EEditorialditorial AAnimationnimation StudiesStudies By Thomas Lamarre

Animation has always had its champions. volume of essays on animation, The Illusion of others ontologically, and others heuristically. Animators and fans have often proved eager Life II: More Essays on Animation, is especially But to situate the volume and the emergence to sing the praises of animation and especially interesting because, although it only recently of animation studies I will begin somewhat to laud it over and above cinema. To give appeared in print, in 2007 (all quotes from historically, with stories about the formation examples: French animation director René which are noted by page number only in the of cinema and its subsequent expansion to Laloux (2006) famously declared animation body of this editorial), its essays derive from a the point of dissolution. to be the true cinema, and in a humourous conference held in 1995 in Sydney, Australia. The Cinema Formation yet profound essay exploring the ‘evolution’ What is more, the conference and the essays of Mickey Mouse from adult to juvenile, build on a prior conference held in 1988 and renowned biologist Stephen Jay Gould published in 1991 under the title The Illusion Cinema has changed dramatically over the (1992) parenthetically remarked that he of Life: Essays on Animation also edited by past twenty-five years. Whether we look at still preferred Pinocchio to Citizen Kane. Yet, Alan Cholodenko. The essays in The Illusion production, distribution or reception, it is for all that its enthusiasts remind us that of Life II thus precede the contemporary clear that cinema today is not what it was. animation is at least as old as cinema (some boom of scholarly interest in animation, The advent of the VCR and DVD players would give animation historical priority over building on and responding to the astonishing created the possibility of film rental and cinema); still, animation has only recently popularity of animated forms in mass-targeted home theatre. Distribution laws changed, begun to produce a groundswell of activity and globally disseminated entertainments repertory or art film theatres closed, and the within the university. This is not to say that of the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as cineplex made its appearance, even as new animation has not previously garnered any video games, television series, music videos, sorts of image-based entertainment (video serious attention. There have been books, and special effects films. The Illusion of Life games, comics, animation, manga, anime) and very good ones, largely centred on major II speaks to a moment when animation had vied for attention, and new technologies of studios or famous animators. In the course begun its meteoric rise within global media, editing and imaging transformed the moving of the 1990s, however, animation began to while animation studies remained low on the image itself. The emergence of digital feel important enough that today animation theoretical horizon. technologies and the Internet permitted a studies is frequently presented as a field As with any set of responses, the essays film to be distributed and received in various of analysis distinct from other fields, even are exceedingly heterogeneous in their formats at various times and places. What from film studies. New journals dedicated approaches and concerns, and yet they had formerly appeared as a stand-alone film to the study of animation have emerged, merit consideration both as a whole and became another information file in a media and in coming years we can expect a host of separately, precisely because they anticipate network. Films were and are still being new books dealing with various aspects of basic questions about animation that will made, and film continued to be an important animation. haunt animation theory for some time. Two medium and form of mass entertainment, but its coherence and salience had been radically It is impossible to foresee what will emphases distinguish the volume as a whole altered. characterize or constitute animation studies. from prior discussions of animation. Much as René Laloux declared animation On the one hand, an aura of urgency Film studies, too, underwent important to be the true cinema, animation studies surrounds animation criticism. We get changes. After years of petitioning for serious may pronounce itself the true film studies. the feeling that animation opens pressing intellectual and academic attention, film Or, in the manner of Stephen Jay Gould’s questions about contemporary media suddenly became almost ubiquitous in the preference for animated films, animation conditions that could not otherwise be North American university: videocassettes studies may be predicated on an open-ended posed. There is also a sense that cinema and disks made copies of various kinds preference that fortuitously opens new kinds and film studies are no longer suited to, or of films from documentaries to television of questions about the moving image. But sufficient for, understanding contemporary programs readily available, and professors why now? What has changed that animation media. Simulation becomes a key word, in in a range disciplines introduced film into is calling for new or renewed attention? response to the sense of a collapse in the the classroom. From needing to prove its intellectual worthiness, film became source By the late 1990s, the ascendancy of distinction between cinema and animation, material. Just as historians and sociologists animation became associated with the rise of or more precisely, between capturing reality often include novels in their courses without digital. New media theorist Lev Manovich, and generating reality. In this respect, Illusion fussing over literary analysis, so it is with for instance, wrote, “the opposition between of Life anticipates of some of the points that films: anyone can use film in the classroom the styles of animation and cinema defined became central in new media and digital without addressing film theory and analysis. the culture of moving images in the twentieth theory. Film simultaneously won credibility and lost a century” (1999:298). Famously, Manovich On the other hand, The Illusion of sense of specificity. spun a tale of the relation between cinema Life II is unusual in its endorsement of the and animation in which animation, once importance of Japanese animation (anime), Not surprisingly, around the same subsumed by cinema, had now succeeded at a time when anime had barely begun to time, a debate over theory ran through film in subsuming cinema. Japanese animation garner scholarly attention. Explicitly, and studies. A number of scholars expressed director Oshii Mamoru (2004) expressed implicitly in the choice of materials, the strong objections to film theory, especially its a similar sentiment, announcing that all collection entertains the idea that American psychoanalytic conceits, which had in their cinema is becoming animation. Oshii, and Japanese animations are the crucial site heyday contributed greatly to the scholarly of course, is renowned for his use digital for analyzing current media conditions. importance of cinema. Film scholars who technologies to experiment with the proposed to jettison theory often insisted Taken as a whole, The Illusion of Life boundary between cinema and animation. that theory tended to totalize the film, to II seems to announce a fundamental shift introduce overarching paradigms that ignored Such explanations of the new centrality from a ‘cinema formation’ to an ‘animation the material complexity and diversity of and popularity of animation are surely correct formation’. At the same time, its emphasis cinema. To counter such allegedly totalizing to call attention to the importance of digital on Japanese animation introduces questions tendencies, the anti-theory scholars proposed technologies and new media in transforming about the transnational, about relations a turn to cognitive sciences and statistical (although maybe not subsuming) cinema between place of production and reception, analysis, leaning on modes of classical and spurring animation. Yet, because their which in turn raises questions about where empiricism that, although frequently taken emphasis falls on a sort of digital avant- and how ‘animation cultures’ are formed. for scientific in the humanities, have never gardism, questions about the broader field of The essays are not necessarily in agreement held sway in the sciences. Reductively animation or animation studies tend to drop about how this shift to animation or the speaking, the result was a standoff between out of the picture. emergence of animation culture should be psychoanalytic theory and cognitive In this context, a recently published articulated: some articulate it historically, empiricism. Significantly, the debate over film theory allows early film scholars to look at moving conditions, describing new objects, rectifying made manifest a new degree of uncertainty pictures as one medium among others within scholarly neglect, or with filling gaps in about the ground for the study of film. Was a broader field of modern perception. As our knowledge. Instead he unabashedly there any reason to insist on the specificity of a result, as Ben Singer (2001) notes, such proposes to privilege poststructuralist and film as distinct from other media or modes of studies tend toward a ‘modernity thesis’. It is postmodernist theory, seeing in animation a expression? as if the specificity thesis of cinema had been way to reanimate Grand Theory. First, he Somewhat paradoxically, even as the displaced onto a specificity thesis of Western argues, we need to theorize “film ‘as such’ as anti-theorists posited the ground for the modernity. This is where this manner of a form of animation”, and second, we must study of film outside film itself (for example, thinking film history presents some new begin to theorize “animation as a form of in statistics and cognitive science), they did challenges and impasses. ‘philosophy’” (45). The study of animation, not question the coherence of film as an Either ignorant of or uninterested in then, entails a two-fold movement. On the object of study. At the same time, film theory the historical and theoretical debates about one hand, Cholodenko calls for an inversion developed a new awareness of its tendency formations of modernity and the status of the of current priorities: the neglected term to presume an historical impulse toward West, this manner of thinking film history (animation) is given precedence over the unity and totality within the film industry, runs the risk of replacing the teleological privileged term (film), not only historically in the guise of ‘classical cinema’ or ‘classical history of cinema with a massive Western but also ontologically. In a often vertiginous Hollywood style’. It was in this context that modernity thesis, in which modernity style that favours chiasmus and temporal the new film history, with renewed attention emerges in the West and diffuses to the inversions, Cholodenko stages the relation to ‘early cinema’, appeared to resolve or at Rest. Emphasis thus falls on the emergence between cinema and animation as a form least to bypass the impasse that had appeared and diffusion of Western forms (usually of ‘mise-en-abime’ in which cinema is not in the debate over theory. Hollywood cinema, which gradually came never animation, and film studies are always to dominate global markets in 1920s) to the already animation studies. Animation almost Theoretically, the new film history found seems to become a privileged term. On the in early cinema a useful point of departure Rest. In other words, such film histories presume a centre and a periphery without other hand, in the manner of deconstruction, for talking about the emergence of modernity this inversion of priorities is not intended and modern modes of perception, especially considering how some areas come to be constructed as peripheries, and how the West to privilege and thus ground animation but in the urban metropolis, by turning to a time rather to open ontological inquiry. The study before cinema was cinema. Prior to the (or even Hollywood style) might emerge as a relation between centre and periphery to of animation thus promises to renew the formation and institutionalization of certain grand theoretical questions that film studies, cinematic conventions that made cinema begin with. There is, simply put, a tendency to replicate modernization theory, however in Cholodenko’s opinion, formerly raised but into a distinctive and autonomous form subsequently failed to pursue in earnest. of expression (the classical style), moving unwittingly. Yet part of the challenge of pictures meshed readily with other forms of cinema, even in its early days, lies in effects Such an approach resonates with popular entertainment such as magic acts, of synchronicity among urban centres, which Derrida’s deconstruction, and as such, raises side shows, vaudeville theatre, popular opera, poses a challenge to diffusion theories and questions about what exactly is at stake magic lantern displays, fairs, festivals and centre-periphery models, encouraging us to in deconstructing the cinema/animation exhibitions. In fact there was no cinema address the temporality that unfurls diverse construct. After all, Derrida’s critique of as such; moving pictures, as one medium formations of modernity. Miriam Hansen’s metaphysics meticulously unraveled the among others, contributed to the production (1999) notion of vernacular modernism is a tautological constructions that grounded of modern forms of perception and the gesture in this direction. She sees Hollywood power formations associated with Western modern urban experience. While resolutely cinema as fractured with modernist modernity. But what kind of metaphysics is historical, such research strove to get out of ambiguities, with anxieties about modernity associated with cinema/animation? Because teleological, linear or deterministic histories that can be reiterated or recombined with Cholodenko’s work insistently refers to of the birth of cinema, by situating itself at a other ambivalent modernisms in non-Western simulation and to life, it would seem that life moment when cinema as such did not exist. locales. Still, the gesture remains predicated and reality themselves demand philosophical André Gaudreault (2007) writes directly on diffusion theory and leans toward a reconsideration, even though it is not about this historical problem. massive Western modernity thesis. entirely clear in his account if a specific formation of power is at stake. I will return Needless to say, bracketing questions If I linger over (and somewhat reductively extract) this oscillation between to this. Suffice it to say at this juncture, about the material specificity of cinema and Cholodenko’s view of animation reprises looking at moving pictures within a broader the specificity thesis and the modernity thesis in film history and theory, it is because this is the oscillation between a specificity thesis framework of modern perception presents and a modernity thesis. On the one hand, a new set of questions. A certain paradox precisely where animation studies emerges, posing a very similar set of questions. his account tends not simply to bracket arises vis-à-vis the specificity of cinema in the specificity of animation or cinema but early film studies. Historically, arguments Animation studies gathers steam, for instance, at the same time that film history to situate animation as the site of non- about the specificity of cinema in contrast specificity or indeterminacy vis-à-vis cinema. to other media were crucial not only to the begins to bracket the specificity of cinema, opening cinema into media studies and Animation comes before film, subsumes and industrial establishment of the so-called underlies it, and opens and extends it. On ‘classical style’ but also to the development into general theories of the moving image, with film as one medium among others. the other hand, not surprisingly in light of of film theory and film studies. Noel Carroll Cholodenko’s vision of animation as a site (2004) calls this the ‘specificity thesis’, Animation studies arrives in conjunction with the modernity thesis of cinema, as of ontological indeterminacy at the heart of only to argue against it. He feels that the cinema, he associates animation primarily specificity thesis constrains each art or if ideally suited to contribute to general histories of the moving image and discussions with the postmodern. Much as Lyotard came medium to pursue only what it can do best — to see postmodernity as a site or moment as the critic defines it. In effect, Carroll calls of modern media conditions and perceptual formations. Nevertheless questions about of perpetual indeterminacy nascent within attention to the prescriptive and teleological modernity, Cholodenko inclines toward a implications of the specificity thesis. the distinctiveness or specificity of animation inevitably arise. rather massive postmodernity thesis in which Rather than dispense with the specificity animation at once anticipates and comes thesis altogether, however, early film studies after the modernity of cinema. tends to bracket the specificity of cinema. In The Limited Field As an introduction to an exceedingly other words, early film studies accepts the diverse collection of essays, this is a cannily history of the emergence of a set of specific In his introduction to The Illusion of ambitious and capacious vision of animation. formal conventions and industrial measures Cholodenko’s is a Janus-faced vision that that made ‘cinema’ what it is, but turns to a Life II, Alan Cholodenko initially situates the volume as a needed response to the allows animation at once to ground and to time before cinema in order to step outside ‘unground’ any particular study of animation. the prescriptive and teleological implications historical boom in animation, contrasting the ubiquity and centrality of animated Animation is at once a new object of of the specificity thesis. In effect, however, study and the anti-disciplinary object par it holds the specificity of cinema under forms with the dearth of intellectual inquiry. Subsequently, however, Cholodenko makes excellence. Thus we are invited to read any erasure. Specificity is presumed to come essay on animation, however localized and later. Bracketing the specificity of cinema clear that the study of animation cannot rest content with responding to new historical specific, from the angle of an inoperative specificity that foils and complicates any nor West. Yet her evocation of ‘The Bomb’ “it was Disney management’s insistence that, attempt at a disciplinary formation such as also implies a historically specific origin to despite its worldwide animation expertise, it animation studies. this non-locatable cute, even if that origin had never heard of Tezuka or of Kimba – that As if echoing the two-pronged gesture is traumatic and thus difficult to represent. they were not worthy of knowing about – of their editor, the essays in The Illusion of Moore makes clear that cute comes from which caused the entire controversy” (311). Life II fall neatly under two general headings, America, as did the atomic bombs. In other Such a politics of recognition feels heading in two directions. The first nine words, the trauma inherent in Japanese decidedly at odds with the deconstructive essays, grouped under such national rubrics cute implies a real origin and direction; play of animation envisioned by Cholodenko, as ‘Japan,’ ‘the United States’ and ‘Japan it is trauma vis-à-vis American power. and in which “a spectre haunts the animatic and the United States’, not only rely on Interestingly enough, Moore’s interpretation relation between the two nations, one… received national identities but also deal recalls arguments made popular by called ‘Japanimerica’” (55). The concern largely with ‘traditional’ cel animation, that conservative and rightwing commentators for recognition and identity that commonly is, animation composed primarily by applying in Japan in the 1990s. They argue that the arises around Japanese animations does not ink and colour to celluloid ‘cels’ that are trauma of postwar defeat, symbolised in the countenance a third spectral term as the then photographed. The latter seven essays atomic bombs, has so thoroughly distorted condition of (im)possibility for differentiating in The Illusion of Life II, under the general postwar Japan that younger generations have Japan and America. It gives identities aegis of the ‘expanded’ field of animation, no sense of nation, history, or responsibility. priority, and its logic is, in deconstructive focus more on CGI, computer games, and Some commentators see in Japanese cute a terms, supplemental. As such, discussions flight simulation, as well as animation in a refusal to grow up that derives from nuclear that explore specific features of anime can broader field of operations (such as character trauma and Japan’s defeat. Artist Murakami easily turn into proclamations of Japanese licensing). Simply put, it is as if there existed Takashi enshrined this logic in his 2005 ‘Little difference or even Oriental difference. The two fields of animation — an expanded Boy’ exhibition. Simply put, evocations of specificity thesis can quickly morph into the field and a contracted or limited field. The Japan’s nuclear trauma frequently imply an nation thesis or the exoticism of the Oriental expanded field conjures up a postmodernity ideology of national victomology. supplement. thesis (or a series of postmodernity theses) Moore, however, steers clear of In a lively and inspired exploration in which animation is a sort of omnivorous victomology, striving to move beyond her of how anime visualises the invisible yet mediator ideally suited to technologies that initial investment in the logic of origins palpable energies of sound, for instance, capture and recombine different media whereby Japan borrows or adapts American Philip Brophy turns to differences between digitally. Animation is a central contributor forms. Ultimately, in anime, she detects Western and Eastern thinking about matter to the formation of a general mediatic or Japan coming into its own, no longer a and energy in an attempt to bring specificity techno-economic condition. In contrast, passive borrower or adapter but now an to anime. He suggests that the visualization the limited field presumes defined places and active exchanger and trader. While she of sounds and forces in anime derive from identities that become manifest in specific presents this transformation in a relatively an Oriental tradition that gives force priority instances of animation. In effect, the limited positive light, I think that there are bleaker over matter, the invisible over the visible, and field gravitates toward a specificity thesis implications. For instance, Moore articulates by extension, the spiritual over the material, for animation; but rather than demonstrate this Japanese trading and exchanging vis- and the metaphysical over the physical. Here or argue for the specificity of animation, à-vis America, as if it were only possible for it is not so much Japanese identity as Eastern the essays tend to attribute its specificity to Japan to act on the world via a US-Japan spirituality that is at stake, and across a series underlying formations of national culture. circuit. What is more, to transform the US- of very different anime, Brophy finds that This tendency is most evident when Japanese Japan relation from dominator-dominated to their depictions of the sonic are consonant animation or anime is in question. equal partners, Moore must somehow lessen with Oriental thought. Oddly, however, Significantly, Japanese animation or domesticate the trauma of the atomic many of the features of Oriental thought in does not make an appearance within the bombs. This is precisely what she notes in Brophy’s essay — the vibrational whole, the expanded field of animation, even though, Japanese manga and anime: a transformation reverberation of the past in the present, the as Cholodenko observes, Japan is the world’s of nuclear trauma into a general critique emphasis on forces acting on forces — are largest producer of animation. Anime is of technology. The full implication of her central concerns of modern philosophy in constrained to the contracted and limited observations is that Japan emerges as a full Japan and the West. William Routt’s essay, field of animation, as if inherently. What trading partner with the US by transforming for instance, is also concerned with how is more, the essays on Japanese animation its traumatic experience of the atomic bombs the manga and anime versions of Gunmu consistently place it in dialogue with into a generalized vision of a technologized present something invisible yet somehow American animation and generally shore up world suitable for export. It seems that perceptible — the soul and life. Like Brophy, a sense of its unity and identity rather than mutations in cute make nuclear trauma he poses a phenomenological question — its diversity or multiplicity. Kosei Ono’s exportable and exchangeable within the US- how do we experience something invisible contribution, for instance, offers a brief Japan global partnership. or imperceptible in anime? Thus, alongside anecdotal history of animation in Japan in If Moore appears more cheerful than I Brophy’s account, Routt’s essay serves as which American animation is a constant about such developments, it is because at a reminder that the crucial question is not point of reference. He calls attention to some level her discussion picks up on a self/ whether anime is, in essence, traditional or citations of American cartoon characters in other dialectics of recognition (and a cultural modern, or Eastern or Western. Rather, the prewar Japanese animation and, even though hermeneutics) that almost invariably comes question is one of why resolutely modern he wishes to acknowledge the diversity of into play in discussions of Japan. Japan’s questions, when posed in the context of animation and individuality of Japanese values must be posited as different from manga or anime, so often imply a movement animators, he nonetheless defines Japanese those of the U.S. and at the same time must beyond Western modernity – either toward society (as homogeneity) in contrast to be recognized by the US. American fans the postmodern or toward the ancient East American society. In other words, in place often express a desire for fuller recognition or both at once. Here, too, Cholodenko’s of a specificity thesis or modernity thesis of of the artistry and other virtues of Japanese deconstructive sensibility invites us to detect animation, Ono provides a nation thesis, a animations, and the new visibility of anime a movement of supplementation vis-à-vis Japan thesis, in which Japanese animation within the American mainstream commonly anime, calculated to delimit and manage its tells us more about Japan than about became cause for celebration in the 1990s. surplus. animation. A politics of identity and recognition In an essay that delves into the dynamics Pauline Moore also uses Japanese frequently arises around anime. For instance, of dualism in animation (in the form of animation to talk about Japan, but her in a painstakingly researched essay that innocence versus experience), Jane Goodall discussion greatly complicates our image of addresses allegations that Disney’s Lion King uses an anime film, the soft porn rape Japan. She proposes that forms like manga borrowed directly from Tezuka Osamu’s Jungle monster fantasy Urotsukidoji, to exemplify a and anime “live out, that is, reanimate Emperor (aka Kimba the White Lion), without worldly and experienced mode of address. the trauma of The Bomb, as do the cute acknowledging its debt to the Japanese Calling attention to quasi-mythic structures characters found therein” (23). For Moore, master, Fred Patten ultimately concludes that of dualism in animation, Goodall largely the cute characters of manga and anime are the real scandal is not that Disney borrowed brackets questions about culture until the undecidable in terms of location or place, from Tezuka but that Disney refused to admit end of the essay where she cites, for ‘cultural neither Japan nor America, neither East that its animators knew of Tezuka. He writes, context’, Karel van Wolferen on how the “alleged absence of any fundamental dualism if by default. This default specificity thesis void. It is only through the king that we in traditional Japanese thought is extolled has consequences for situating anime within come to understand there is no actual locus even today” (169). The implication is that animation studies. Japanese animations of power” (329). In other words, the king is the anime film can thus stage or perform tend to be defined as modernist in advance like the phallus in Lacan, and animation the dualism to mock it, and Goodall challenges rather than as ‘classical’ or ‘institutionalized’, stain that forces a reckoning with castration. us to think about this humourous manner of which means that their modernism is also Thus Butler feels that “the ‘idealism’ of enacting dualism as fundamentally different an identity, a cultural context, a limited Spielberg and Disney offers a far more radical from poststructuralism. Yet, because Goodall field, and is thus constrained to yearn for deconstruction of capitalist ideology…”. turns to traditional Japanese thought to recognition within the expanded field They are “great critics of the postmodern” make her point, her observations about (transnational postmodernity), even while its (330). ‘mock dualism’ raise questions about how triumph there is presumed. Butler does not elaborate on capitalist she stages identities and oppositions, about Film theory and postcolonial theory have ideology or the postmodern, but because their performative status. What would it registered a similar impasse. In film theory, his emphasis is on subject formation via mean to see Japan animation as staging and the insistence on the classical Hollywood the structuration of the visual field in constructing ‘Japan’ rather than embodying style encouraged the notion that everything general (rather than animation specifically), or reflecting a received identity (traditional that did not strictly accord with Hollywood one surmises that ideology here refers to Japanese thought)? form constituted a modernist response or any structuration of visual field (subject This is the other face of deconstruction, even resistance. Entire national cinemas as formation) that hides or does not the flipside of Cholodenko’s Japanimerica. well as American films that disturbed the acknowledge its fundamental impossibility, The deconstructive sensibility encourages us classical style might equally well be construed its illusory and tautological nature, its point not merely to expose the tautological nature as modernist. Somewhat analogously, of internal otherness. In contrast, by staging of received identities but to account for how postcolonial scholars have recently begun an illusion of illusion, Spielberg and Disney something becomes present to begin with. In to express concern that deconstruction, as expose “this world itself as an illusion” (330). this respect it is noteworthy that the three used in postcolonial theory, has tended to Butler thus brings new theoretical rigor to the essays grouped under the rubric ‘The United generate ever more sophisticated studies of modernism implicit in prior essays, finding States’ do not fuss about American identity the West while unwittingly discovering pretty modernist texts and auteurs engaged in a or cultural context. Rather these essays much the same kind of otherness in every struggle against the illusion of plenitude (the address basic conflicts in value that emerge discussion of the non-West. Needless to say, imaginary) that masks the lack at the heart of across varieties of animation. Interesting the fault may not lay with deconstruction per subject formation. enough, it is Disney animation (or something se but with a general deconstructive manner Likewise, in an essay discussing at length like it) that provides the point of reference of thinking, where difference is posited as Derrida’s deconstruction of the metaphysics for articulating a critical modernism within difference vis-à-vis American or Western that gives ontological priority to speech American animation. With great subtlety, norms and conventions — explicitly or by over writing, Annemarie Jonson finds in Edward Colless shows how “the story of the default. In the essays on animation grouped Porky Pig’s stutter a deconstruction of little mermaid is an impure thing that excuses under national rubrics in Illusion of Life II, plenitude, life without death, and life without the image of a carnal embrace” (239-40), something similar happens, partly because difference that “hyberbolises nonplenitude, deftly revealing the sly machinations of desire the specificity of animation is assumed disclosing the thantic interval” (447). Much that make Disney’s Little Mermaid something and yet remains largely unspecified. As a as Butler explores the articulation of an very different from a sentimental child’s tale. consequence, to speak deconstructively, internal material limit to the illusion of Richard Thompson explores transformations animation surplus is staged as supplement. visual plenitude, Jonson discovers in the in the postwar American cartoon, grounding While this tendency becomes most evident pig’s stutter an internal material limit on the shift from prewar to postwar through in discussions of Japanese animation, spoken plenitude within animation — to wit, a contrast between Disney and Warner it is indicative of a general tendency to the stain as the condition of (im)possibility Bros. While Duck Amuck makes evident the imagine animation not in terms of a specific for seeing, writing as the condition of (im) breakdown in prewar unities of character ground, material conditions or orientations, possibility for speech, and death as the and narrative, it is ultimately in Robert technologies, discourses, power formations, or condition of (im)possibility for life. For me, Clampett’s The Great Piggy Bank Robbery that even modernity. Instead animation appears the interest of these kinds of deconstructive Thompson sees the deepest realization of the ideally suited to a renewal of modernism thought lies in their insistence on looking empty quest film, built on a series of deferrals and its modalities (vernacular nationalism, at the internal limit of a material formation and the futility of desire — in other words, Orientalism, supra-humanism). The material or modality. What strikes me as odd, a true cinematic modernism comparable to limits of animation studies appear almost however, is their lack of interest in animation Citizen Kane. Freida Riggs defends Ralph synonymous with those of modernism. The specifically — one might say the essence or Bakshi’s use of rotoscoping of live action limited field thus forces us to ask: what is ontology of animation. Instead what comes footage in The Lord of the Rings, which critics the future of modernism? Why modernism to the fore is a deconstruction of the essence almost universally maligned. She sees in today? or ontology of the human. this alleged failure of animation a raid on Ideals that recalls Husserl’s vain search Thus, in a beautifully turned for a foundation for philosophy, wherein The Expanded Field deconstruction of mechanism versus she detects the outlines of a practical and animism in the history of Western thought, Cholodenko shows how the mechanism has conceptual emphasis on process, and endless While the essays grouped under the quest. operated as the unacknowledged condition expanded field are equally diverse, as a whole of (im)possibility for animistic schools Alongside the individual merits of these they present a shift toward questions of of thought, and conversely the living or essays, what interests me is the overall power. Rex Butler’s essay makes for a good animated for mechanistic thought, which tendency to discover, or rather to re- transition, for, in a manner reminiscent of tautology extends into film and animation discover, modernism through highly localized Zizek and psychoanalytic theory, Butler sees theory. He then proposes a third term, the discussions of examples of animation. Film in animation a point of departure for a careful automaton, as a sort of impossible ground studies historically developed an emphasis reading of the work of negativity within for both schools of thought. Here, too, on film’s specificity, which spurred the popular American films. An animation-like deconstruction of ontology moves toward production of a ‘classical film style’ or an moment in Schindler’s List — a girl hand- the human, and the human automaton ‘institutionalized mode of representation’ (to coloured in red within the black-and-white takes priority. He writes, “man is always use Noel Burch’s term), as well as a critique film – disturbs and exposes the mechanisms already hybrid, ‘man-machine’ — ‘animate of classical institutionalized conventions. In of fantasy for it bears “some analogy to what inanimate’…, what operates in both domains contrast, the above essays on animation at the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan spoke of of artificing the human — the animistic and once presume and bypass the articulation as the ‘stain’, that place in the image from the mechanistic — is simulation, the human of a specificity thesis for animation. Yet which the image looks at you” (320). Butler is always already a simulation…” (494). it seems that Disney animation comes to finds analogous negativity in the figure of the While Cholodenko’s account opens into stand in for a ‘classical animation style’ or an extraterrestrial in E.T. and in the king-father broader questions about the fascination with ‘institutionalized mode of animation.’ It is in The Lion King. In the latter instance, he life and movement as well as the ground for vis-à-vis Disney that modernism emerges, as concludes, “the king is the place holder of mimesis, it nonetheless dwells on the human face to face with humanoid automatons, responses to competitive marketplaces the study of animation promises something dolls, demons, cyborgs, and other folds of the around the globe” (421). On the hand, more than a simple repetition of modernism human. he sees the enforcement of intellectual and humanism, potentially inviting us to At stake in these variations on the property and copyright laws as the basic confront the physiology of power inherent deconstructive turn, then, is the status of the operating reality of the animation industry. in the intersection of the animate typologies human and humanism. While one might On the other hand, he considers the seven with new information technologies and well ask if such approaches to animation main criticisms of licensed merchandise, transnational capital. are not narrowly axed on the human finding that such criticism typically entailed an elitism blind to its own practices and (anthropocentrism) to the exclusion of other Thomas Lamarre teaches in East Asian material essences and ontologies (cinema, values, while projecting them onto children. Countering such criticisms, Schaffer Studies and Art History & Communications animation, media), there also seems to be Studies at McGill University. He is author something about animation that returns us concludes, “at the heart of merchandising and children’s entertainment lies not the of Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of to a confrontation with the human, which Sensation and Inscription (2000), Shadows on might productively be taken up in greater rejection of humanism in a festival of aimless effect but rather the recruitment of the power the Screen: Tanizaki Jun’ichirô on Cinema and detail. The other essays within the expanded “Oriental” Aesthetics (2005), and Difference field which address power formations also of affect liberated from its humanistic bonds” (421). In contrast to Schaffer’s emphasis on in Motion: How Anime Thinks Technology consistently return to questions about (forthcoming). the human. Patrick Crogan, for instance, the image, Crawford, for strategic reasons, provides an overview and finely honed wishes to dispense with image analysis analysis of the military development of flight to underscore the impact of character References simulation and its impact on virtual reality. properties. Yet surely the dynamics of the Insofar as he focuses on technologies, his image are as real as those of the market and corporate law. If we take up the challenges Carroll, Noel (2004) “The Specificity Thesis.” In point of departure promises to part with th anthropocentrism. At the same time, issued by both Schaffer and Crawford, both Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. 6 perhaps because Virilio’s discussion of the the ‘production machine’ and the ‘image Edition. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New logistics of perception consistently provides a machine’ demand further attention, as does York: Oxford University Press. point of reference for him, Crogan’s critique the relation (and non-relation) between them. Crawford indicates as much when he of technology implies a sense of the complete Cholodenko, Alan (ed.) (2007) The Illusion of Life II: puts forth the question of “the power of the loss of a human-scaled and human-centred More Essays on Animation. Sydney: Power Publications. life world, albeit less explicitly than Virilio. persona rendered as image”. But it is still the human that is at stake, In assessing the video game Street Fighter, almost nostalgically. Crogan’s emphasis accused of inciting racial violence in the --- (1991) The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation. makes us think about what is at stake in the wake of the Rodney King riots, David Ellison Sydney: Power Publications. deconstructive turn of other essays. How first considers how the impulse toward does the deconstruction of the human privatisation and securitisation has been Gaudreault, André (2007) “From ‘Primitive Cinema’ respond to the technological derealization of extended to information, such screens and to ‘Kine-Attractography.’” In The Cinema of Attractions the human world announced in Crogan and data flows have become as much a part of Reloaded. Ed. Wanda Strauven. Amsterdam: Virilio? protective siege-resistant architectures as Amsterdam University Press. The human also stages its return in a metal or other materials. Critical attention, brilliant essay that considers in detail the he notes, gravitated toward video games, ontology of animation (the essence of its particularly those featuring combat, as a Gould, Stephen Jay (1992) “A Biological Hommage technology, as it were). William Schaffer convenient scapegoat – whence the notion to Mickey Mouse.” In The Panda’s Thumb: More considers the consequences of the immobility of the Gulf War as a Nintendo War. Ellison, Reflections on Natural History. New York: W. W. of the camera in animation. With Gilles however, finds that Street Fighter “utterly Norton. Deleuze’s ontology of cinema and its subverts” the “kind of racist typology” in which “their body speaks the truth of their emphasis on camera movement as a point of Hansen, Miriam (1999) “The Mass Production of the reference, Schaffer stresses “the performance character”, a mode that he sees prevalent in other visions of interactive or immersive Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism,” of an invisible hand” (466) in animation, Modernism/Modernity 6.2 (1999): 59-77. different from yet analogous to the mobile technologies (360-61). Once again, as if camera of cinema. For Schaffer, animation ineluctably, questions about animation in thus entails a tension between the animator’s relation to power formations direct attention Laloux, René (2006) Ces dessins qui bougent, control over the character and the animator’s toward the human, here articulated in 1982-1992: cent ans de cinéma d’animation. Paris: invisibility, resulting in a control image character ‘types’. While I am not sure that I Dreamland. agree with Ellison that Street Fighter subverts in which the “position of the controller, Manovich, Lev (1999) “What is Digital Cinema?” invulnerable and all powerful, is the one all racist typology by assuming that “all races and species are capable of violence” (360), In The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media characters strive to capture for themselves Cambridge: MIT. as their chaotic encounters unfold…” (471). his comments are especially interesting in Thus the ontology of the human reappears, light of the emphasis in other discussions in the form of allegories of ‘divine creative of animation on character properties, Oshii Mamoru (2004) Subete no eiga wa anime ni naru. freedom’ versus ‘impotence’. While Schaffer humanoid automatons, the invisible control Tokyo: Tokuma shoten. nicely avoids psychologising this relation, of characters, and even stuttering humanoid the promise of looking at the ontology of animals. Singer, Ben (2001) Melodrama and Modernity: Early animation gradually gives way to an account The study of animation in the expanded Sensational Cinema and its Contexts. New York: of how animated characters find themselves field of power relations consistently gestures Columbia University Press. in an animatic abyss (which contrasts sharply toward the conditions of (im)possibility with Deleuze’s divergent series). It is as for human existence — but not simply if the indeterminacy proper to animation as universal ontology but as biopolitics. becomes displaced onto the characters’ Maybe it is here that studies addressing experience of a crisis in authority or ‘natural’ animation in its specificity might shed new sovereignty. But that crisis is as much an light on contemporary power formations effect of anthropomorphism in analysis as it is by focusing an inquiry on the material of animation. limits of animation. One of the strengths An equally challenging essay by Ben of The Illusion of Life II as a collection Crawford on character licensing and anticipating the current boom of interest animation is especially provocative in light in transnational flows of animation comes of Schaffer’s emphasis on animator and of its demonstration that it is not simply character. Crawford stresses “a collaborative, the illusion of life that is at stake but the corporate model of authorship, one politics of life. Thus the reappearance of conceived of as operating within strategic modernist and humanist conceits around