Canterbury Christ Church University’s repository of research outputs http://create.canterbury.ac.uk Please cite this publication as follows: Pallant, C. (2013) New York: the animated city. Comparative American Studies, 11 (4). pp. 349-360. ISSN 1477-5700. Link to official URL (if available): http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/1477570013Z.00000000056 This version is made available in accordance with publishers’ policies. All material made available by CReaTE is protected by intellectual property law, including copyright law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Contact:
[email protected] New York: The Animated City Chris Pallant Canterbury Christ Church University Abstract The urban landscape of New York City is one that is familiar to many, but through the medium of animation this familiarity has been consistently challenged. Often metamorphic, and always meticulously constructed, animated imagery encourages reflective thinking. Focussing on the themes of construction, destruction, and interactivity, this article seeks to cast critical light upon the animated double life that New York City has lived through the following moving image texts: Disney’s Fantasia 2000 (1999), Patrick Jean’s computer- generated short Pixels (2009), and Rockstar Games’ open-world blockbuster Grand Theft Auto IV (2008). Keywords animation, cinema, Disney, Fantasia 2000, Grand Theft Auto IV, New York, Pixels, video games Introduction Of all the major global cities, New York ‘is perhaps the most storied, photographed and – of course – filmed on earth. A capital of culture, finance, politics and business, an entry point for immigrants, an empire for crime lords and, subsequently, the setting for a multitude of movies, New York is a uniquely cinematic city’ (Harris, 2012: 5).