“Experi-mental” by Esther Leslie,
from “Hollywood Flatlands: Animation Critical Theory and the
Avant-Garde” (2002)
“...[Emile Cohl's Fantasmagorie]
has presented an illogical narrative of cruelty and torture executed
by people and things at war with each other. But the violence is
painless, dreamlike, as if it were of a utopian transfiguration of
actuality's discord. And, at the end, the clown, suffering no
after-effects from being decapitated twice in one minute, floats off
in an undefined spatial void. From the very first,
animation, self-reflexive and unmasking, establishes
a circuit of life and destruction. Animation,
the giving of life, battles with annihilation, and always overcomes,
always reasserts the principle of motion, and continuation and
renewal.”
-a “sound byte”
of the text
“Phantasmagoric representations revelled in their technologically enhanced
ability to contrive a fraudulent presence” - not
much has changed since the 1790s! (“SEE IT IN
*3D*”)
Magic lanterns,
etc. were eventually replaced with cinema – both had a power over
people (fetish commodity)
Being invested with
power made them ANIMATE before drawn animation existed – giving
inanimate objects personalities, as many early cartoons did*, was the
next logical step
*J. Stuart
Blackton's “The Haunted House” (1907) used real objects; Emile
Cohl stuck to drawn work
In the 1910s
EVERYONE except Winsor McCay invented labour-saving methods
The Fleischers
popularised animation as a short character-based sketches in 1915
with “Out of the Inkwell”
Otto Messmer
continued the tradition of drawing vs. artist started by Cohl -
“Trials of a Movie Cartoonist” (1916)
“Feline Follies”
(1919) used fairytale logic in a relentlessly cruel world; the
character who became Felix the Cat was based on Charlie Chaplain (a
victim) but found solutions to his problems where Chaplain could not
– thanks to being animated
The Russian
performer Shklovsky (correctly – CGI) predicted the future of
cinema might belong to animation – not theatre-style acting
Walt Disney's early
cartoons were notable not for the animation but for always having a
HOOK (“Alice in Cartoonland”)
Eventually he and
Ub Iwerks created Micky Mouse, who gradually became more of a role
model for children – animation shaping society (propaganda?)
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