"This is an academic look at the contribution of popular culture to the loss if innocence in today's children."--Publisher.

This book explores contemporary families as sites of consumption, examining the changing contexts of family life, where new forms of family are altering how family life is practised and produced, and addressing key social issues - childhood obesity, alchohol and drug addiction, social networking, viral marketing - that put pressure on families as the social, economic and regulatory environments of consumption change.

"Think you know Rapunzel's story? Think again, because the tower was only the beginning..." -- Jennifer Nielsen, New York Times bestselling author of THE FALSE PRINCE In all of Tyme, from the Redlands to the Grey, no one is as lucky as Rapunzel. She lives in a magic tower that obeys her every wish; she reads wonderful books starring herself as the heroine; her hair is the longest, most glorious thing in the world. And she knows this because Witch tells her so -- her beloved Witch, who protects her from evil princes, the dangerous ground under the tower, even unhappy thoughts. Rapunzel can't imagine any other life.Then a thief named Jack climbs into her room to steal one of her enchanted roses. He's the first person Rapunzel's ever met who isn't completely charmed by her (well, the first person she's met at all, really), and he is infuriating -- especially when he hints that Witch isn't telling her the whole truth. Driven by anger at Jack and her own nameless fears, Rapunzel descends to the ground for the first time, and finds a world filled with more peril than Witch promised...and more beauty, wonder, and adventure than she could have dreamed.

Since Toy Story, its first feature in 1995, Pixar Animation Studios has produced a string of commercial and critical successes including Monsters, Inc.; WALL-E; Finding Nemo; The Incredibles; Cars; and Up. In nearly all of these films, male characters are prominently featured, usually as protagonists. Despite obvious surface differences, these figures often follow similar narratives toward domestic fulfillment and civic engagement. However, these characters are also hypermasculine types whose paths lead to postmodern social roles more revelatory of the current “crisis” that sociologists and others have noted in boy culture. In Pixar’s Boy Stories: Masculinity in a Postmodern Age, Shannon R. Wooden and Ken Gillam examine how boys become men and how men measure up in films produced by the animation giant. Offering counterintuitive readings of boy culture, this book describes how the films quietly but forcefully reiterate traditional masculine norms in terms of what they praise and what they condemn. Whether toys or ants, monsters or cars, Pixar’s males succeed or fail according to the “boy code,” the relentlessly policed gender standards rampant in American boyhood. Structured thematically around major issues in contemporary boy culture, the book discusses conformity, hypermasculinity, socialhierarchies, disability, bullying, and an implicit critique of postmodern parenting. Unprecedented in its focus on Pixar and boys in its films, this book offers a valuable perspective to current conversations about gender and cinema. Providing a critical discourse about masculine roles in animated features, Pixar’s Boy Stories will be of interest to scholars of film, media, and gender studies and to parents.

The Importance of Being Innocent addresses the current debate in Australia and internationally regarding the sexualisation of children, predation on them by pedophiles and the risks apparently posed to their 'innate innocence' by perceived problems and threats in contemporary society. Joanne Faulkner argues that, contrary to popular opinion, social issues have been sensationally expounded in moral panics about children who are often presented as alternatively obese, binge-drinking and drug-using, self-harming, neglected, abused, medicated and driven to anti-social behavior by TV and computers. This erudite and thought-provoking book instead suggests that modern western society has reacted to problems plaguing the adult world by fetishizing children as innocents, who must be protected from social realities. Taking a philosophical and sociological perspective, it outlines the various historical trends, emotional investments and social tensions that shape contemporary ideas about what childhood represents, and our responsibilities in regard to children.

In this book Honeyman looks at manifestations of youth agency (and representations of agency produced for youth) as depicted in fairy tales, childlore and folk literature, investigating the dynamic of ideological manipulation and independent resistance as it can be read or expressed in bodies, first through social puppetry and then through coercive temptation (our consumption replacing the more obvious strings that bind us). Reading tales like Popeye, Hansel & Gretel, and Pinocchio, Honeyman concentrates on the agency of young subjects through material relations, especially where food signifies the invisible strings used to control them in popular discourse and practice, modeling efforts to come out from under the hegemonic handler and take control, at least of their own body spaces, and ultimately finding that most examples indicate less power than the ideal holds.

For over forty years, John Hawkes has created fictions remarkable for their stylistic beauty and narrative experimentation. Rita Ferrari's Innocence, Power, and the Novels of John Hawkes is an unprecedented exploration of Hawkes's sixteen novels and novellas.