Crossing Boundaries: Families, Audiences and the Mainstream Aesthetic

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.