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Can children's media be a source of education and empowerment? Or is the commercial media market a threat to their sense of social and democratic values? Such questions about the appropriateness of children's media consumption have recurred in public debates throughout the twentieth century. From Superman to Social Realism provides an exciting new approach to the study of children's media and childhood history, drawing on theories of cross-media consumption and transnational history. Based on extensive Scandinavian source material, it explores public debates about children's media between 1945 and 1985. Readers are taken on a fascinating journey through debates about superheroes in the 1950s, politicization of children's media in the 1960s, and about television and social realism in the 1980s. Arguments are firmly contextualized in Scandinavian childhood and welfare state history, an approach that demonstrates why professional and political groups have perceived children's media as the key to the enculturation of future generations. Received honourable mention at Nordic History Book Prize (Den nordiske historiebogpris 2017)

This article, based on extensive source material from Denmark, Sweden and Norway, is about the changing norms for children's media, childhood and art in Scandinavia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The analysis demonstrates how changes within welfare state institutions converged with the youth rebellion's wider criticism of children's low status in traditional power hierarchies, and contributed to new definitions of the role of media in children's lives. After establishing a wider historical contextualisation, the article moves on to show how the criticism of existing norms in the realm of children's literature in the mid-1960s grew into a critique of the prevailing ideologies and existing narratives in all children's media (including film, theatre and television) at the end of the decade. A key figure in the redefinition of norms for children's media was the Swede, Gunilla Ambjörnsson. Her 1968 book, Trash Culture for Children, led to discussions about the role of media in children's lives all over Scandinavia. Her core belief in the innate social and political interests of children had a great impact on the ways in which the possibilities for an explicit political agenda in children's media were conceptualised in Scandinavia at large.

In this article, I examine change and continuity in conceptions of parental agency in public debates about children's media consumption in Scandinavia, 1945-1975. During this period, public debates about the various kinds of media products children consumed were dominated by different groups of professionals: first, by teachers and librarians in the mid-fifties and, then, by intellectuals and performing artists in the late sixties. With a radically changed professional hegemony and a shifting media landscape, the role of media in children's lives was described very differently during the period. However, a strong continuity in the debates was the negative influence parents were seen as having on children's media consumption due to their lack of insight and interest in the topic. Drawing upon recent works on children's media, consumption and enculturation, I analyse why the negative description of parents as co-consumers prevailed despite radical changes in views on children's media consumption. In particular, I examine the shared inter-Scandinavian socio-cultural contexts that structured the changing professional and political groups' pressure on parents to perform according to their norms and values.

This article contains an analysis of public debates about children's consumption of comics in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) in the mid 1950s. With this analysis I aim to contribute to the understanding of how adult public 'consumption politics' regarding children's consumption of cultural products has been articulated at a specific time and place. By historicising adult debates about children's consumption of cultural products (e.g. films, comics, books) from a cultural history perspective, I attempt to make the arguments of the 1950s debates appear coherent and logical, rather than old-fashioned and disproportionate, as they seem to us in a modern context. "We do not want our children to be raised in the name of violence, race-hatred, gangsters and pin-ups as it is the case in the inappropriate comics of mostly American origin. We want our children to be reared as good, harmonic and optimistic human beings with respect for their fellow humans, tolerant and able to live their lives in peace. Inappropriate comics encourage the first and hinder the last." This quotation is from an open letter to the Swedish government, written at a public meeting in Malmö May 13th 1954, organised by the Malmö Peace Committee and Swedish Women's Left Union (the letter was published in the Swedish newspaper Ny Dag, 13 May 1954). The letter was published on behalf of the couple of hundred parents who had attended the meeting hoping to encourage the government to stop importing American comics into Sweden. Today it can seem ridiculous that Swedish parents, as well as the vast majority of other Scandinavian adults in the 1950s, assumed that the consumption of comics such as Superman, Batman and The Phantom would hinder children from growing up as good human beings. Nowadays toys, films, comics and many other products featuring these almost 'classic' American superheroes have become a natural part of Western childhood, and no Scandinavian politician, teacher or librarian would argue that the consumption of these comics could be the ruin of democracy as many did in the 1950s. So how can we understand the consumption politics that dominated the Scandinavian public fifty/sixty years ago ('politics' here means a set of notions shared by a specific interpretive community, see below)?2 What were the premises that created a fertile ground for the consumption politics that deemed comics an inappropriate cultural product for children in 1950s Scandinavia? This article contains an analysis of public debates about children's consumption of comics in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) in the mid 1950s. With this analysis I aim to contribute to the understanding of how adult public "consumption politics" regarding children's consumption of cultural products has been articulated at a specific time and place. By historicising adult debates about children's consumption of cultural products (e.g. films, comics, books) from a cultural history perspective, I attempt to make arguments that could otherwise seem old-fashioned and disproportionate, appear logical and coherent from the point of view of the 1950s debaters.

This is the accepted version of the following article: "Exporting the Nordic Children's '68: The global publishing scandal of The Little Red Schoolbook", which has been published in final form at https://www.barnboken.net/index.php/clr/article/view/332 ; International audience ; The Little Red Schoolbook (1969) was one of the most welltravelled media products for children from '68 aimed at children, and it was certainly the most notorious. Over the course of a few years (1970–2) it was translated and published in Belgium, Finland, France, Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. It also circulated freely in Austria and Luxembourg, and reached beyond Europe to countries including Australia, Japan and Mexico. It led to an obscenity trial in Great Britain, nearly toppled the Australian government, and caused a global publishing scandal. This essay therefore looks at the Scandinavian children's '68 in its international context, via a transnational, comparative analysis of the reception of the LRSB, in order to examine how '68 counterculture and ideas of childhood clashed and converged in the West around 1970. It asks: what can the publishing history of the LRSB tell us about the distinctive features of children's media in Scandinavia at this time?

The Little Red Schoolbook (1969) was one of the most well-travelled media products for children from '68 aimed at children, and it was certainly the most notorious. Over the course of a few years (1970–2) it was translated and published in Belgium, Finland, France, Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, it also circulated freely in Austria and Luxembourg, and reached beyond Europe to countries including Australia, Japan and Mexico. It led to an obscenity trial in Great Britain, nearly toppled the Australian government, and caused a global publishing scandal. This essay therefore looks at the Scandinavian children's '68 in its international context, via a transnational, comparative analysis of the reception of the LRSB, in order to examine how '68 counterculture and ideas of childhood clashed and converged in the West around 1970. It asks: what can the publishing history of the LRSB tell us about the distinctive features of children's media in Scandinavia at this time?

The Little Red Schoolbook (1969) was one of the most well-travelled media products for children from '68 aimed at children, and it was certainly the most notorious. Over the course of a few years (1970–2) it was translated and published in Belgium, Finland, France, Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, it also circulated freely in Austria and Luxembourg, and reached beyond Europe to countries including Australia, Japan and Mexico. It led to an obscenity trial in Great Britain, nearly toppled the Australian government, and caused a global publishing scandal. This essay therefore looks at the Scandinavian children's '68 in its international context, via a transnational, comparative analysis of the reception of the LRSB, in order to examine how '68 counterculture and ideas of childhood clashed and converged in the West around 1970. It asks: what can the publishing history of the LRSB tell us about the distinctive features of children's media in Scandinavia at this time?