Monstrous Youth: Transgressing the Boundaries of Childhood in the United States - Softcover

Austin, Sara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814258344 ISBN 13: 9780814258347

Publisher: Ohio State University Press, 2022

Synopsis

Winner, 2024 Children’s Literature Association Book Award The monstrous has a long, complicated history within children’s popular media. In Monstrous Youth: Transgressing the Boundaries of Childhood in the United States, Sara Austin traces the evolution of monstrosity as it relates to youth culture from the 1950s to the present day to spotlight the symbiotic relationship between monstrosity and the bodies and identities of children and adolescents. Examining comics, films, picture books, novels, television, toys and other material culture―including Monsters, Inc. and works by Mercer Mayer, Maurice Sendak, R. L. Stine, and Stephanie Meyer―Austin tracks how the metaphor of monstrosity excludes, engulfs, and narrates difference within children’s culture. Analyzing how cultural shifts have drastically changed our perceptions of both what it means to be a monster and what it means to be a child, Austin charts how the portrayal and consumption of monsters corresponds to changes in identity categories such as race, sexuality, gender, disability, and class. In demonstrating how monstrosity is leveraged in service of political and cultural movements, such as integration, abstinence-only education, and queer rights, Austin offers insight into how monster texts continue to reflect, interpret, and shape the social discourses of identity within children’s culture.

About this title

About the Author

Sara Austin teaches in the Department of Global and Intercultural Studies at Miami University. Her articles have appeared in International Research in Children’s Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn, and Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics, among other journals.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Monstrous Youth tracks cultural cycles and changes in the representation of monsters in American texts from 1950 until the present, dividing the work chronologically. I argue that direct marketing of monstrosity to teens as a potential identity began in the 1950s with comic books and drive-in horror films, and continues to evolve within American children’s culture. Since teenagers are visibly similar to adults, teens of the 1950s were the first group to use monsters as a point of identification to gain agency. In time, younger children gained access to the same cultural models. Legal writings in the US use the term infant to mean any person under the age of legal majority, which may be eighteen or twenty-one depending on circumstances (“Infant”). Though our cultural and educational conceptions divide young people into subgroups including infants, toddlers, children, and teens, these categories are constantly evolving while the flattening legal definition remains constant. Since all young people are subjected to this same limitation on their legal rights, the archive for this project includes materials for young adults such as novels, comics, film, television, and fan productions such as zines, as well as material for younger children including picture books, easy readers, and toys. The specific case studies in each chapter represent examples from each of these groups. While each text builds on previous representations, the primary focus and medium of monster fiction shifts over time. I follow this chronological progression while discussing the major thematic moves within monster fiction in each decade. Following the development of monsters in children’s culture over time reveals patterns in both the types of bodies adults label as monstrous, and in how children and teens respond to these associations. Specifically, this chronological progression maps how child identification with the monster expands the boundaries of childhood, pushing the label of monstrous farther from adult control. While monstrous behavior initially meant “delinquent” or criminal conduct, the label shifts as social concerns move to include markers of race, class, reproductive sexuality, and queerness. In each case, child identification with the monster requires a cultural shift, folding bodies and behaviors previously identified as “monstrous” into the culturally accepted definition of childhood.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ohio State University Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814258344
• ISBN 13: 9780814258347
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 194