Public Care for Children in (Post)Socialist European Films: On the Side of Sons and Stepdaughters of the Nation?

Abstract

This article explores the multifaceted role of films that disseminate critical views on public care for children in terms of their epistemic sensitivity towards the main challenges of constructing discursive practices around children and their subjectivity. Three cohorts of Eastern European films produced between the 1960s and 1990s are examined through the prism of two approaches to the deconstruction of the traditional objectified child and the development of his subjectivity, radical psychoanalysis and ‘child fundamentalism’. The diversity of critical arguments against residential care reverberates with a variety of gender-based approaches to presenting children’s subjectivity in the films. I explore the sustainable difference between the films with either male or female protagonists through political contexts concerning the production of films and the options to accept the mission of epistemic activism regarding the children deprived in their subjectivity, namely those placed in residential care. To conclude, I discuss the exodus of epistemic activism from the post-socialist Eastern European films about public care in favour of serving the mission of delegitimizing authoritative past and achieving positive public reception.