Childhood images in fascism between cinema and textbooks

Abstract

The article examines the figuration of childhood through a heterogeneous set of texts and images from the fascist period.

The corpus analyzed, which includes documentaries, films and school books of the time, constitutes a significant source of rhetorical strategies of representation of the fascistization of children. These images, even in their multiple aspects, appear as a privileged observatory to capture in the icon of the ‘naturally fascist’ child the target of choice for the ideological diffusion and consolidation of the regime's hegemony. Physical courage, muscular strength, love of military life, spirit of sacrifice, discipline, but also the distinction between female and male childhoods, show an active and deep involvement of the new generations in the value system on which the dictatorship was based. To conquer the imagination of children, the first condition to guarantee the integral character of control and its projection into the future, childhood was cleverly depicted not only as a biological and sociological category, but also as a political and functional category for the nationalization of the people.