A Penitentiary in Amusement Park: a critique on the place of Fantasy in children's cinema

In the cinematographic works related to the field of children, a special tendency has become a repetitive pattern in all works. This pattern works against the nature of children’s movies, and instead of institutionalizing the element of fantasy for the purpose of freedom and the desire for revelation in children’s minds, while examining the category of childhood, the educational role of children’s works, and the place of fantasy in children’s movies, the steps that the child hero goes through in the movie to neutralize the initial tension are depicted. To do so, the place of fantasy in selected works of children’s movies from before the revolution of 1357 to the 1990s was investigated and the model of fantasy used in these works was highlighted and depicted. This entry and exit of the hero to the fantasy world follows a pattern in Iranian movies. This pattern, the main cause of which is the educational goal of the filmmakers, prevents children from watching a work produced for them without fear of what is presented to them as fantasy. By highlighting this pattern, which includes “initial tension, searching for a solution, and returning with regret to the original state”, the present research depicts fantasy as a penitentiary built in an amusement park. Although this pattern is accepted all over the world and seems to help the child to adapt to the real world, but, based on the hero’s journey model, the hero’s return in the children’s movie structure is not a “return with elixir”. After going through the steps that are in front of him, the child hero finally returns to the point of peace as if there were no journey at all! The only result of his so-called trip is that “it was better not to go on a trip”.