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Re/Presenting Marginalized Children in Contemporary Children’s Cinema in India: A Study of Gattu and Stanley ka Dabba

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Abstract

This chapter explores the uses of three spaces integral to childhood—school, playground, and family or home—as sites of struggle in two films, Gattu (2011) and Stanley Ka Dabba (2011), and examines both how these films portray marginalized children and how they address issues related to child labor, education, and exploitation. Central to the argument is the films’ representations of education and trickery as key thematic configurations. The variations in the cinematic construction of the child-protagonist and the content make one film more politically radical than the other.

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Mehra, D. (2019). Re/Presenting Marginalized Children in Contemporary Children’s Cinema in India: A Study of Gattu and Stanley ka Dabba. In: Hermansson, C., Zepernick, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Children's Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17620-4_18

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