Iconoclastic images in the history of education: another look at children in revolt in two children’s films from the 1930s.

EMIL und die Detektive (Film); ZERO de conduite (Film)

VIGO, Jean, 1905-1934; LAMPRECHT, Gerhard

There are images in the history of education that can be considered iconic, images that are, as Georges Didi-Huberman says, “full of future”. In this article, I want to consider two children’s films from the 1930s,Emil und die Detektive(Gerhard Lamprecht, Germany, 1931) andZéro de conduite(Jean Vigo, France, 1933) that include several scenes portraying children in revolt against traditional authorities. Whereas the hitherto dominant visual imaginaries about childhood stressed children’s innocence, these films depict images that show children as subjects of political, collective actions, in line with the political mobilisation of those years. These images can be defined as iconoclastic in their explicit break or rupture with the icons of authority (teachers, statues, policemen, school buildings); in fact, film itself has been considered an iconoclast medium because of its adoption of movement against contemplation, and of the practices of fragmentation and montage that it imposes on the image. In my approach, I argue for the relevance of visual studies to the history of education, and particularly for the consideration of iconophilia and iconoclasm as particular politics of the image. The analysis of iconoclasm wants to point to its ambivalence, as the attack on images implies at the same time the production of new icons that become idolatrised and romanticised. In the case here considered, the image of children in revolt has become one of these new icons, which opened a space for desire and hope for a new world but whose politics may still need further interrogation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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