Cinema and childhood: cultural production for apparently disenchanted children

Abstract

This article analyses if only the study of the classic conception of childhood, especially Rosseau’s thinking, might illuminate the problems related to education of children in the contemporary world. It starts off from the hypothesis that childhood is a concept which can be analyzed under the perspective of what Adorno and Benjamin called natural history, in which myth, history and rationality are imbricated. This paper also discusses cinematographical works that signalize new forms of enchantment and endurance of the myths towards childhood and rationality, as well as other possibilities for the relation between human and nature, between myth and history.