Ways of Being: Identity and Hollywood Animation

Abstract

This chapter examines how contemporary animated films have negotiated changes in attitudes towards individual and group identity, particularly (though not exclusively) in relation to gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity. One of the central projects of post-1990s Hollywood animation is that of accommodating difference. This is partly a matter of commercial pragmatism: films must address a pluralistic, global audience to remain profitable, and therefore must be able to reconcile a multitude of different interests, backgrounds and perspectives. However, it also responds to current debates regarding the social desirability, and the political capital, of diversity in its many forms. This chapter is concerned not only with how different kinds of identity are represented in contemporary animation, but also how valorisations of difference are reconciled with the utopianism traditionally embodied by the Hollywood family film.