Download or read book Animating Culture written by Eric Loren Smoodin and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Prime Time Animation written by Carol Stabile and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Identity in Animation written by Jane Batkin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book New York s Animation Culture written by Kristian Moen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Animating Culture written by Eric Smoodin and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of animated short films and the system that mass-produced them, this book examines subjects such as: Hollywood animation and social control; sexuality, law and competition; comment on race, gender and class; and the shaping of public opinion through cartoon characters.
Download or read book Chinese Animation Creative Industries and Digital Culture written by Weihua Wu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-03 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Animating Truth written by Nea Ehrlich and published by EUP. This book was released on 2021-03-31 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Animation Studies Reader written by Nichola Dobson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Animation Studies Reader brings together both key writings within animation studies and new material in emerging areas of the field. The collection provides readers with seminal texts that ground animation studies within the contexts of theory and aesthetics, form and genre, and issues of representation. The first section collates key readings on animation theory, on how we might conceptualise animation, and on some of the fundamental qualities of animation. New material is also introduced in this section specifically addressing questions raised by the nature, style and materiality of animation. The second section outlines some of the main forms that animation takes, which includes discussions of genre. Although this section cannot be exhaustive, the material chosen is particularly useful as it provides samples of analysis that can illuminate some of the issues the first section of the book raises. The third section focuses on issues of representation and how the medium of animation might have an impact on how bodies, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity are represented. These representations can only be read through an understanding of the questions that the first two sections of the book raise; we can only decode these representations if we take into account form and genre, and theoretical conceptualisations such as visual pleasure, spectacle, the uncanny, realism etc.
Download or read book Prime Time Animation written by Carol Stabile and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Animating Cultural Politics written by Janet P. Palmer and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Puppets Gods and Brands written by Teri J. Silvio and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2019-09-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The early twenty-first century has seen an explosion of animation. Cartoon characters are everywhere—in cinema, television, and video games and as brand logos. There are new technological objects that seem to have lives of their own—from Facebook algorithms that suggest products for us to buy to robots that respond to human facial expressions. The ubiquity of animation is not a trivial side-effect of the development of digital technologies and the globalization of media markets. Rather, it points to a paradigm shift. In the last century, performance became a key term in academic and popular discourse: The idea that we construct identities through our gestures and speech proved extremely useful for thinking about many aspects of social life. The present volume proposes an anthropological concept of animation as a contrast and complement to performance: The idea that we construct social others by projecting parts of ourselves out into the world might prove useful for thinking about such topics as climate crisis, corporate branding, and social media. Like performance, animation can serve as a platform for comparisons of different cultures and historical eras. Teri Silvio presents an anthropology of animation through a detailed ethnographic account of how characters, objects, and abstract concepts are invested with lives, personalities, and powers—and how people interact with them—in contemporary Taiwan. The practices analyzed include the worship of wooden statues of Buddhist and Daoist deities and the recent craze for cute vinyl versions of these deities, as well as a wildly popular video fantasy series performed by puppets. She reveals that animation is, like performance, a concept that works differently in different contexts, and that animation practices are deeply informed by local traditions of thinking about the relationships between body and soul, spiritual power and the material world. The case of Taiwan, where Chinese traditions merge with Japanese and American popular culture, uncovers alternatives to seeing animation as either an expression of animism or as “playing God.” Looking at the contemporary world through the lens of animation will help us rethink relationships between global and local, identity and otherness, human and non-human.
Download or read book Frames of Anime written by Tze-Yue G. Hu and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Frames ofAnime provides a wonderfully concise and insightful historical overview of Japanese animation; more importantly, Tze-yue G. Hu also gives the reader a much-needed frame of reference--- cultural and historical --- for understanding its development." - Harvey Deneroff, Savannah College of Art and Design, Atlanta, Georgia "This is a valuable study that transcends most of its predecessors by situating Japanese anime in its cultural context and providing detailed insight into the lives and works of some of Japan's most prominent animators and their struggles to establish it as a legitimate form of cinema and television media. Its authorship by an Asian scholar also conversant with Chinese and Southeast Asian cinema and comic book culture gives it a unique comparative character."-John Clammer, United Nations University Japanese anime has long fascinated the world, and its mythical heroes and dazzling colors increasingly influence popular culture genres in the West. Tze-yue G. Hu analyzes the "language-medium" of this remarkable expressive platform and its many socio-cultural dimensions from a distinctly Asian frame of reference, tracing its layers of concentric radiation from Japan throughout Asia. Her work, rooted in archival investigations, interviews with animators and producers in Japan as well as other Asian animation studios, and interdisciplinary research in linguistics and performance theory, shows how dialectical aspects of anime are linked to Japan's unique experience of modernity and its cultural associations in Asia, including its reliance on low-wage outsourcing. Her study also provides English readers with insights on numerous Japanese secondary sources, as well as a number of original illustrations offered by animators and producers she interviewed.
Download or read book The Animated Bestiary written by Paul Wells and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-28 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Animation and Cartoons written by Nichola Dobson and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2009-08-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animation was once a relatively simple matter, using fairly primitive means to produce rather short films of subjects that were generally comedic and often quite childish. However, things have changed, and they continue changing at a maddening pace. One new technique after another has made it easier, faster, and above all cheaper to produce the material, which has taken on an increasing variety of forms. The Historical Dictionary of Animation and Cartoons is an introduction to all aspects of animation history and its development as a technology and industry beyond the familiar cartoons from the Disney and Warner Bros. Studios. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, photos, a bibliography, and over 200 cross-referenced dictionary entries on animators, directors, studios, techniques, films, and some of the best-known characters.
Download or read book Animation Sport and Culture written by P. Wells and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-10-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animation, Sport and Culture is a wide-ranging study of both sport and animated films. From Goofy to Goalkeepers, Wallace and Gromit to Tiger Woods, Mickey Mouse to Messi, and Nike to Nationhood, this Olympic-sized analysis looks at the history, politics, aesthetics and technologies of sport and animation from around the globe.
Download or read book My Reality written by Jeff Fleming and published by Independent Curators International (ICI. This book was released on 2001 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays by Jeff Fleming, Takashi Murakami and Susan Lubowsky Talbott. Foreword by Judith Richards,
Download or read book Pixar s America written by Dietmar Meinel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-26 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the popular and critically acclaimed films of Pixar Animation Studios in their cultural and historical context. Whether interventionist sheriff dolls liberating oppressed toys (Toy Story) or exceptionally talented rodents hoping to fulfill their dreams (Ratatouille), these cinematic texts draw on popular myths and symbols of American culture. As Pixar films refashion traditional American figures, motifs and narratives for contemporary audiences, this book looks at their politics - from the frontier myth in light of traditional gender roles (WALL-E) to the notion of voluntary associations and neoliberalism (The Incredibles). Through close readings, this volume considers the aesthetics of digital animation, including voice-acting and the simulation of camera work, as further mediations of the traditional themes and motifs of American culture in novel form. Dietmar Meinel explores the ways in which Pixar films come to reanimate and remediate prominent myths and symbols of American culture in all their cinematic, ideological and narrative complexity.
