Animating Culture

Animating Culture PDF Author: Eric Loren Smoodin
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813519494
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Long considered "children's entertainment" by audiences and popular media, Hollywood animation has received little serious attention. Eric Smoodin's Animating Culture is the first and only book to thoroughly analyze the animated short film. Usually running about seven or eight minutes, cartoons were made by major Hollywood studios--such as MGM, Warner Bros., and Disney--and shown at movie theaters along with a newsreel and a feature-length film. Smoodin explores animated shorta and the system that mass-produced them. How were cartoons exhibited in theaters? How did they tell their stories? Who did they tell them to? What did they say about race, class, and gender? How were cartoons related to the feature films they accompanied on the evening's bill of fare? What were the social functions of cartoon stars like Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse? Smoodin argues that cartoons appealed to a wide audience--not just children--and did indeed contribute to public debate about political matters. He examines issues often ignored in discussions of animated film--issues such as social control in the U.S. army's "Private Snafu" cartoons, and sexuality and race in the "sites" of Betty Boop's body and the cartoon harem. Smoodin's analysis of the multiple discourses embedded in a variety of cartoons reveals the complex and sometimes contradictory ways that animation dealt with class relations, labor, imperialism, and censorship. His discussion of Disney and the Disney Studio's close ties with the U.S. government forces us to rethink the place of the cartoon in political and cultural life. Smoodin reveals the complex relationship between cartoons and the Hollywood studio system, and between cartoons and their audiences.

Animating Culture

Animating Culture PDF Author: Eric Loren Smoodin
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813519494
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book Here

Book Description
Long considered "children's entertainment" by audiences and popular media, Hollywood animation has received little serious attention. Eric Smoodin's Animating Culture is the first and only book to thoroughly analyze the animated short film. Usually running about seven or eight minutes, cartoons were made by major Hollywood studios--such as MGM, Warner Bros., and Disney--and shown at movie theaters along with a newsreel and a feature-length film. Smoodin explores animated shorta and the system that mass-produced them. How were cartoons exhibited in theaters? How did they tell their stories? Who did they tell them to? What did they say about race, class, and gender? How were cartoons related to the feature films they accompanied on the evening's bill of fare? What were the social functions of cartoon stars like Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse? Smoodin argues that cartoons appealed to a wide audience--not just children--and did indeed contribute to public debate about political matters. He examines issues often ignored in discussions of animated film--issues such as social control in the U.S. army's "Private Snafu" cartoons, and sexuality and race in the "sites" of Betty Boop's body and the cartoon harem. Smoodin's analysis of the multiple discourses embedded in a variety of cartoons reveals the complex and sometimes contradictory ways that animation dealt with class relations, labor, imperialism, and censorship. His discussion of Disney and the Disney Studio's close ties with the U.S. government forces us to rethink the place of the cartoon in political and cultural life. Smoodin reveals the complex relationship between cartoons and the Hollywood studio system, and between cartoons and their audiences.

Prime Time Animation

Prime Time Animation PDF Author: Carol Stabile
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136481710
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In September 1960 a television show emerged from the mists of prehistoric time to take its place as the mother of all animated sitcoms. The Flintstones spawned dozens of imitations, just as, two decades later, The Simpsons sparked a renaissance of primetime animation. This fascinating book explores the landscape of television animation, from Bedrock to Springfield, and beyond. The contributors critically examine the key issues and questions, including: How do we explain the animation explosion of the 1960s? Why did it take nearly twenty years following the cancellation of The Flintstones for animation to find its feet again as primetime fare? In addressing these questions, as well as many others, essays examine the relation between earlier, made-for-cinema animated production (such as the Warner Looney Toons shorts) and television-based animation; the role of animation in the economies of broadcast and cable television; and the links between animation production and brand image. Contributors also examine specific programmes like The Powerpuff Girls, Daria, Ren and Stimpy and South Park from the perspective of fans, exploring fan cybercommunities, investigating how ideas of 'class' and 'taste' apply to recent TV animation, and addressing themes such as irony, alienation, and representations of the family.

Identity in Animation

Identity in Animation PDF Author: Jane Batkin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317533240
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Identity in Animation: A Journey into Self, Difference, Culture and the Body uncovers the meaning behind some of the most influential characters in the history of animation and questions their unique sense of who they are and how they are formed. Jane Batkin explores how identity politics shape the inner psychology of the character and their exterior motivation, often buoyed along by their questioning of ‘place’ and ‘belonging’ and driven by issues of self, difference, gender and the body. Through this, Identity in Animation illustrates and questions the construction of stereotypes as well as unconventional representations within American, European and Eastern animation. It does so with examples such as the strong gender tropes of Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki, the strange relationships created by Australian director Adam Elliot and Nick Park’s depiction of Britishness. In addition, this book discusses Betty Boop’s sexuality and ultimate repression, Warner Bros’ anarchic, self-aware characters and Disney’s fascinating representation of self and society. Identity in Animation is an ideal book for students and researchers of animation studies, as well as any media and film studies students taking modules on animation as part of their course.

New York's Animation Culture

New York's Animation Culture PDF Author: Kristian Moen
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030279316
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
This book reveals and explores the thriving animation culture in midtown Manhattan, the World’s Fair, art galleries and cinemas during a vibrant period of artistic, commercial and industrial activity in New York City. Alongside a detailed investigation of animated film at the time – ranging from the abstract works of Mary Ellen Bute and Norman McLaren to the exhibition practices of the Disney Studios and the New York World’s Fair – New York’s Animation Culture examines a host of other animated forms, including moving dioramas, illuminated billboards, industrial displays, gallery exhibitions, mobile murals, and shop windows. In this innovative microhistory of animation, Moen combines the study of art, culture, design and film to offer a fine-grained account of an especially lively animation culture that was seen as creating new media, expanding the cinema experience, giving expression to utopian dreams of modernity, and presenting dynamic visions of a kinetic future.

Chinese Animation, Creative Industries, and Digital Culture

Chinese Animation, Creative Industries, and Digital Culture PDF Author: Weihua Wu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351611089
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This book explores the development of the Chinese animation film industry from the beginning of China’s reform process up to the present. It discusses above all the relationship between the communist state’s policies to stimulate "creative industries", concepts of creativity and aesthetics, and the creation and maintenance , through changing circumstances, of a national style by Chinese animators. The book also examines the relationship between Chinese animation, changing technologies including the rise first of television and then of digital media, and youth culture, demonstrating the importance of Chinese animation in Chinese youth culture in the digital age.

Animating the Science Fiction Imagination

Animating the Science Fiction Imagination PDF Author: J. P. Telotte
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190695269
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Long before flying saucers, robot monsters, and alien menaces invaded our movie screens in the 1950s, there was already a significant but overlooked body of cinematic science fiction. Through analyses of early twentieth-century animations, comic strips, and advertising, Animating the Science Fiction Imagination unearths a significant body of cartoon science fiction from the pre-World War II era that appeared at approximately the same time the genre was itself struggling to find an identity, an audience, and even a name. In this book, author J.P. Telotte argues that these films helped sediment the genre's attitudes and motifs into a popular culture that found many of those ideas unsettling, even threatening. By binding those ideas into funny and entertaining narratives, these cartoons also made them both familiar and non-threatening, clearing a space for visions of the future, of other worlds, and of change that could be readily embraced in the post-war period.

The Animated Bestiary

The Animated Bestiary PDF Author: Paul Wells
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813546435
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Cartoonists and animators have given animals human characteristics for so long that audiences are now accustomed to seeing Bugs Bunny singing opera and Mickey Mouse walking his dog Pluto. The Animated Bestiary critically evaluates the depiction of animals in cartoons and animation more generally. Paul Wells argues that artists use animals to engage with issues that would be more difficult to address directly because of political, religious, or social taboos. Consequently, and principally through anthropomorphism, animation uses animals to play out a performance of gender, sex and sexuality, racial and national traits, and shifting identity, often challenging how we think about ourselves. Wells draws on a wide range of examples, from the original King Kongto Nick Park's Chicken Run to Disney cartoonsùsuch as Tarzan, The Jungle Book, and Brother Bearùto reflect on people by looking at the ways in which they respond to animals in cartoons and films.

Animating Truth

Animating Truth PDF Author: Nea Ehrlich
Publisher: EUP
ISBN: 9781474463362
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Animating Truth examines the rise of animated documentary in the 21st century, and addresses how non-photorealistic animation is increasingly used to depict and shape reality. Confronting shifts in the status and aesthetics of the real, Nea Ehrlich analyses how contemporary technoculture has transformed the relationship of animation to documentary by mapping out two parallel trends: the increased use of animation within documentary or non-fiction contexts, and the increasingly pervasive use of non-photorealistic animation within digital media. As the virtual becomes another aspect of our contemporary mixed reality (physical and virtual), the book aims to understand how this visual paradigm shift influences viewers, both ethically and politically, and questions the wider ramifications of this transformation in non-fiction aesthetics. Nea Ehrlich is a lecturer in the Department of the Arts at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.

Understanding Animation

Understanding Animation PDF Author: Paul Wells
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136158804
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
First Published in 1998. Understanding Animation is a comprehensive introduction to animated film, from cartoons to computer animation. Paul Wells' insightful account of a critically neglected but increasingly popular medium: * explains the defining characteristics of animation as a cinematic form * outlines different models and methods which can be used to interpret and evaluate animated films * traces the development of animated film around the world, from Betty Boop to Wallace and Gromit. Part history, part theory, and part celebration, Understanding Animation includes: * notes towards a theory of animation * an explanation of animation's narrative strategies * an analyis of how comic events are constructed * a discussion of representation, focusing on gender and race * primary research on animation and audiences. Paul Wells' argument is illustrated with case studies, including Daffy Duck in Chuck Jones' Duck Amuck, Jan Svankmajer's Jabberwocky, Tex Avery's Little Rural Riding Hood and King Size Canary ', and Nick Park's Creature Comforts. Understanding Animation demonstrates that the animated film has much to tell us about ourselves, the cultures we live in, and our view of art and society.

Animating Space

Animating Space PDF Author: J.P. Telotte
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813133718
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Animators work within a strictly defined, limited space that requires difficult artistic decisions. The blank frame presents a dilemma for all animators, and the decision of what to include and leave out raises important questions about artistry, authorship, and cultural influence. In Animating Space: From Mickey to WALL-E, renowned scholar J. P. Telotte explores how animation has confronted the blank template, and how responses to that confrontation have changed. Focusing on American animation, Telotte tracks the development of animation in line with changing cultural attitudes toward space and examines innovations that elevated the medium from a novelty to a fully realized art form. From Winsor McCay and the Fleischer brothers to the Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros., and Pixar Studios, Animating Space explores the contributions of those who invented animation, those who refined it, and those who, in the current digital age, are using it to redefine the very possibilities of cinema.