‘Veni, vidi, voro: I came, I saw, I consumed’
Age, immortality and intergenerational conflict in 21st century British children’s fantasy dramas
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/imaginingtheimpossible.163164Keywords:
children's television, fantasy, immortality, ageing, childhood, public service broadcasting, monstrosityAbstract
This article will analyse the representations and politics of ageing and longevity in two case studies from British children’s television drama, Young Dracula (CBBC 2006-2014) and Shoebox Zoo (CBBC 2004-2005). British public service broadcasting for children has been constructed as a service protective of the child audience’s development, which may account for its ‘lack of recognition […] as part of the great TV drama tradition’ (Máire Messenger Davies 2001, 57). Despite this, this article suggests that these case studies use immortality to investigate the same fears and anxieties about ageing and death identified in art and culture more broadly. Drawing from television studies and gerontological studies, and using textual analysis, this article argues that these immortal figures also signify a corresponding anxiety about the loss of children’s identity and destabilization of ontological and epistemological boundaries within intergenerational relationships, defeated only by child protagonists’ use of PSB values against them.
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