Reshaping New York City: The Child Gaze in Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck (2017)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2022-44.1.08Abstract
This article looks at Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck and explores the ways in which New York, as a cinematic city, is reshaped in the film through the eyes of children. Given the rich intertextual links that can be traced in Wonderstruck, the article situates the cinematic New York alluded to by the film—the city of the late 20s and the 70s—as a metropolis characterised by alienation. The child’s gaze, in its unregulated and sensorial way of looking at the world, is argued to transform this image of an alienated New York into a rehumanised version of the city. Drawing on textual analysis, the article contends that New York is thus mapped, both literal and metaphorically, as a living entity and a place defined by the subjective experience of its people. In this process, the film negotiates the constructive links between urbanity and sense of place.
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Funding data
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Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
Grant numbers FFI-2017-83606
