The victim children: Portrayals of children characters in war films

A successful film depends on its story and characters. It does not have to be an art film or a commercial film. In the last few decades, the film emerged as one of the important mass media channels to the audiences. It is dominating the viewer's minds by heart touching story, storytelling style, and visualization. There are thousands of war films in the market. Most of the war film story focuses not only on historical, ideological, propagandistic, and hero character perception but also on victories or victims. In 1922, Mussolini echoed Lenin in proclaiming that "The cinema is the most powerful weapon". Cinema has the power to divert and motivate the audience because of the real feel combination with videography and sound design. Suppose a film is compared to the other artwork like a poem, photography, painting, sculpture art, etc. Basically, War film plots bear mournful myth with tragic drama. According to Aristotle's poetic theory, every tragedy has catharsis and negative emotions. And negative emotion catches the audience's attention very easily. That is why war victim children characters influence the audiences from the war film plots. Because cinema film is an audiovisual rhetoric and it has many abilities to make images to the audiences. The victim children characters in the war films are influential characters for the audiences. They have strong abilities to make sympathy for the war victim children with rhetoric and storytelling power. This thesis describes its arguments by using qualitative, narrative analysis research methods on different five war films, where children characters are portrayed as war victims.