The chapter Issues with Representation spoke about how forms and characters are used both positively and negatively to represent human traits, ideas, and abstract concepts. The form of the character takes place of the 'actor' in the framework of an animated film, but animated forms are not subject to the same laws of physics that actual, physical characters are. In their contexts, animated forms are able to carry powers of abstraction and symbolism that human beings cannot. In this way, animated characters can surpass and ascend their social, biological, and political limitations.
Something that is becoming more and more apparent throughout this course is that animation cannot be analyzed in the same manner as traditional film. It's hard to imagine Mickey Mouse or Tom and Jerry as objects or things rather than "people" or "characters." But that's what they are. They're formal entities made of line and paint. Mickey Mouse is an idea before he's a mouse or a man. This is both disheartening and liberating, as it allows an analysis unique to animation, but it also dehumanizes my favorite characters and destroys the suspension of disbelief. After reading the section on gender bending, especially, I doubt I'll be able to simply ignore the underlying gender tensions any longer. It's difficult to not see the overtly sexual undercurrents within many classic cartoons, especially as my own personality and sexuality are constantly being defined and developed.
What about everybody else? Does anybody else resent the fact that the more theory that is read, the further from the material the viewer is pushed?
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Hmm...I guess my answer to your question is yes and no. Yes, you get further from the material in the sense that you don't look at cartoons with "kid eyes" or that innocence that you used to anymore. But no, because reading theory makes you understand more deep concepts, are you were pointing out ("Mickey Mouse is an idea before he's a mouse or a man"). What you understand after reading is that there is something behind and sometimes that something I don't know if I would qualify as "liberating" as you did. I'd rather prefer to use "surprising" or "disturbing" in some cases.
ReplyDeleteFor example, for me was discovering that The Little Mermaid, the story that I've watched so many times when I was a girl, was basically saying that "a woman has to stay silent if she wants to stay next to a man" (The Little Mermaid loses her voice in exchange to go to the man world and meet the prince). That's why I use disturbing here. How a cartoon that you have loved so much can suddenly, after a reading, become a story with such a retrograde message?
Anyway, as you, I am discovering a new way of looking at cartoons this semester!
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