Growing Sideways: Challenging Boundaries Between Childhood and Adulthood in Twenty-First Century Britain
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DOCTORAL THESIS Growing sideways challenging boundaries between childhood and adulthood in twenty-first century Britain Malewski, Anne Award date: 2019 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 29. Sep. 2021 Growing Sideways: Challenging Boundaries Between Childhood and Adulthood in Twenty-First Century Britain by anne malewski BA, MA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of English & Creative Writing University of Roehampton 2018 . Snail human by author, 2018 Abstract This thesis examines changing boundaries between childhood and adulthood in twenty-first century British society and culture through the concept of growth in order to investigate alternatives to conventional ideas of growing up. It is the first in-depth academic study to consider growing sideways as a distinct and important discourse that challenges, and provides an alternative to, the discourse of upwards growth, previously identified as a pervasive grand narrative that privileges adulthood (Trites, 2014). The thesis demonstrates that twenty-first century Britain is a particular historical and socio-cultural moment at which boundaries between childhood and adulthood are widely debated, policed, and contested. Building on usages of the phrase growing sideways in Shane Meadows’s film and television cycle This Is England (2006 ‒2015) and Kathryn Bond Stockton’s study The Queer Child or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century (2009), and on pre-existing terminology and theories around non-normative growth, this thesis develops growing sideways as a concept that queers the grand narrative of upwards growth by destabilising childhood and adulthood, and the boundaries between them. This concept is refined and complicated through close readings of twenty-first century British children’s literature, television series, film, and participatory events, focusing on three conceptual areas in turn. First, the thesis explores how, because appearance is a flawed signifier of age, bodily and vestimentary boundaries between childhood and adulthood are transgressed through passing and cross-dressing. Second, the thesis argues that conventional behavioural and attitudinal boundaries between childhood and adulthood are broadly and prominently challenged through play, particularly performative role play and playfulness as a long- term attitude. Third, the thesis considers endeavours that seek resistance to, and release from, containment within spatial boundaries between childhood and adulthood, which are shaped by power structures biased, through the grand narrative of growth, towards adulthood. Investigating these age boundaries around appearance, play, and space, the thesis traces growing sideways as an emerging structure of feeling (Raymond Williams, 1977) and explores strategies of sideways growth. Table of Contents Acknowledgements i List of Abbreviations ii List of Figures iv Introduction: Structures of Feeling Growth 1 Chapter One Growing Sideways: Queering the Grand Narrative of Growth 33 The Grand Narrative of Upwards Growth 38 Alternative Concepts of Growth 48 Growing Sideways 71 Chapter Two Appearance 90 Passing 97 Cross-Dressing 118 Chapter Three Play 148 Performative (Role) Play 158 Play(-fulness) as a Queer Way of Life 180 Chapter Four Space 205 Resistance 209 Release 230 Conclusion: Feeling Growth Sideways 266 References 278 . Acknowledgements I heartily thank my supervisors Dr Lisa Sainsbury, Dr Alison Waller, and Dr Jane Suzanne Carroll for their patience, advice, analogies, encouragement, and, most importantly, for believing in me even when I could see neither trees nor forests. I am cheerfully indebted to my PhD colleagues Nick Campbell, Erica Gillingham, Nick Lavery, Emily Mercer, Sinéad Moriarty, Sarah Pyke, Denise Saul, and Kay Waddilove who, between them, have read jumbled words and given clarifying feedback, sometimes with lightning speed turnaround; semaphored confidence through fog and rain; and provided actual and virtual hugs, high fives, cups of tea, and a room of my own (with cheering squad) for the final writing months. Here’s to the mighty power of the 45s, office dancing, and chai! You have been the best support and distraction a snail could have. I am also grateful to my friends outside the PhD room, especially Tina Raspe, Julia Kunz, Daniel Roß, Guy Farber, and Teresia Fant, whose messages, visits, vegetable gifts, and invitations reminded me that there is a world out there. To my lovely parents, thank you for letting me run away to London again, always picking up the phone, sending me postcards and parcels, and forever keeping Moomin duvet covers ready for me. Finally, I want to thank Nick Lavery for kitchen adventures, jellyfish hugs, everyday silliness, all the bright lights and keeping me sane(ish). ♥ i List of Abbreviations Big Kids (2000) CBBC Writ. Lucy Daniel Raby E2 “Kate Avoids Friends” (4 Oct. 2000) Crashing (2016) Channel Four Writ. Phoebe E4 “Episode Four” (1 Feb. 2016) Waller-Bridge Doctor Who (2010−2013) BBC One S5E1 “The Eleventh Hour” (3 Apr. 2010) Writ. Steven Moffat S5E5 “Flesh and Stone” (1 May 2010) Writ. Steven Moffat ConS5E13 “Doctor Who Confidential: Out of Time” (26 Jun. 2010) Fleabag (2016−present) BBC Three Writ. Phoebe S1E5 “Episode Five” (18 Aug. 2016) Waller-Bridge Miranda (2009−2015) BBC Two S1E1 “Date” (9 Nov. 2009) Writ. Miranda Hart S1E3 “Job” (23 Nov. 2009) Writ. Miranda Hart, & James Cary S2E1 “The New Me” (15 Nov. 2010) Writ. Miranda Hart S3E3 “The Dinner Party” (7 Jan. 2013) Writ. Miranda Hart SP2 “The Final Curtain” (1 Jan. 2015) Writ. Miranda Hart Some Girls (2012−2014) BBC Three Writ. Bernadette Davis S1E3 “Episode Three” (20 Nov. 2012) The Sparticle Mystery (2011−2015) CBBC S1E1 “The Disappearance” (14 Feb. 2011) Writ. Alison Hume S1E2 “The Invasion” (15 Feb. 2011) Writ. Alison Hume S1E4 “The Quest” (17 Feb. 2011) Writ. Debbie Moon ii Thirteen (2016) BBC Three Writ. Marnie Dickens E5 “Episode Five” (27 Mar. 2016) This Is England Television Series (2010−2015) Channel Four Writ. Shane Meadows, S1E1 “Episode One” (7 Sept. 2010) & Jack Thorne S1E2 “Episode Two” (14 Sept. 2010) S1E3 “Episode Three” (21 Sept. 2010) S2E1 “Episode One” (13 Dec. 2011) S2E2 “Episode Two” (14 Dec. 2011) S2E3 “Episode Three” (15 Dec. 2011) S3E1 “Spring” (13 Sept. 2015) S3E2 “Summer” (20 Sept. 2015) S3E3 “Autumn” (27 Sept. 2015) S3E4 “Winter” (4 Oct. 2015) Uncle (2014–2017) BBC Three Writ. Oliver Refson, & S2E3 “Last Place Hero” (24 Feb. 2015) Lilah Vandenburgh iii List of Figures Figure 1 : Still from trailer printed inside the This Is England ‘86 DVD box 38 (2010). Figure 2: Diagram charting possibilities of sideways growth from birth to death 77 in sea colours against the grand narrative of growth’s upwards trajectory from childhood to adulthood (drawn by the author). Figure 3: Patrol leaders at Camp Wildfire 2015, photograph by Liam Keown 163 (left), and Camp Wildfire Facebook post directing participants’ clothing for the 2018 festival (right, 13 Aug. 2018). Figure 4: Participants in the activity Assault Course, photograph by Louise 166 Roberts (2016) iv Introduction: Structures of Feeling Growth On 23 rd September 2011, a group of 228 experts, among them children’s author Philip Pullman and Richard House from the University of Roehampton’s Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, published an open letter in The Telegraph to express their concern about “the erosion of childhood in Britain” (“Erosion of Childhood”, n.pag.). The signatories position this erosion as a specifically British phenomenon by referring to a report that found Britain to have lower levels of child wellbeing than twenty other economically advanced countries, such as Sweden, and comparatively considerably poorer ones, such as Greece and Poland (Unicef, 2007, p. 2). Listing “increasing commercial pressures”, an earlier start in formal education, and spending more time on screen-based activities indoors than outdoor activities as causes for childhood’s “erosion”, the signatories state that “[i]t is everyone’s responsibility to challenge policy-making and cultural developments that entice children into growing up too quickly” (“Erosion of Childhood”, 23 Sept. 2011, n.pag.). A similar open letter had been published in the same newspaper on 12 th September 2006, signed by 110 experts, then also including other prominent children’s authors such as Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Morpurgo alongside Pullman. The 2006 signatories “are deeply concerned” for children’s wellbeing and mental health, arguing that it is part of “a complex socio-cultural problem” in the twenty-first century: “[s]ince children’s brains are still developing, they cannot adjust ‒ as full-grown adults can ‒ to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change” (“Modern