Abstract
In its most basic, dictionary-based and widespread popular understanding, animation’s key attribute is to ‘bring things to life’; death is rarely a topic for discussion and there are very few character ‘deaths’ in popular animation films. Indeed, analogous to the impossibility of cartoon physics, in cartoon violence, characters flattened by anvils, blasted to bits by bombs, torsos riddled with gunshot holes and burnt to a crisp by flames magically reassemble and regain dynamic ‘living’ form, ever at the ready to be resurrected like the Phoenix from their next cartoon annihilation. Yet, the body being brought into life and the ultimacy of death, unlike cartoon physics a state of maximum entropy, are irrefutable, unavoidable bookends to human existence, and there are films that do address this immutability and fragility. Our first two articles share an interest in the body as well as death and life; the first in the human corpse, and the second in the puppet and its ‘skin’.
Working with, and endorsed by, a global humanitarian organization, in ‘Posthumous Portraits in Motion: Experimental Animation, Metamorphosis, and Reflections on Mortality’, Michelle Stewart discusses the genesis, ethical considerations and artistic process of a project based on a series of posthumous photographic portraits, many of deceased individuals whose bodies remained unclaimed. Mostly Black males, often undocumented, their photographic portraits are held in the forensic archive to which Stewart was granted access. Supported by key theorists throughout, Stewart maps out multiple agendas of her project. This includes a socio-political position in light of current Nationalist tendencies in South Africa with far-reaching roots in colonialism and apartheid and, more specifically, in her film, Do You Know Me? (2023), addressing xenophobic response to recent and ongoing national migration and to people in transit to other countries.
Stewart’s choice to work with the paint-on-glass method to circumvent the terrible realism of the photographs in respect of the persons documented is explained through an exploration of the problematics of appropriation and primitivism in Modernist art, the realist tendencies displayed in African Modernism and the creative methods located in the field of experimental animation, with a specific focus on the most important visual principles of animation – metamorphosis – that is also central to growth and development of life forms. The method of repetition in the work’s formal structure refers to the enduring colonialist racist structure endemic in government. Stewart then turns to an historical discussion of the body and destructive aspects of metamorphosis in early 20th-century animation via Panofsky, Benjamin and others, linking them to some Dada artists; the fine art focus then narrows to experimental animation. With this contextual framework, parts of the second half of the article are in the first person, providing insights into the practice as research aspect of process and creativity. The article maps out features of transformation, metamorphosis and erasure, and palimpsest in artists working with the technique, as well as specific features of the animation process itself: frame by frame and the animorph. Considerations are made on how to create the transitions between the portraits through repetition and loops to express non-hierarchical transitions between life and death. A description of the work’s future installation is as a discrete and sensitive presentation where visitors can choose if and how they want to engage, and this, combined with the work’s public premiere, provides demonstrations of Bourriaud’s notion of relational art at work. Stewart then returns to painting and ideologies underlying post-mortem portraits, with an interest in realistic depictions of suffering as well as evocations of empathy and compassion, specifically Géricault, Serrano and Dumas. In her conclusion, Stewart offers thoughts on how the project’s aims were achieved through artistic processes with the aim to raise public awareness globally of this ongoing tragedy in this part of the world.
Stewart’s film and process imbues the tragic reality of death with a gesture of animated life between each of the portraits; the next article has aesthetic affinities with Stewart. Rather than artistic processes that aim to avoid – and respect – the documented photographic representation of the biological fact of human mortality, Vincenzo Maselli investigates emotional and narrative qualities evoked through puppets’ real world, profilmic ‘stuffness’ and materiality, specifically of fabric as puppets’ skin as a locus of nostalgia. In ‘Narrating Fabrics: Nostalgia in Animated Puppets’ Skin’, he sets up a framework around materiality, symbolism, psychoanalysis and psychology before discussing communicative and other qualities of (non-animated) fabric-based objects such as dolls. This is followed by a review of key concepts of puppet animation with reference to nostalgia. He then undertakes narrative and material analysis of three films, evaluating them according to how they evoke what he terms proactive, relational or uncanny nostalgia. The second and third films discussed have a self-reflexive quality; a puppet is creating another puppet that is then brought to life. Maselli is interested in both the craftsmanship, design and material process of puppet animation as well as in viewers’ experience of the result on screen, and his conclusion points out the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to developing novel approaches to his subjects’ formal, aesthetic and technical properties.
The next article also works with interdisciplinary approaches to locate Richard Wagner’s Romantic notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork), conceived well before cinema was invented, in the context of a set of Walt Disney shorts and features from the 1930s and 1940s. In ‘Disney’s Wagner Aesthetic: Music Drama in Pursuit of the Total Artwork’, Jason Barker establishes early on three key aspects from Wagner’s aesthetic philosophy, originally with the art form of music in mind. Citing Adorno’s critique of Wagner, he points out how both music and cinema affected emotions and the senses, and then narrows his focus on music drama and on how to combine opera, live action cinema and animation. Over the course of the article, Barker makes convincing observations on similarities between the two artists – Wagner and Disney – in their respective eras in a number of ways: their striving for perfection and mythologization, their savvy business acumen, and in their production of unconventional music dramas, in Disney’s case, of melodrama, particularly in the interwar period. Barker’s analysis of the musical shorts and how some work with leitmotifs (a key Wagnerian innovation) is illuminating, and his interpretation of the impactful technological introduction of sound and the detrimental effect of synchronization on live action (Chaplin’s 1931 City Lights), and how Disney ‘beat the establishment at its own game’ is one of a number that he makes about early 20th-century labour relations, capitalism and technology. After considerations about more recent animation and TV productions, in his conclusion, Barker articulates where what he calls ‘Disney’s Wagner aesthetic’ and the studio head’s American optimism appear to be at variance with his 19th-century counterpart’s tragic pessimism. He then deconstructs this through a critical analysis and evaluation of the prosaic and economic difficulties and challenges Disney faced with his studio, ending with how both artists shared what he calls a ‘nihilist turn’ in their respective searches for control and perfection of their works.
Chinese animation shares an historical reach with Western animation back to the early 20th century, and scholarship on its history, theory and aesthetics in English-language publications, often with a critical interest in national style, is significantly on the rise. (The first article published in this journal in 2009 on Chinese meishu [fine art] style was Weihua Wu’s ‘In Memory of Meishu Film: Catachresis and Metaphor in Theorizing Chinese Animation’.) Our final article from Wang Aiqing and Thomas William Whyke takes up this subject as a socio-historic framing for a concentration on specific visual aesthetics of a (2023) animated series. In their ‘From Ancient Zhiguai Tales to Contemporary Animation: A Study of Visual Rhetoric in “Yao-Chinese Folktales” (2023)’, literary notions of rhetoric, metonymy and metaphor are adapted to formal properties of visual art. A helpful initial overview maps historical and political developments up to the commencement of the late 1970s Reform period that affected studios as well as the style and subject of films. Relevant artistic and stylistic terminologies are also explained throughout the article. The series’ concept and its popular reception are summarized; based on an over 2000-year-old literary genre of the strange and supernatural, zhiguai, that received negative treatment during various political periods, a detailed description of its many qualities and its interpretative complexity is at the heart of the article, with a bridge to animation via mythology. An overview of the critical development of visual rhetoric helps establish their approach. Wang and Whyke work with the more familiar figurative rhetoric of metaphor (others include synecdoche or metalepsis) and, interestingly, also with metonymy; both are taken into the visual field. The authors then undertake a detailed literary, historical narrative and aesthetic visual and analysis of one episode, ‘Goose Mountain’, explaining in great detail the cultural meaning of the metonymic animal figures, and the metaphoric symbolic elements. Their aim is to reveal what they claim is a transformational quality of the work to reinterpret visually this ancient zhinguai tale and traditions using minzu national style ink paint and wash, and make it accessible and appealing to contemporary audiences. Yet they also posit their research as an opportunity to expand current debates around definitions of the Chinese School of Animation by looking beyond traditions and their role in the developments of contemporary culture.
The Back Office
After a period of dormancy, our Reviews Section is revived. We are happy to let our readership know that Dr Aimee Mollaghan is back and continuing as Co-Reviews Editor. She is joined by Dr Patrick Sullivan, who we welcome on board as a member of the journal Reviews team, bringing editorial experience both as an author and an editor, and an interest in the interdisciplinary nature of our field and how it intersects with other technologies. Based at Texas A&M University, Patrick is Programme Director of the Film Studies Minor and Graduate Certificate in the School of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts. His article ‘Hanna-Barbera’s Cacophony: Sound Effects and the Production of Movement’ was published in this journal (vol. 16[1/2], 2021). Patrick’s expertise, publications and research interests lie in media hiastory, sound, network-era television and the relation between form and medium.
A Call for Book Reviews was distributed early this year. We are now seeking book review contributions that critically engage with leading scholarship in the field and reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the journal. We also welcome the review of publications that are based in other disciplines and display a clear intersection with animation theories and practices. In addition to books in English, the journal encourages reviews of texts published in languages other than the academic lingua franca of English.