Nel prisma delle rappresentazioniTra Letteratura per adolescenti e Media Narrativi

Nowadays something is happening between Children’s Literature and Narrative Media: more and more often Cinema (and sometimes even Television) draws inspiration from Children’s Literature, but, at the same time, a part of Children’s Literature, and especially Teenagers Fiction and Young Adult Fiction, seems to be more and more influenced by other narrative media, in particular Cinema and Television. In this situation, the exchange dynamics between Literature, Cinema and Television are more and more important, and it is essential to investigate what is actually happening among Teenagers Fiction and Narrative Media. This situation may encourage a "mutual influence" among these media languages, an influence based on the use of the same stock characters, the same stereotypes and the same narrative structures. But, are teen novels really influenced by teen drama and teen films, absorbing their characters, their clichés, their conventions? And, if this is the case, what is the dimension of this phenomenon? A two-step research work was planned in order to answer to these questions. Initially, a questionnaire was prepared and distributed to a sample of approximately 1500 teenagers (aged from 12 to 16). The survey questioned about books, serials and movies in order to identify the most popular ones. These books, serials and movies was then analyzed to verify if a narrative constant or a recurring factor is present. When this research project began, I expected to find a connection, between films, serials and books, influenced by marketing. I assumed that the questionnaires would demonstrate that the huge popularity of some cultural products (for example the Harry Potter book series or the Italian serial ‘I Cesaroni’) would be the driving force for some cultural products related to them (for example the films based on the Harry Potter series or the books based on ‘I Cesaroni’). But the outcome turned out to be different. Nevertheless the more I proceeded with the content analysis of the most popular cultural products, the more I realized that they have something in common: patterns of gender representation. Therefore I concentrated on the male characters that are most liked by the male audience and on the female characters that are most liked by the female audience; and I found out that there are recurrent character types.