ORBIT - Online Repository of Birkbeck Institutional Theses Enabling Open Access to Birkbecks Research Degree output Animating perception: British cartoons from music hall to cinema, 1880 - 1928 http://bbktheses.da.ulcc.ac.uk/28/ Version: Full Version Citation: Cook, Malcolm (2013) Animating perception: British cartoons from music hall to cinema, 1880 - 1928. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London. c 2013 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copyright law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit guide Contact: email Animating perception: British cartoons from music hall to cinema, 1880 - 1928 by Malcolm Cook Thesis submitted to BIRKBECK, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (PhD) (VISUAL ARTS AND MEDIA) October 2012 1 Declaration of original work The work presented in this thesis is my own and has not been submitted for any other degree. All sources of information have been acknowledged. Signature.............................................................. Date.............................................................. 2 Acknowledgments Beyond the sources recorded in the footnotes and bibliography of this thesis, many people have provided assistance and input, and I would like to credit and thank them publicly here. Ian Christie has provided invaluable advice and ideas, allowing me to shape my own field, while gently steering me away from trouble. His boundless knowledge and enthusiasm are an inspiration. Mike Allen, Laura Mulvey, Dorota Ostrowska, and all the staff and students in the Department of History of Art and Screen Media have provided guidance, encouragement, and discussion that have contributed enormously to my work. Birkbeck is a unique institution in its commitment to combining excellence with evening teaching, which has made it possible for this thesis to be completed part-time. That assistance included funding for my fees for two years, through a College Research Studentship, for which I am grateful. Donald Crafton demonstrated great insight and made many helpful comments and suggestions in performing my MPhil/PhD upgrade. He has continued to be generous with his time and knowledge in later dialogues. The knowledge and skills I gained during my undergraduate degree at the University of Warwick between 1994 and 1997 are evident throughout this work and are a testament to the teaching I received there. Without Victor Perkins’ inspiration, this thesis would not end on a chapter length analysis of a four minute film sequence. The members of the Society for Animation Studies and Domitor, and especially the friends I have met attending their conferences, have provided a knowledgeable audience for my work and have challenged my understanding of their specialist areas. I have also had the privilege of presenting my work at a number of other conferences at which questions, comments, suggestions, and discussions have greatly improved this study. My thanks to the organisers and delegates of ‘Using Moving Image Archives’ (2009); ‘Music and Modernism’ (2009); ‘Sonic Futures NECS Conference’ (2011); ‘The Second Birth of Cinema’ (2011); ‘Sights and Sites: Topographical Approaches to British Cinema’ (2011); ‘The Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain’ (2011). 3 Daphne Jones was generous and hospitable in sharing her father’s archive relating to his career as a lightning cartoonist. I am grateful for the permission to use some of that material here. Patricia Cook, Lucie Dutton, and David Williams provided specific research materials that contributed to my work. I am appreciative of belonging to a wider group of researchers who unselfishly share resources in this manner. It is impossible to describe the extent of the love mine and my wife’s parents give and the how far it underpins everything I have done. My thanks to them and our families, both close and extended, for the unwavering support they provide. Over the past six years, in parallel to this thesis, Clara and Oliver Cook have grown from nothing into much more than I could have imagined. I hope when one day they come to read this they will understand that anything is possible if you put your mind to it, as well as realising that all those episodes of Paddington, Mr Benn, and Peppa Pig, along with all those Pixar films, weren’t just for them. Most importantly, my wife Rachel has provided unwavering love and support. Without her this thesis, and its author, would be nothing. I love her very much and look forward to spending the rest of our lives together, in the present tense. 4 Abstract This thesis examines the history of animated cartoons in Britain between 1880 and 1928, identifying a body of work that has been largely ignored by film and animation historians, covering the production, distribution, and exhibition of these films. Throughout this history, graphic arts - especially print cartooning and illustration - and the music-hall lightning cartoon act are found to have played a formative role in British animated cartoons. The artists who made the first British animated cartoons were almost exclusively drawn from one of those two fields and thus this work may be considered to form a parallel history of ‘artists’ film’. They brought with them to film a range of concerns from those prior forms that would shape British animated cartoons. Examining that context provides an understanding of the ways British animated cartoons developed in technologic, economic, and aesthetic terms. This work includes the first in-depth history of the music-hall lightning cartoon act, which finds that it anticipates cinematic animation, featuring qualities such as transformation, the movement of line drawings, and the desire to bring drawings to life. Building on this history, a new critical framework for examining these films aesthetically is provided, emphasising the role of the spectator and their perceptual processes. This framework draws upon the work of E.H. Gombrich and Sergei Eisenstein, and extends it to include recent findings from neuroscientific fields. The result is an original aesthetic reading of this body of work, which finds the films to have a deep engagement with the basic perceptual processes involved in viewing moving line drawings. 5 Table of Contents Declaration of original work .................................................................................. 2 Acknowledgments .................................................................................................. 3 Abstract .................................................................................................................. 5 List of figures ....................................................................................................... 10 List of tables ......................................................................................................... 10 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 12 British animated cartoons: A neglected field of study ..................................... 12 Two approaches to animation history .......................................................... 13 Terminology and boundaries of field ............................................................... 16 ‘All British’ .................................................................................................. 16 Animated Cartoons....................................................................................... 17 1880 - 1928 .................................................................................................. 19 Argument ......................................................................................................... 20 Institutional influence of prior forms: Alternative ‘artists’ film’ ................. 20 Aesthetic influence of prior forms: The interrogation of, and appeal to, base perception ..................................................................................................... 22 Methodology and theoretical framework ......................................................... 24 Chapter Summaries .......................................................................................... 26 Chapter 1. Music hall and print cartooning: The desire for animation ........ 26 Chapter 2. From music hall to cinemas: Animated cartoons emerge .......... 27 Chapter 3. British animated cartoons and the international film industry ... 27 Chapter 4. Theories of aesthetic perception: Gombrich, Eisenstein, and Luria ............................................................................................................. 28 Chapter 5. Animating perception: An aesthetic approach to British animated cartoons ........................................................................................................ 28 Chapter 6. The contributions of neuroscience: A case study ....................... 29 Chapter 1. Music hall and print cartooning: The desire for animation ................ 31 Music hall and the lightning cartoon ................................................................ 32 The lightning cartoon: The earliest British animated cartoons .................... 32 Music Hall .................................................................................................... 33 The lightning cartoon: A music-hall genre .................................................. 35 The narrative of perception .........................................................................