The melodramatic children: The representation of children in Ratapan Anak Tiri [Lament of Step-Children] (1973), Ratapan Anak Tiri [Lament of Step-Children 2] (1980), and Arie Hanggara (1985)
Article

The New Order’s cultural politics of development of national identity were applied to Indonesian films made during this period as a form of cinema politics. The New Order conceived of cinema as a medium for ideological propaganda which could and should be controlled in order to maintain political stability. Most Indonesian films made during the New Order regime depicted children as part of a discursive strategy to promote national identity within an ideological framework defined by theories of social development and discourses of social and political stability. This article focuses on Ratapan Anak Tiri [Lament of step-children] (1973), Ratapan Anak Tiri [Lament of step-children] 2 (1980), and Arie Hanggara (1985), melodrama genre films that featured suffering children among the main characters was the result of a narrative shift initiated to avoid political problems with the regime. The typical narrative of these films includes the representation of a family with the father figure as the apex, a demonised woman figure, and helpless children at the bottom of the family structure. Primary child characters are predominantly depicted as weak, dependent, and less imaginative. These melodrama films emphasised this pattern in their narrative by presenting an image of the state’s apparatus as a solver of family domestic problems.

Freeing the Elephant-eating Boa: Theorizing Children in Philippine Social Science Research
Article

Both the child character and the child audience contribute significantly to the body of research on childhood studies. How children think, learn, and behave have been researched in many studies on psychology and education. Meanwhile, the social sciences have also become a home for childhood studies due to the richness of content for children in broadcast and print, which is the focus of this literature review.

The paper explores how children are theorized in social sciences in the Philippines. Through a survey of prominent journals such as Plaridel, Humanities Diliman, Social Science Diliman, and Kritika Kultura, this paper identifies the discursive roles that children play in research concerning their communicative styles, and text and media consumption. In addition, the paper also analyzes how children are represented in literature on childhood studies.

This review encourages providing a more active role for children in research and literary works about and for them published in the social sciences, the arts, and the humanities. Children can have a wide and insightful imagination the way the Little Prince has. Children are not petty participants. Children matter. Children are powerful.