The government of childhood in the film Sciuscià

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the child control process and its objective and subjective constitution through the analysis of the discourses about childhood and the government practices of its conduct in the film Sciuscià by Vittorio De Sica 1946, which portrays the conditions of Italian society after the Second World War. Indeed, to highlight the strategies of control and subjection of poor childhood in this conjuncture as a way of producing a certain type of subjectivity. Point out the elements that constitute analysis data (socio-historical, characters, images, cinematographic language, etc.) of the investigation, revealing the conceptions of childhood. The film analysis method of Vanoye and Golliot-Lété (2002) and as a source: bibliographic studies, the film Sciuscià and the filmic review of the work of Vittorio De Sica, linked to the neorealist cultural and aesthetic movement. The neglect of the role of the State is evidenced and made explicit through the policy of subjection in reformatories, with their “pedagogical” technologies of childhood government supported by official discourses that conceive childhood as a social risk and victims of their own condition of victims.