Written Childhood: Representation of Agency in Soviet and Western Children's Books and Their Adaptations

Abstract

This capstone project analyzes how socialist and capitalist ideologies shape the representation of children’s agency in 20th century children’s literature and its adaptations across Soviet and Western contexts. It is aimed to fill the gap in the comparative literature about the impact of distinct ideological systems on children’s books and films. The research is based on Bhaskar and Archer’s critical realist theory and focuses on the analysis of 6 books and 6 movies, which are “The adventures of Pinocchio” by Collodi, “The adventures of Buratino” adapted by Tolstoy, “Winnie-the-Pooh” by Milne, “Winnie-the-Pooh and all,all,all” translated by Zakhoder, “The wonderful wizard of Oz” by Baum, “The wizard of Emerald City” adapted by Volkov, as well as their Soviet and Western film adaptations. The adaptations in this context refer to the changes made in the original story in order to adjust it to the new conditions, environment or time. The research implemented qualitative content analysis and narrative research methods, where open and deductive coding were used. There are three main findings identified during the analysis. Firstly, the difference in framing agency, where capitalist ideology frames the children’s agency as the one which needs to be changed, while socialist ideology doesn’t require the change as long as one acts for collective purpose. Secondly, the power distribution and authority, the Western books and films concentrate the power in the hands of a single character, while Soviet ones disseminated the power among several characters, focusing on collective authority. In the second case, the main character’s agency is more pronounced, while in the first one the main character mostly relies on the help from others. Thirdly, the hierarchy of being, where there was a clear class hierarchy, with adult characters at the top, followed by children characters, and with anthropomorphic characters at the bottom. The outside world of the stories themselves also held the power and in the case of Soviet books and adaptations, they hold the most power compared to other characters, predetermining their fate. The findings show how children’s literature acts as a powerful ideological tool through which the next generations are socialized and how the visual adaptations in the form of films further popularize the norms and the values depicted in the children’s literature. This capstone project contributes to the comparative studies of children's literature and its adaptations as well as to the analysis of the concept of children’s agency and its importance in the sociology of childhood.