Scholarship on the cultural status of the child in America has taken diverse and fruitful forms, yet there exists a significant ellipsis within theories of filmic spectatorship regarding cinematic children. This study engages the child figure's relation to the cinematic apparatus and analyzes spectator responses to the child's presentation as a desiring subject and desired object. Within contemporary American culture, the child figure generates at once a mise-en-scène of desire and a mise-en-abime of potential stigmatization, self-abjection and shame. The vexed relation to the image of the child that characterizes the contemporary adult citizen and, more pointedly, the adult spectator, is a symptom of the contradictory discourses of childhood at play in contemporary American media and within its political bodies. The Columbine shootings, the murder of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, the Catholic Church scandals, many well-publicized child abductions, and countless occurrences over the past decade have produced a climate of moral panic over children's endangerment. Yet, more than ever, the eroticization of children's bodies has inundated cinematic and other media productions, generating anxieties within the adult spectator concerning the propriety of gazing at children. Juvenile desires suggests that the dissonances produced by the contradictory signposts of moral panic and sexual objectification have too often given rise to a homophobically polarizing model of the adult spectator: one the one hand, the ostensibly heterosexual spectator whose relation to the child image is aesthetically distanced, moral, and nostalgic; and on the other, a perverse, likely homosexual spectator whose relation is libidinal, regressive, and genitally oriented. As a theoretical intervention and a reception study, this dissertation examines the term pedophilia as one both culturally over-determined and critically under-investigated. The deployment of the term pedophilia has the rhetorical effect of reducing the complex relations sustained among adult spectators and children to a space of inarticulate abjection or criminality. The dissertation proposes that a deconstructive queer theory can unsettle the recalcitrant association of pedophilia with homosexual pathology, and thereby afford a complex and nuanced account of the roles cinematic children play in generating visual and narrative pleasure across gendered and sexually oriented subject positions. / text

Text in Afrikaans / In this dissertation an attempt has been made to study the past and in particular the basic cultures of Western civilization (the ancient Israelites, ancient Greeks, Romans and early Christians) in order to investigate the educational role of the father. In an examination of the past from a historic pedagogical perspective, an endeavour has been made to compare the educational role of the father during the ancient period to that of the father at present in order to ascertain whether the past can possibly serve as "preceptor" with regard to this contentious contemporary problem. A chapter was devoted to each of the four aforementioned cultures in which the father's educational role was disclosed. At the end of each chapter a brief conclusion was reached pertaining to the field of study. In the last chapter a number of conclusions and recommendations with regard to some of the factors which influenced the father's educational role but which has immense significance for the contemporary (as well as the future) period and consequently cannot be ignored, were recorded. Matters such as the· father's educational responsibility, religious/devout support, moral-ethical education, vocational preparation and the implementation/enforcement of punishment and discipline were discussed so that the present state of affairs with regard to these factors could be evaluated and compared to that of the past. / In hierdie verhandeling is gepoog om by die verlede en wel by die grondkulture van die Westerse beskawing (die oud-lsraeliete, antieke Grieke, Romeine en vroee Christene) te gaan kers opsteek betreffende die opvoedingsrol van die vader. Deur die verlede vanuit 'n histories-pedagogiese ingesteldheid te bevra, is daar gepoog om die verband tussen die opvoedingsrol van die vader in die antieke tyd met die van die vader in die huidige tyd te vergelyk in 'n paging om vas te stel of die verlede moontlik as "leermeester" ten opsigte van die brandende kontempor~re vraagstuk kan di en. Aan elkeen van die vier genoemde kulture is 'n hoofstuk gewy waarin die vader se opvoedingsrol onthul is en aan die einde van elke hoofstuk is tot 'n kart samevattende gevolgtrekking met betrekking tot die veld van ondersoek gekom. In die laaste hoofstuk is 'n aantal gevolgtrekkings en aanbevelings met betrekking tot enkele faktore wat die vader se opvoedingsrol be1nvloed het maar wat groat segwaarde vir die huidige (sowel as toekomstige) tyd het en dus nie negeer kan word nie, geboekstaaf. In hierdie verband is aangeleenthede soos die vader se opvoedingsverantwoordel ikheid, religieus/godsdienstige steungewing, moreelsedelike opvoeding, beroepsvoorbereiding en die toepassing/handhawing van tug en dissipline aan die orde gestel sodat die huidige toedrag van sake met betrekking tot die genoemde faktore daarteen gespieel en geevalueer kan word. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Historical Education)

Text in Afrikaans / In this dissertation an attempt has been made to study the past and in particular the basic cultures of Western civilization (the ancient Israelites, ancient Greeks, Romans and early Christians) in order to investigate the educational role of the father. In an examination of the past from a historic pedagogical perspective, an endeavour has been made to compare the educational role of the father during the ancient period to that of the father at present in order to ascertain whether the past can possibly serve as "preceptor" with regard to this contentious contemporary problem. A chapter was devoted to each of the four aforementioned cultures in which the father's educational role was disclosed. At the end of each chapter a brief conclusion was reached pertaining to the field of study. In the last chapter a number of conclusions and recommendations with regard to some of the factors which influenced the father's educational role but which has immense significance for the contemporary (as well as the future) period and consequently cannot be ignored, were recorded. Matters such as the· father's educational responsibility, religious/devout support, moral-ethical education, vocational preparation and the implementation/enforcement of punishment and discipline were discussed so that the present state of affairs with regard to these factors could be evaluated and compared to that of the past. / In hierdie verhandeling is gepoog om by die verlede en wel by die grondkulture van die Westerse beskawing (die oud-lsraeliete, antieke Grieke, Romeine en vroee Christene) te gaan kers opsteek betreffende die opvoedingsrol van die vader. Deur die verlede vanuit 'n histories-pedagogiese ingesteldheid te bevra, is daar gepoog om die verband tussen die opvoedingsrol van die vader in die antieke tyd met die van die vader in die huidige tyd te vergelyk in 'n paging om vas te stel of die verlede moontlik as "leermeester" ten opsigte van die brandende kontempor~re vraagstuk kan di en. Aan elkeen van die vier genoemde kulture is 'n hoofstuk gewy waarin die vader se opvoedingsrol onthul is en aan die einde van elke hoofstuk is tot 'n kart samevattende gevolgtrekking met betrekking tot die veld van ondersoek gekom. In die laaste hoofstuk is 'n aantal gevolgtrekkings en aanbevelings met betrekking tot enkele faktore wat die vader se opvoedingsrol be1nvloed het maar wat groat segwaarde vir die huidige (sowel as toekomstige) tyd het en dus nie negeer kan word nie, geboekstaaf. In hierdie verband is aangeleenthede soos die vader se opvoedingsverantwoordel ikheid, religieus/godsdienstige steungewing, moreelsedelike opvoeding, beroepsvoorbereiding en die toepassing/handhawing van tug en dissipline aan die orde gestel sodat die huidige toedrag van sake met betrekking tot die genoemde faktore daarteen gespieel en geevalueer kan word. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Historical Education)