The Child’s Imagination:
Studies of Cinematic Fantasy

Instructor: Jason Mohaghegh Date & Time: March 26th, April 2nd, 16th, 23rd, May 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th. 09:00-11:30 ET

DESCRIPTION: This Seminar explores the strange contours of the child’s imagination and its relation to the fantastical. How does childish fantasy entertain a mode of pretending that is neither pure dream nor nightmare but rather something more exotically dangerous than both? To answer this, we will track the spaces and characters who haunt their visions through the prism of several iconic films of the 1980s: Labyrinth; The Never Ending Story; Legend; Time Bandits; Willow; The Princess Bride; and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (among references to others like The Dark Crystal, Where the Wild Things Are, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Spirited Away, Alice In Wonderland, The Hobbit, Pan’s Labyrinth, and The Wizard of Oz).

These excursions into the dark and light content of childlike perceptions will allow us to radically alter our innocence, fear, wish, and appearance philosophies. Moreover, their cinematic image worlds will come close to unlocking the child’s attraction to eeriness, risk, malformation, secrecy, tantrum, wonderment, and desertion—all the while falling infinitely short as they remind us that these representations are still but the adult’s idea of the child’s imagination. Hence, we might challenge ourselves to speculate: What would the pure fantastical consciousness of the child actually look like?

IMAGE: Paul Klee, Bust of a child 1933.

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