Forever Young: A Psychoanalysis of Children in New Zealand Film 1984-2010

Abstract

New Zealand is sometimes imagined as a ‘young country’ – as a nation formed in 1840, it is seen to be without the lengthy history of other countries. This youthful character can also be discerned in New Zealand’s national cinema: many New Zealand films depict children. Since the early 1980s, the child-protagonist has been positioned as a central figure in the organisation and development of the narrative, concerted around themes loosely generalised as ‘coming of age’ or ‘rites of passage.’ These child-characters are consumed by a desire to ‘find out’ – to explore, investigate and become ‘experienced,’ to shake off innocence. The coming of age genre suggests a passing from innocence to experience, and this transition is filtered through a range of different general themes from the acquisition of knowledge of sexuality through to the acceptance of loss and the experience of grieving. The aim of my research is to examine the child protagonists in New Zealand films through a psychoanalytic lens. The work of Melanie Klein forms the theoretical basis of this thesis, and I have used her contributions to the psychoanalysis of children to elaborate my analysis of each film. Klein’s theory of children’s play as a means of exposing the child’s unconscious fears, while her theory of object-relations allowed for the child’s relationships with others (particularly its parents) to be fundamental to its developing subjectivity. Objectrelations psychoanalysis highlights the subject’s psychic world (under the sway of phantasy, anxieties and wishes) and place in material reality equally. This dual emphasis allows the child-characters’ internal and external worlds to be analysed, and this quality is transmitted through cinema itself, as the medium gives shape and definition to a character’s thoughts and emotions which in turn are made available to the viewer. The films analysed in the thesis were produced in the period 1984-2010 – a time often characterised as New Zealand film’s ‘coming of age.’ The thesis proposes that films that place a child or children at the centre of the narrative not only work within the bounds of the ‘coming of age’ narrative, but that this can be projected outwards, informing a discussion on settlement as a ‘coming of age,’ or transition from innocence to experience.