novel.

The next two chapters move forward almost a hundred years to more contemporary books that center on children struggling to cope with challenging topics like aging and death. Helma van Lierop-Debrauwer's [End Page 239] fascinating chapter "The Right to Self-Determination: Ageism in Two Dutch Children's Books on the Voluntary Death of Elderly People" examines representations of assisted suicide and euthanasia in two Dutch children's books: Marjolin Hof's De regels van drie (2013) and Koos Meinderts's Lang zal ze leven (2014). Hof's novel challenges ageist stereotypes and emphasizes the agency of children and the elderly. By contrast, Meinderts's narrative depicts death as preferable to the natural aging process, promoting harmful biases. Themes of death, taboo topics, and trauma also feature prominently in Joosen's contribution, "Extremely Close Generations: Childhood and Old Age in Jonathan Safran Foer's Novel." The chapter investigates how Foer's post-9/11 adult novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005) uses child and adult narrators to explore the ways that intergenerational relationships can foster community and mutual respect in the aftermath of trauma. Together, these five chapters productively highlight the complexities of elderly and youth agency in children's literature.

The second cluster analyzes how Asian and Western films call attention to and critique the social marginalization of children and youth. In "'The Strawberry Generation': Two Views on Intergenerational Relations in Post-Cold War Taiwan," Emily Murphy offers a nuanced comparative reading of relationships between the young and old in Chang Ta-chun's book Wild Child (1996) and the film adaptation of Jimmy Liao's Starry Starry Night (2011). Through insightful close readings, Murphy demonstrates how the narratives reflect the real-life struggles of the so-called "Strawberry Generation" by showing the ways that modernization complicates the young protagonists' relationships with their grandparents. The complex relationship between grandparents and grandchildren is also the focus of Sung-Ae Lee's chapter, "Intergenerational Bonding in Recent Films from South Korea." Lee analyzes three South Korean films: The Way Home (2002), Cherry Tomato (2007), and Treeless Mountain (2008). These films highlight the grim economic and social abandonment of the elderly and youth in South Korea, but, Lee contends, they do offer a slight glimmer of hope. By centering grandparents' love for their grandchildren, she writes, "the films also explore the possibility that the generations can complement one another through mutual support and affection, but their situation may be fragile as aspects of economic modernization continue to threaten the tenuous well-being of these vulnerable and liminal members of society" (143). Finally, in "Mischief and Mayhem: A Cultural History of the Relationship between Children and Old People in the [End Page 240] Contemporary Family Film," Lincoln Geraghty examines depictions of childhood and old age in the Western films Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and Paddington (2014). Both films destabilize conventional notions of age by positively portraying the elderly and youth as transitional beings who move fluidly between developmental stages with the support of their community.

The final cluster features four chapters that examine negative depictions of grandparents and other elderly people in television shows and commercials. Mariano Narodowski and Verónica Gottau's essay "Grandparents and Grandchildren in The Simpsons: Intergenerational Rupture and Prefigurative Culture" argues that the popular American television show parodies ageist stereotypes and the nuclear family to lament the loss of meaningful intergenerational bonds in postfigurative cultures. The authors argue, "The Simpsons is an ironic and disconsolate expression of the end of a culture in which grandparents guided their grandchildren in their growth" (181). Similarly, in "Sustaining and Transgressing Borders: The Relationship Between Children and the Elderly in Mad Men," Cecilia Lindgren and Johanna Sjöberg analyze the complex bonds between grandparents and grandchildren in the popular adult television show. Examining young Sally's tumultuous relationship with her grandfather, Lindgren and Sjoberg contend that Mad Men depicts this intergenerational connection as boundary-challenging, mutually empowering, and subversive.

Next, Gökçe Elif Baykal and Ilgim Veryeri Alaca's chapter "Representations of Intergenerational Relationships in Children's Television in Turkey: Inquiries and Propositions" investigates how social constructions of childhood and old age in Turkish television shows influence young viewers' attitudes toward their grandparents. The authors surveyed children and their grandparents about how their perceptions of each other changed after seeing intergenerational relationships in Turkish cartoons. They conclude by suggesting ways that the animated shows could promote greater intergenerational understanding. Finally, Anna Sparrman's essay "'It's Disgusting!': Children Enacting Mixed-Age Differences in Advertising" discusses how cultural constructions of age influence children's perceptions of the elderly. When the author showed an advertisement featuring a mixed-age romantic relationship to a focus group of children, they responded with revulsion. Their reactions provide valuable insights into how youth enact childhood and old age when these two age groups are placed in relation. These four chapters usefully explore how television can reveal and reinforce [End Page 241] troubling ageist stereotypes, but they also gesture at the potential for this medium to promote more inclusive narratives that celebrate familial connections between old people and youth.

Together, the introduction and twelve chapters provide an expansive overview of the links between childhood and old age in popular culture. The book's transnational focus is its greatest strength. The collection features diverse analytical approaches, geographical locations, mediums, and texts. By comparing Western and East Asian representations of the links between the elderly and children, the chapters challenge black-and-white notions of Western culture as ageist and Eastern culture as revolving around filial piety. As the essays demonstrate, popular media presents a spectrum of representations of children and old people, ranging from the overtly negative representations of aging in Lang zal ze leven to more empowering depictions in Mad Men. Childhood and old age are often constructed in relation to each other, but, as the chapters indicate, these representations vary widely depending on cultural, historical, and social contexts. The authors also draw on various disciplines, including anthropology, childhood studies, film studies, media studies, and sociology. The collection serves as a helpful model for effective interdisciplinary and collaborative research in children's media.

While Connecting Childhood and Old Age in Popular Media is a useful guide to understanding cultural constructions of old age and youth, the book has two minor flaws. First, despite the collection's admirable international scope, none of the twelve essays discuss Black or Indigenous characters. Given the importance of kinship and intergenerational relationships in many Black and Indigenous cultures, this absence seems like a curious oversight. Second, many chapters evaluate texts aimed at adult audiences, such as Foer's novel, Mad Men, and The Simpsons. And none of the chapters address picture books, despite the proliferation of elderly characters in this foundational children's literature genre. As a result, the collection will likely be more helpful for childhood studies scholars than readers strictly interested in children's literature. Despite these omissions, the collection provides insightful intersectional readings about childhood and old age, and the broad scope guarantees that all readers can find something that interests them. [End Page 242]