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CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD ANIMATION 66543_Brown.indd543_Brown.indd i 330/09/200/09/20 66:43:43 PPMM Traditions in American Cinema Series Editors Linda Badley and R. Barton Palmer Titles in the series include: The ‘War on Terror’ and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second Terence McSweeney American Postfeminist Cinema: Women, Romance and Contemporary Culture Michele Schreiber In Secrecy’s Shadow: The OSS and CIA in Hollywood Cinema 1941–1979 Simon Willmetts Indie Reframed: Women’s Filmmaking and Contemporary American Independent Cinema Linda Badley, Claire Perkins and Michele Schreiber (eds) Vampires, Race and Transnational Hollywoods Dale Hudson Who’s in the Money? The Great Depression Musicals and Hollywood’s New Deal Harvey G. Cohen Engaging Dialogue: Cinematic Verbalism in American Independent Cinema Jennifer O’Meara Cold War Film Genres Homer B. Pettey (ed.) The Style of Sleaze: The American Exploitation Film, 1959–1977 Calum Waddell The Franchise Era: Managing Media in the Digital Economy James Fleury, Bryan Hikari Hartzheim, and Stephen Mamber (eds) The Stillness of Solitude: Romanticism and Contemporary American Independent Film Michelle Devereaux The Other Hollywood Renaissance Dominic Lennard, R. Barton Palmer and Murray Pomerance (eds) Contemporary Hollywood Animation: Style, Storytelling, Culture and Ideology Since the 1990s Noel Brown www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/tiac 66543_Brown.indd543_Brown.indd iiii 330/09/200/09/20 66:43:43 PPMM CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD ANIMATION Style, Storytelling, Culture and Ideology Since the 1990s Noel Brown 66543_Brown.indd543_Brown.indd iiiiii 330/09/200/09/20 66:43:43 PPMM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Noel Brown, 2021 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 10/12.5 Adobe Sabon by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 1056 4 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 1057 1 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 1058 8 (epub) The right of Noel Brown to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 66543_Brown.indd543_Brown.indd iivv 330/09/200/09/20 66:43:43 PPMM CONTENTS List of Figures and Tables vii Acknowledgements ix 1. Change and Continuity: The Making of Contemporary Hollywood Animation 1 Production Trends 2 Animation and Hollywood Cinema Since the 1970s 6 Style and Aesthetics 22 Storytelling and Narrative 28 Critical Approach 39 2. Crossing Boundaries: Families, Audiences and the Mainstream Aesthetic 41 The Family Audience 43 Repositioning the Family: The Lion King and Toy Story 47 Family and Kinship 54 Family and Individualism 67 Child–Adult Crossovers 74 3. Hollywood Animation, Late Modernity and Contemporary America 78 Postmodern Irony: DreamWorks and Beyond 79 Social Comment and Contemporary America 92 Conclusion 107 66543_Brown.indd543_Brown.indd v 330/09/200/09/20 66:43:43 PPMM CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD ANIMATION 4. Ways of Being: Identity and Hollywood Animation 109 Disney in Transition: Sexual Politics in the Early Films of the ‘Disney Renaissance’ 109 Diversity and Contemporary Disney Films 114 Women and the Contemporary Princess Film 128 Models of Masculinity 137 Conclusion 142 5. On the Borders: Children’s Horror and Indiewood Animation 144 Children’s Horror and Contemporary Hollywood 145 ‘Indiewood’ Animation 161 Hybridisation 171 Conclusion 175 Conclusion 178 Notes 185 Select Filmography 206 Select Bibliography 209 Index 213 vi 66543_Brown.indd543_Brown.indd vvii 330/09/200/09/20 66:43:43 PPMM LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figures 2.1 Scar’s POV shot of Mufasa’s death (The Lion King, Disney, 1994) 48 2.2 The reformed Gru with his adopted family (Despicable Me, Illumination, 2010) 61 2.3 Mr Incredible’s malaise when Helen supersedes him in the action stakes (Incredibles 2, Pixar, 2018) 70 3.1 Shrek bathing in mud: the child-oriented pictorial counterpoint to the youth-centred soundtrack (Shrek, DreamWorks, 2001) 91 3.2 Father and son engage in brand-based play (The Lego Movie, Warner Bros., 2014) 96 3.3 The post-apocalyptic city still haunted by consumerist slogans (WALL-E, Pixar, 2008) 103 4.1 The noble white man and the free-spirited Native American woman (Pocahontas, Disney, 1995) 121 4.2 The restored Te Fiti as an image of nurturing feminine fecundity (Moana, Disney, 2016) 127 4.3 The peaceful accord between Hiccup and Toothless (How to Train Your Dragon, DreamWorks, 2010) 140 4.4 Personifi cations of ‘bad masculinity’ attempt to come to terms with their destructive inclinations (Wreck-It Ralph, Disney, 2012) 141 5.1 The unconventional child and her grey, barren everyday world (Coraline, Laika, 2009) 148 66543_Brown.indd543_Brown.indd vviiii 330/09/200/09/20 66:43:43 PPMM CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD ANIMATION 5.2 The abjection of Prenderghast’s tongue lolling on to Norman’s horrifi ed face (ParaNorman, Laika, 2012) 153 5.3 Rango engages in existentialist dialogue with The Man with No Name (Rango, Paramount, 2011) 170 5.4 Kubo’s plangent reunion with the apparitions of his dead parents (Kubo and the Two Strings, Laika, 2016) 175 Tables 1.1 Theatrically released animated fi ction features produced in the United States 1937–2019 3 1.2 Theatrically released fi lms by major US animation studios 1990–2019 6 1.3 Number of animated fi lms in list of top ten highest-grossing fi lms worldwide per year 1989–2019 14 1.4 Top ten highest-grossing fi lms of each major Hollywood animation studio 15 1.5 Estimated budgets of top fi ve highest-grossing Hollywood animated fi lms per fi ve-year intervals vs those of top-grossing live-action fi lms of the same period 22 1.6 Average shot length (ASL) of select Hollywood animated features 1941–2018 27 viii 66543_Brown.indd543_Brown.indd vviiiiii 330/09/200/09/20 66:43:43 PPMM ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My fi rst thanks go to the series editors, Linda Badley and Barton Palmer, for their enthusiasm for the book, and to Gillian Leslie, Richard Strachan, Anita Joseph, Fiona Conn and everyone at Edinburgh University Press for their pro- fessionalism, good humour and patience. (I fi rst started work on this book in 2014, and there were times when the term ‘suspended animation’ wouldn’t stop springing to mind . .). With typical intellectual generosity, Bruce Babington and Peter Krämer – two of the best scholars I know – read and offered invaluable suggestions on the book throughout the writing process. The book is richer for their ideas and constructive criticisms; quite a few of its fl aws are no doubt due to failing to follow their advice more carefully. I’ve had many conversations over the years with friends and colleagues that have informed the ideas in this book in one way or another. In no particular order, I’d like to thank Filipa Antunes, Robin Brown, Peter Clark, Joshua Gulam, Paul Johnston, Catherine Lester, Stephen McLoughlin, Lucy Pearson, Kimberley Reynolds, Jeffrey Richards, Michael Shaftoe, Susan Smith, Sam Summers, Yannis Tzioumakis, and my students on the BA Film & Visual Culture and MA Film, Media and Society programmes at Liverpool Hope University. Finally, thanks and love to my parents, Alan and Kate, for all their help and support over the years; to my brother Robin and sister-in-law Helen, who put me up for a year and a half when I fi rst moved to Liverpool; and to Mauricio, for keeping me relatively sane and for (mostly) putting up with my seemingly endless absences while writing this book. ix 66543_Brown.indd543_Brown.indd iixx 330/09/200/09/20 66:43:43 PPMM 66543_Brown.indd543_Brown.indd x 330/09/200/09/20 66:43:43 PPMM 1. CHANGE AND CONTINUITY: THE MAKING OF CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD ANIMATION Until the 1990s, animation occupied a fairly marginal presence in Hollywood. Today, it is at the heart of the industry. This transformation did not occur overnight; it refl ects a number of seismic changes in industry and style. The most visible point of difference is the near-wholesale reinvention of a primarily cel-animated medium to one that is almost entirely computer-animated. How- ever, we have also seen the emergence of several rivals to Disney’s traditional pre-eminence in the animation marketplace, leading to a huge surge in produc- tion from the stop-start production rhythms of Disney’s ‘classical’ era to the latter-day, year-round proliferation of major animated features; a broadening of the aesthetic and narrative horizons of Hollywood animation to encompass new genres and stylistic approaches; the continued rise of multimedia ‘family entertainment’ franchises built around tent-pole animated blockbusters; and, fi nally, an ongoing blurring of boundaries between animation and live-action. Put simply, animation is now at the centre not only of the fi lm industry, but of contemporary popular culture. This book charts the rise of the Hollywood animated feature since the 1990s. In the process, it investigates developments in industry and style, identifi es nar- rative and thematic patterns, and explores how animation responds to and recapitulates the values, beliefs, hopes and fears of the nation. As Paul Wells observes, mainstream animation in the United States has the capacity to offer important insights into society, ‘aligning with, and depicting the most human 1 66543_Brown.indd543_Brown.indd 1 330/09/200/09/20 66:43:43 PPMM CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD ANIMATION of needs, desires, thoughts and feelings’.1 Equally, it reaches out towards an all-inclusive, global audience through the provision of narrative strategies and the recapitulation of humanistic values that resonate with international audi- ences of all ages and backgrounds.
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