Introduction to the Special Issue: New Perspectives on Animation Historiography

Animation is strongly metamorphic. Not only in the sense of the omnipresent audiovisual and narrative changes we encounter in animated images, but it is animation itself that constantly transforms, shifts and expands (Wells and Hardstaff, 2008: 16). Therefore, our artistic and theoretical conceptions of animation constantly morph as well. These paradigmatic changes are further fuelled by the rapid emergence of new media technologies and their cultural implications (see, for example, Leslie and McKim, 2017). To account for this metamorphic nature of the field, it is helpful to conceive animation not as one single phenomenon but rather as a multitude of phenomena that are connected, in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s sense, by Familienähnlichkeit (which is usually translated as family resemblance), i.e. by overlapping features that are not necessarily shared by all phenomena (Wittgenstein, 1999: 31–32). In relation to historiography, a recognition of animation’s heterogeneity offers a fresh look at what we call animation history and paves the way for writing the histories of new and overlooked forms, contexts and uses of animation both according to their own unique features and in relation to other forms, contexts and uses. For writing the histories of animation, an ever-expanding and changing understanding of the field poses many challenges and offers as many opportunities as this Special Issue aims at exploring.

The Special Issue is framed by our own contribution, which discusses various historiographical approaches to account for a continuously transforming understanding of animation. We survey discourses on historiography in animation studies, trace the impact of new film history and media archaeology on rethinking animation historiography, and point out a few lessons we can learn from ongoing debates in art history and media art history. Conceiving historiography as an interdisciplinary endeavour, we look at how history is written in performance studies and the history of science, two exemplary fields of visual culture where animation plays an important role but is usually only mentioned in passing. Finally, we show what can be gained from studying the histories of what has been perceived as marginal forms of animation, exemplified by motion graphics and animation in utility films. We conceptualize animation historiography in several ways, most notably as a collage and in the shape of a rhizome, written in many ways by many ‘writers’ and institutions. The other articles in this Special Issue address some of the central points raised in our metadiscussion.

Several of the contributions demonstrate the outstanding and continuing importance of archives and archival work for animation historiography. As Chris Pallant (2020) summarized: ‘By saving, sharing, and scrutinizing animation archives, we all stand to gain a much greater understanding of the production cultures and artistic ambitions of the form we care so deeply about.’ However, changing and expanding conceptions of animation call for a re-evaluation and a new contextualization of known documents and for an extended consideration of hitherto neglected archival materials, potentially leading to clarifications and revisions of established knowledge. The publication of a wealth of archival material, including historic documents and images, are a distinct asset of this Special Issue using the advantages of digitalization to disseminate the gems of animation spread in archives across the globe.

In this regard, Christine Veras’s article reads almost like an investigative detective novel. Veras unveils new details about the history of the zoetrope by compiling clues and evidence from legal documents and other archival material originally produced in England, the United States and France. The contribution includes a reproduction of the full booklet that accompanied the early versions of Milton Bradley’s zoetrope, titled The Philosophical Principles of the Zoetrope or Wheel of Life Fully Explained (c. 1867). Veras complements the archival research on the genealogy of the zoetrope with experimental media archaeology (Fickers and Van den Oever, 2014), by recreating and testing various setups of what Nicolas Dulac and André Gaudreault (2006) have named ‘zoetropic editing’, the combination of two strips in one zoetrope.

Tashi Petter’s article, a feminist re-evaluation of Lotte Reiniger, similarly combines archival research with experimental media archaeology. Based on her findings in several Reiniger collections, Petter organized re-enactments of events hosted by the London Film Institute Society and by the Film Society in the 1930s, which featured films and a lecture by Reiniger. The article characterizes Reiniger as an ‘anachronist’, much in line with a non-linear media archaeological understanding of history. Both Veras and Petter reanimate animation history by putting together archival puzzle pieces, thus bringing them to life. The experience of such reconstructions makes animation-related events and processes tangible, while it provides space to reconsider established contextualizations and valuations of animation histories.

Similarly to Veras and Petter, the contributions by Felix Hasebrink and Coralie Lamotte show that studying the histories of animation means in most cases engaging with the many paratextual documents that surround the production, distribution, exhibition and reception of animation, which, following Gérard Genette, can be classified as epitexts (Genette, 1997; Klecker, 2015). Hasebrink analyses making-of documentaries from the 1930s that feature the production of animated films. His article adds to a growing number of publications in film and animation studies on what has been considered minor, marginal, peripheral or derivative types of films, for example utility films and useful animation (Acland and Wasson, 2011; Cook and Thompson, 2019; Hediger and Vonderau, 2009). Hasebrink shows that the changes of content, aesthetics and uses of making-of documentaries in the 1930s were more than symptoms of shifts in the film industry and its promotional strategies: following a specific cinematic logic, these short films about filmmaking themselves contributed to writing animation history.

Like the epitextual making-ofs, animation manuals need to be understood as a discursive practice of an industry, as Lamotte shows in her contribution. Lamotte makes a convincing argument that studying the history of instructional materials, in this case American animation manuals, allows a better understanding of how changes of technologies and the industry have led to changing conceptions of animation and animators. She sees manuals as entrenched in profession-specific animation discourses. Her focus is on three periods of animation manuals (1940s to 1970s, 1970s to 2000s, 2000s to now), which correspond with the shift from material to digital animation and the wide-scale proliferation of animation in the 21st century. Lamotte’s focus on manuals also reflects an increasing interest in researching animation pedagogy, including the histories of animation schools and animation education in general.

Art historians have argued for a horizontal history and for dismantling the hierarchies of centres and peripheries (Piotrowski, 2009). In our contribution, we point out the possibilities that lie with this approach for animation histories: looking at the peripheries entails going beyond established canons; it means foregrounding minor works, minor positions in animation production and minor genres of films; it means focusing on smaller parts of a larger whole such as paratextual motion graphics or animated projection mappings on the stage; and it means emphasizing geographical peripheries in the global animation industry. Both Marta Soares and Mette Peters look at the impact of animation on discourses related to film and art in two smaller non-Anglophone countries, Portugal and the Netherlands, in the first half of the 20th century.

The Portuguese modernist José de Almada Negreiros and his reception of animation during the 1930s is the focus of the contribution by Marta Soares. She demonstrates how the status of animation as an emerging art form between mainstream entertainment and avant-garde art is negotiated in those years in Portugal. Rich with original visual material by Almada, the text shows the aesthetic interaction with animation in his artworks and highlights the variety of ways Almada engaged with earlier optical devices and cinema architecture. Soares analyses extensively Almada’s small book about animation where he points out its potentials in reaction to the premiere of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Hand, 1937) in Portugal in 1938. Furthermore, in-depth archival research of the reception of Disney’s film in Portuguese print media and of discourses on animation in national cinema journals in 1938 contextualize Almada’s strong reflection on the potentials of animation. Soares emphasizes the importance of approaching animation history from an interdisciplinary perspective and points out the enriching potential of such an approach.

Mette Peters’s contribution traces how language contact influences the way a local animation industry conceives the emerging art form of animation, in Peters’s case in the Netherlands before 1940. The article highlights three approaches that we find especially promising for animation historiography. First, Peters’s close look at technical terms can be insightful for production and industry studies approaches (Havens et al., 2009; Mayer et al., 2009). The fast development of new production processes and technologies, the expansion of animation into many cultural contexts with their own specific terms as well as the use of idiosyncratic techniques have all led to a constant change of terminology, which is strongly influenced by international exchange and collaborations across language barriers. Furthermore, animation scholars, similar to film scholars, both adapt terms from the industry and coin new terms for the phenomena they study. Second, Peters’s contribution shows how the digitalization of animated films, production materials and documents related to the production, distribution, exhibition and reception of animation has been instrumental for animation historians, not only making archives more accessible and searchable, but also enabling various digital humanities methods (Heftberger, 2018). Third, Peters’s article and similar linguistic inquiries for other languages (Crafton, 2011; Kim, 2018) demonstrate the insights that a detailed diachronic analysis of animation-specific terminology can offer into the history of cultural conceptions of animation and their negotiation by various stakeholders. Observing, for example, the German language, mainly two hypernyms refer to animated films, the older term ‘Trickfilm’ (‘trick film’) and the younger term ‘Animationsfilm’ (‘animation film’). While both terms can subsume all production techniques, the use of ‘Animationsfilm’ in non-specialized contemporary German-language publications, such as newspapers, blogs or internet comments, seems to connote 3D computer animation in contrast to ‘Trickfilm’, which appears to be more closely related to older material-based techniques such as hand-drawn and stop-motion animation. This semantic distinction between the two terms might indicate how audiences have grown up with a certain cultural understanding of specific types and aesthetics of animation, and how the increasing emergence of CG animation has challenged, expanded and changed this understanding.

Similarly, animation scholars negotiate what constitutes the ever-expanding field of research. As we write in our own contribution, articles that attempt to define animation are published every few years. More importantly, the rhizomatic growth of the field and the shift of focal points are as much determined by evolving phenomena as by what scholars choose as worthy research topics and how their peers – as supervisors, conference organizers, editors or reviewers – respond to their choices. Jeannette Kamp et al. (2018: 9) note that when historians – including those of animation – write about history ‘they also make history’ (emphasis in the original). The authors of this Special Issue have engaged in this continuous dialogue with the past to enrich the histories of animation with new perspectives.

This Special Issue is an outcome of the winter school Doing Animation History: Exploring Challenges and New Visions in Writing Animation Histories, which took place at the University of Tübingen from 25 to 27 March 2019, and was supported by the Institutional Strategy of the University of Tübingen, the Society for Animation Studies and the German-language scholarly interest group AG Animation. The winter school, organized by Rada Bieberstein and Erwin Feyersinger, brought together young scholars and established researchers as well as film archivists, film educators and film festival organizers in an engaging interdisciplinary atmosphere, which included a performance of Donald Crafton’s metaleptic vaudeville re-enactment Winsor and Gertie (1914) and a visit to the Lotte Reiniger archive in Tübingen.