Screening Children in Post-apocalypse Film and Television

Debbie Olson is associate professor at Missouri Valley College.

The apocalyptic story that can't be told—that would not sell books or movies—is that humans are doomed and that, because of their greed and folly, will join the thousands of species that have already gone extinct. Thus, this collection, edited by Olson, searches for sources of hope in contemporary film. Can art point the way, or is the apocalyptic film merely a way of acknowledging collective fear while clinging to various fantasies of transcendence? Varieties of hope are the dominant theme of this volume, and that hope is literally embodied by children surviving disasters of nuclear war, global pandemics, environmental meltdown, etc. These nine rich essays explore the iconography of children: as religious icons, or under the protection of an anthropomorphic “Mother Nature,” or symbols of past cultural apocalypses due to colonialism and its ongoing effects, or even as an image of survival through evolution into a “post-human” existence. Especially good is Olson's closing essay in this collection, which posits children as symbols of the death of innocence. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

• IntroductionDebbie OlsonChapter 1. Post-Apocalyptic Mosaic: The Road and the Image of the Child as an Eschatological Symbol of Hope.Nick PetrovChapter 2. Into the Woods: Mother Nature as Protector of Young Female Survivors in Post-Apocalyptic Film and TelevisionElaine MortonChapter 3. Youth on its Own: Growing Up in a Lonely Post-Apocalyptic WorldDenis NewiakChapter 4. Reanimating the past: Post-Apocalypse and the First Nation Child in Cargo (Howling & Ramke, 2017)Matthew SmithChapter 5. The (Zombie) Child, the Animal, and ‘the Human Part’ in AMC’s The Walking DeadMonica SousaChapter 6. (Re)storying Collective Ethics: Tracing Absences in Figurations of Childhood in Post-apocalyptic FilmCory JobbChapter 7. "Don’t Stray Too Far:" [Robot] Parents and [Posthuman] ChildrenIngrid E. Castro and Joseph V. GiuntaChapter 8. “Being” and “Becoming” of the “Unbecoming” Child: Hybrid Children in the Post-Apocalyptic world of Sweet ToothSuniti Madaan and Cijo JoyChapter 9. “It’s just not yours anymore”: [Dis]Ability, Childhood, and the Death of Innocence in The Girl with All the Gifts (2016)Debbie Olson