Pub Date : 2021-01-19DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0004
Noel J. Brown
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.
{"title":"Ways of Being: Identity and Hollywood Animation","authors":"Noel J. Brown","doi":"10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0004","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":427575,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Hollywood Animation","volume":"2007 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130633091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-19DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0003
Noel J. Brown
One of the primary distinguishing features of post-1990s Hollywood animation is its foregrounding of contemporary culture and society. While many of the ‘classic’ Disney films are set in fantastical or fairy tale landscapes geographically and temporally removed from everyday life (‘once upon a time…’), most animated features from the early 1990s onwards are self-conscious artefacts of late modernity. There are two primary manifestations of the foregrounding of contemporary culture in post-1990s Hollywood animation. The first, and most immediately visible, is (a usually comic) intertextuality that takes the form of an intensified referentiality to other works of popular culture and modern life more broadly. The second form is that of social commentary, which is often satirical in nature and tends to be a more abiding thematic focus than the intertextual allusion. This chapter argues that both forms serve a similar function: they are strategies of proximation that anchor films to recognisable and identifiable situations and events.
{"title":"Hollywood Animation, Late Modernity and Contemporary America","authors":"Noel J. Brown","doi":"10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"One of the primary distinguishing features of post-1990s Hollywood animation is its foregrounding of contemporary culture and society. While many of the ‘classic’ Disney films are set in fantastical or fairy tale landscapes geographically and temporally removed from everyday life (‘once upon a time…’), most animated features from the early 1990s onwards are self-conscious artefacts of late modernity. There are two primary manifestations of the foregrounding of contemporary culture in post-1990s Hollywood animation. The first, and most immediately visible, is (a usually comic) intertextuality that takes the form of an intensified referentiality to other works of popular culture and modern life more broadly. The second form is that of social commentary, which is often satirical in nature and tends to be a more abiding thematic focus than the intertextual allusion. This chapter argues that both forms serve a similar function: they are strategies of proximation that anchor films to recognisable and identifiable situations and events.","PeriodicalId":427575,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Hollywood Animation","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116294755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-19DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0001
Noel J. Brown
In setting the scene, the opening chapter does four things. First, it surveys production trends in Hollywood feature animation from the 1930s to the present. Second, it presents an overview of the major changes in the Hollywood film industry since the 1970s, contextualising the resurgence of animation within developments in live-action cinema, family entertainment and multimedia conglomeration. Third, it examines the stylistic continuities and changes in post-1990s Hollywood animation, particularly with regards to the rise of computer animation. And fourth, it weighs the recurrent narrative structures and mythological influences on the form against more recent changes in storytelling conventions.
{"title":"Change and Continuity: The Making of Contemporary Hollywood Animation","authors":"Noel J. Brown","doi":"10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"In setting the scene, the opening chapter does four things. First, it surveys production trends in Hollywood feature animation from the 1930s to the present. Second, it presents an overview of the major changes in the Hollywood film industry since the 1970s, contextualising the resurgence of animation within developments in live-action cinema, family entertainment and multimedia conglomeration. Third, it examines the stylistic continuities and changes in post-1990s Hollywood animation, particularly with regards to the rise of computer animation. And fourth, it weighs the recurrent narrative structures and mythological influences on the form against more recent changes in storytelling conventions.","PeriodicalId":427575,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Hollywood Animation","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121252213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-19DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0005
Noel J. Brown
This chapter focuses on a recent tradition of Hollywood animated films which mine the intersection between the ‘mainstream’ and ‘cult’ firmaments. While there is a long history of experimental or leftfield animation in the United States, the films discussed here are characterised by a duality specific to post-1990s Hollywood cinema: they target a mass market while simultaneously addressing audiences that may reject mainstream animation in its more conventional iterations. The first half of this chapter examines the ‘children’s horror film’, a cycle that presents grotesque imagery with sufficient wit to appeal to leftfield sensibilities while still delivering the pleasing emotive content associated with mainstream family entertainment. The second half discusses ‘indiewood animation’ films, which often exhibit a comparatively cerebral patented kookiness and trippy, offbeat humour. Collectively, the ‘children’s horror’ and ‘indiewood’ animated films represent a compromise between the perceived requirements of mass audiences and the promise of additional credibility and cachet associated with cult cinema.
{"title":"On the Borders: Children’s Horror and Indiewood Animation","authors":"Noel J. Brown","doi":"10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on a recent tradition of Hollywood animated films which mine the intersection between the ‘mainstream’ and ‘cult’ firmaments. While there is a long history of experimental or leftfield animation in the United States, the films discussed here are characterised by a duality specific to post-1990s Hollywood cinema: they target a mass market while simultaneously addressing audiences that may reject mainstream animation in its more conventional iterations. The first half of this chapter examines the ‘children’s horror film’, a cycle that presents grotesque imagery with sufficient wit to appeal to leftfield sensibilities while still delivering the pleasing emotive content associated with mainstream family entertainment. The second half discusses ‘indiewood animation’ films, which often exhibit a comparatively cerebral patented kookiness and trippy, offbeat humour. Collectively, the ‘children’s horror’ and ‘indiewood’ animated films represent a compromise between the perceived requirements of mass audiences and the promise of additional credibility and cachet associated with cult cinema.","PeriodicalId":427575,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Hollywood Animation","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128192155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-19DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0002
Noel J. Brown
This chapter explores two overarching and interrelated themes. The first is the narrative centrality of family and friendship in post-1990s Hollywood animation, and how this relates to broader social practices in contemporary America. The second is the intended universalism of the films, which are exemplary instances of Hollywood family entertainment in their simultaneous embodiment of quintessential US mythologies and their recapitulation of more universalistic norms, values, fantasies and fears. It is central to the commercial logic of Hollywood animation that it possesses a broad, cross-demographic, transnational appeal. Consequently, in order to mobilise a pluralistic, global mass audience, it must utilise a range of textual strategies to ensure that films are able to cross boundaries of age, gender, class, race, religion, language and culture.
{"title":"Crossing Boundaries: Families, Audiences and the Mainstream Aesthetic","authors":"Noel J. Brown","doi":"10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410564.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores two overarching and interrelated themes. The first is the narrative centrality of family and friendship in post-1990s Hollywood animation, and how this relates to broader social practices in contemporary America. The second is the intended universalism of the films, which are exemplary instances of Hollywood family entertainment in their simultaneous embodiment of quintessential US mythologies and their recapitulation of more universalistic norms, values, fantasies and fears. It is central to the commercial logic of Hollywood animation that it possesses a broad, cross-demographic, transnational appeal. Consequently, in order to mobilise a pluralistic, global mass audience, it must utilise a range of textual strategies to ensure that films are able to cross boundaries of age, gender, class, race, religion, language and culture.","PeriodicalId":427575,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Hollywood Animation","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129226253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：