Bush-Bailey, Gilli (2014) Shifting Screens: The Child Performer and Her Audience Revisited in the Digital Age. In: Entertaining Children: The Participation of Youth in the Entertainment Industry. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 111-127. ISBN 9781137305459

Abstract

This chapter takes a cautiously autobiographical route through the memories of the 1970’s child performer and her audience - then and now. Set against the backdrop of the struggle between Romantic constructions of childhood ‘innocence’ and the lived experience of a professional child performer enacting ‘real’ childhood, the chapter reflects on a personal experience of making Here come the Double Deckers within the television industry for British children in the 1970s and considers conditions for training and working in current legislator advice. The chapter also unpacks the vexed relationship between notions of children at work and play in the creation, commodification and consumption of the child performer through personal memories of her 1970s audience