Child’s perception in Walter Benjamin’s reflections and its representation in The Runner (1984)

Document Type : Scientific- research

Authors

1 Instructor of Cinema Education Department, Faculty of Cinema and Theater, University of Arts, Tehran,

2 M.A. in Dramatic Literature; Arts faculty; Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.

3 Assistant Professor, Faculty of Cinema and Theater, University of Art, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

In the philosophy and thought of Walter Benjamin, the German philosopher and theorist, the concept of childhood, child’s perception, and child’s play is a fundamental issue, and this concept has a strong and influential presence throughout his writings and works. Benjamin’s reflections on the concept of the child begin from his earliest writings and continue until the end of his career and his last work, namely Arcades Project. Benjamin, in his reflections about the child, in particular, has been influenced by Baudelaire and Nietzsche’s Ideas. He argues that the child’s perceptual process creates a hierarchical and bilateral non-hierarchical relationship between subject and object. The child encounters with real-world objects, projects his dream world onto these fragments, and transforms them into components of his dream world. Concept of the play for Benjamin is a childish strategy for overcoming restrictions of the real world, because it employs the same real-world materials and tools to create an imaginary world. By employing the descriptive-analytical approach, using library resources, and focusing on Benjamin’s ideas, the present paper seeks to examine how the perception of the child is represented in The Runner (1984), a film directed by Amir Naderi. Many of Benjamin’s discussions about childhood are traceable in The Runner. By analyzing The Runner, from the perspective of Benjamin’s thoughts on child perception, one can draw some interesting conclusions about the representation of the child and childish perception in one of the most critical Iranian films about the children

Keywords

References

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Thinking and Children
Volume 10, Issue 1 - Serial Number 19
September 2019
Pages 125-148

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