Karen Lury

Children in an open world: Mobility as ontology in New Iranian and Turkish cinema

In a series of non-Western films — Times and Winds, A Time for Drunken Horses, Turtles Can Fly and Buddha Collapsed out of Shame — contemporary child figures inhabit their world in a manner that demonstrates the child’s resilience and their intimacy with the land. Drawing on non-representational theory (NRT) and relating this to feminist theories of affect and subjectivity, the article suggests that these films present child figures for whom mobility has effectively become their ontology and that this demonstrates that there may be a different form of kinship between the natural world and the child. This is not to romanticize this connection or to essentialize the child: this relationship is revealed to be not idyllic but affectively ‘open’ in a way that may be terrifying as well as liberating.

Chewing gum for the ears: children's television and popular music

Television is one of the earliest ways that children gain access to popular music. The childs early experience of both music and television does not necessarily separate out ‘music alone’ from his or her evolving musical appreciation. The co-operation of television and popular music encourage particular modes of attention and expression for the child as both viewer and listener. Movement, gesture, and the response of the body to the visual and aural cues of music-television may be seen to inform this appreciation. The child learns, feels and demonstrates that they have done so. This is guided and inspired by what they hear and see.

Review: Dafna Lemish, Children and Television: A Global Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. £17.99. 257 pp:

discourses and institutions, animated by the drive to realize self desires’ (p. 31). Compelling though the argument is, one can offer some caveats to aspects of Miller’s thesis. His core premise is that to understand culture in the US, ‘we need to start with television, because that is where Yanquis [sic] learn about war, subsistence and the environment’ (p. 179). However there are alternative perspectives on the origins of identity and culture. Panikkar (2002), for example, looks to India’s history to explain current trends in Indian society. For Panikkar, constructions of identity displayed on television are shaped not by a conspiracy of elites but by social forces themselves, of which elites are also a product. The possible contrasts to Miller converge with the substantial controversy surrounding media effects in general (Lilleker, 2006: 114–17), yet in constructing his normative ontological position that places the construction of society solely in the hands of media owners, Miller fails to engage with the debates or truly justify his perspective empirically. That said, this is a refreshing read, it is passionate and informed and offers a disturbing insight into some aspects of US society. Detractors will hate it and supporters will love it, while for those undecided on the role of the media in society, reading this should be obligatory. Miller definitely offers some rich food for thought.