Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780861966615 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | John Libbey Publishing |
| Publication date: | 02/20/2007 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Joyous Reception: Animated Worlds and the Romantic Imagination
The Joyous Reception: Animated Worlds and the Romantic Imagination
Rachel Kearney
Abstract: This essay contends that Romantic notions are relevant to animation associated with twentieth century aesthetics. By focusing on the metamorphic contour of Disney, and digital media's ability to blend indexical and software-based data, a concurrence is suggested between the formal qualities of these images and the Romantic process of mind. Approached through the theories of Eisenstein, Schelling and Coleridge, it is proposed that the imagination's dialectical synthesis, a reunion of subject and object, is symbolically revealed in the animated form. This ultimately allows an active communication between viewer and image, one that reflects the Romantic experience of joy.
The 'world' I wish to suggest for animation is one of the imagination, specifically one that corresponds with 19th century Romantic notions of the creative mind. Although it may appear historically incongruous to place such an interpretation on an art form associated primarily with Modernist or Postmodernist ideologies, what I wish to promote in this essay is the idea that the Romantic Imagination, its function and product, can transcend apparently opposing cultural contexts and operate within different technologies.
The Romantic aesthetic conveys a sense of unity, a symbolic loss of division between the mind and the ontological, within the formal qualities of the image. Its appeal is not based merely upon a lack of the quotidian in content, or the special effect, but on a formal construction that enables a deep communication between the image and viewer; a revelation of unconscious thought activity. Richard Coyne has stated that 'the twentieth century is every bit a Romantic age represented through ... the entertainment and leisure industries that pervade mass media'. It is within animation produced for mainstream distribution and culture that I intend to search for this aesthetic, firstly through an examination of the cel animation of Disney, and secondly by extending these notions into films that digitally integrate live action and software-based animation.
Cel animation is sometimes considered to be a subversive medium. Due to its graphic freedom from the rational and indexical, it has sometimes been connoted as an anarchic comment upon modernist society and culture, a 'world upside down'. In the case of Disney I will argue that subversion is present but unconsciously produced: it is identifiable in its retreat from society rather than an engagement with it, the signification of a Romantic unity rather than the fragmentation of Modernism. These elements are also present, I believe, in the theoretical approach taken by Sergei Eisenstein in his work on Disney. I will therefore employ Eisenstein's notions of the 'plasmatic' and the 'ecstatic'. These will be read into an aesthetic that is comparable to the early 19th century German Romanticism. The Romantic notions I will focus upon here are ideas surrounding the artist as genius, notions of the dialectic as the essence of evolution and freedom, and the reunion of man and nature in the face of mechanistic alienation.
Eisenstein himself had undergone a theoretical shift in the 1930s, moving away from mechanism in his theoretical and filmic approach towards organic modes. During the 1920s, Eisenstein's work had reflected the dominant ideology of Leninist dialectics and a Pavlovian physiology, treating the mind as a materialist function, a reflex manipulated by his concept of montage. In 1931 however, following the 1925 publication in the Soviet Union of Engels' Dialectics of Nature, and a shift towards Hegelian idealism at the Soviet Writers' Congress, Nicolai Bukharin warned against the mechanisation of 'spiritual life'. This ideological shift, in conjunction with implementation of Socialist Realism's 'revolutionary romanticism' (which, as Margaret Rose has pointed out, is never wholly differentiated from the original), and Eisenstein's own reading of James Joyce, led Eisenstein to reformulate his approach towards one of organic unity. This theoretical combination of biology, mind, and art however suggests to me an earlier philosophical approach, that of the late 18th and early 19th century Romantic aesthetics and German 'Naturphilosophie'.
Eisenstein identifies his organic aesthetic in a range of artistic styles and epochs, from Mayan architecture to the paintings of Goya, however in his essays on Disney he not only locates this universal aesthetic but also defined a cultural cause for it. As Thomas Elsaesser has noted in his work on German Expressionist film, this style reified Romanticism as 'the expression of a frustrated desire for change'. German Romanticism in general has been interpreted as a retreat of the mind from social immobility and technological alienation, and Disney's content reflects this. His use of European folklore and rural settings suggest the Romantic immersion in nature. In relation to the work of Disney Eisenstein was to express a similar point; that this animation and its animism was a flight from the mechanised constrictions of American life. He argues that the Silly Symphonies shorts (Walt Disney, USA, 1929–1939) are a response to 'the age of American mechanization' and are 'a glimpse of freedom within a capitalist state'. He goes on to compare 'America and the formal logic of standardization' 14 with 18th century Europe's 'restrictive and artificial life', caused by the rationalist division of man and nature. Here, 'man was confined to his soul, and the whole soul was allotted to reason ... separated from matter'.
The freedom that Eisenstein confers on the animation of Disney can then perhaps be compared to the reading of Romanticism as a reaction to the restriction and division of the 18th century. For the German Romantics of this period, mind and nature were conceived of as being fundamental elements of a greater whole, Johann Gottfried von Herder arguing that they should be viewed as a dissoluble unity, 'one interpenetrating, all animating soul'. The aim of the Romantic movement was to achieve a reunion of these elements through art, an aimshared by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who observed that a work of art must be 'spiritually organic'. However, in my attempt to show the work of Disney as Romantic, I intend to employ the concepts of a philosopher who incorporated the ideals of Herder and Goethe, namely Friedrich Schelling.
Schelling's early idealist work on 'Naturphilosophie', Ideas Towards a Philosophy of Nature, contends that mind and nature are one, the original product of an absolute whose essence is a striving for freedom within matter. This striving takes the form of a dialectical progression, engendering evolution and, ultimately, man, who has achieved ultimate freedom through self-reflection or self-consciousness. The resulting division of self-conscious purposeful intelligence and unconscious objective nature is not, however, absolute. Nature remains lodged within the unconscious of man, an aspect that is spontaneous and free, the internal representative of the unconscious development of matter in evolution and objective reality. Schelling's belief is that 'Nature should be Mind made visible, Mind the invisible Nature'.
In his aesthetics Schelling identifies this unconscious element as being crucial to artistic production. Art is the product of a yearning for dialectical synthesis between conscious purpose and unconscious development, achieved within the faculty of the imagination. Schelling writes that 'unconscious force must be linked with conscious activity' to produce the highest art, and that this process will be symbolically manifested in the product or artwork. For this reason art and aesthetic acts are uniquely championed in the philosophy of Schelling and in the Romantic movement The Joyous Reception: Animated Worlds and the Romantic Imagination as a whole. Art is philosophy visualised, and as such it can communicate the process of thought and universal unity to the spectator, with an immediacy and appeal that Schelling knew could not be achieved in his writing.
Interestingly, Eisenstein takes an inverse approach, claiming that his aesthetic can be used for philosophical purpose, a visual revelation of 'this dialectic principle'. Although ostensibly working within a materialist framework, his use of Engels' organic dialectic and the notion of a universal structure appear to reflect the ideas of Schelling and Romantic aesthetics. In his essay 'On the Structure of Things', Eisenstein claims that a work of art can only fully communicate when its construction corresponds to 'the laws of the structure of organic phenomena of nature'. He relates this construction to an unconscious element of mind or 'inner speech' that combines with the logic of consciousness to produce the artwork. Like Schelling, Eisenstein believes that art is created by a 'dual process: an impetuous rise along the lines of the highest conceptual steps of consciousness and a simultaneous penetration by means of the structure of the form into the layers of the profoundest sensuous thinking'.
For Schelling, the unifying process of the imagination is inherent in all humans, but it is only the artist of genius who can project this unconscious process symbolically within the form of art. He states that 'the artist ought indeed to emulate this spirit of nature, which is at work at the core of things and which speaks forth in shape and form only'. Eisenstein appears to concur on this point, claiming that Disney is 'the great artist and master' who creates on the level of unconscious nature: 'the realm of the very purest and most primal depths ... on the conceptual level of man not yet shackled by logic, reason or experience'. For Eisenstein this is the same law that dictates 'how butterflies fly ... how flowers grow'.
Eisenstein calls this unconscious and universal dialectic, which dictates both nature and art, the 'plasmatic', an essence defined by the freedom of form. A transformational quality, it can evolve seamlessly from shape to shape, or into any recognisable organic form. For Schelling this evolutionary essence reveals itself in progressive developments and the 'ultimate fusion of manifold forms', apparently reflecting Eisestein's belief that the attraction of the plasmatic is revealed symbolically, through 'infinite changeability' and 'continuous coming into being'. He defines it in Disney as the metamorphic quality of the line, a 'varying contour-expanding or ... variations of species'. Its presence can communicate a revelation of freedom held within the unconscious of the spectator, an ecstatic experience, or as Schelling notes, an 'infinite harmony'.
In his essays on Disney, Eisenstein focuses on the Silly Symphonies to exemplify his aesthetic. If we apply these notions in their Romantic context to Disney's later feature length work Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen, USA 1941) specifically the 'Pink Elephants on Parade' sequence, this notion of unconscious freedom, reflected through form, is highly evident. There is, I believe, a reflexive quality to the content of the film and to this segment in particular: its setting is within the circus, an arena of the visual mass entertainment where, like the cinema, the 'suspension of disbelief' is habitual. The hallucination scene itself, 'Pink Elephants on Parade', I intend to read as an expression not only of the Romantic aesthetic through its metamorphic qualities, but also as a depiction of this form of artwork's creation and reception.
Dumbo's intoxication allows him to behave in the manner of the creative artist and he can be read reflexively as representing Disney the artist, as genius creating animation. Drawing up the alcohol infused water in his trunk, Dumbo expels and creates bubbles that exemplify the aesthetic of growth and coming into being through their contour. The line metamorphosises and expands in a paradigmatic example of the plasmatic freedom of form. As a bubble transforms itself into the contour of an elephant, this then seamlessly replicates itself, dividing into a multitude of pachyderms. Limbs stretch and scale is distorted as they march, step over one another, and remerge into one vast creature. Species begin to mutate: an elephant with a snake for a trunk wanders across the screen, leaving human footprints, a cobra transforms into a belly dancer and another elephant transmutes into a car. Dumbo is now positioned as the spectator of his own images. The plasmatic appeal of the freedom of form causes his own hypnotism or ecstasis; it allows himto employ his own unconscious to gain the freedom of flight, to defy gravity.
This communication of unconscious nature, of growth and development, through the animated line of Disney demonstrates Schelling's belief that 'the basic character of the work of art is that of an unconscious infinity'. Eisenstein believes that these animated films or cartoons achieve this aesthetic comedically in a way live action cannot, the stretching and transformational qualities literally revealing the plasmatic. He also cites Disney's literal animism and anthropomorphism as an element that brings the spectator back to an originary oneness with nature, the 'world soul' of Schelling, a period prior to the division of man and matter.
For Eisenstein, Disney's animation is the apotheosis or teleological consummation of the illustrations of John Tenniel, best known for his caricatures in Punch and for illustrating Lewis Caroll's 'Alice' books, and the German satirical cartoonist Wilhelm Busch. The stretching and transformation of form depicted statically is now allowed the movement it represents in the graphic animation of Disney. Similarly, Schelling believes that this aesthetic is universal, that it will progress dialectically and re-emerge in different forms. It will be represented by a period's specific art. He claims: The Joyous Reception: Animated Worlds and the Romantic Imagination 'to be sure, an art the same in all respects as that of past centuries will never come again; for nature never repeats itself ... but there will be another who has attained to the highest level of art in the original manner'. This art will be relative to its culture, yet a Romantic essence of freedom will survive within it.
In relation to Disney's animation as mass entertainment, I have noted that Schelling believed that art should be exposed to as wide an audience as possible. The role of the artist is primarily to communicate, to be relevant to society and to produce work that can convey the fundamental unity of mind and matter. Schelling is of the opinion that 'without some relation to a creative public opinion the artist is condemned to isolation and eccentricity'. As an animator operating within the capitalist structure of Hollywood production and distribution, Disney was wholly reliant on public opinion and society to maintain his studio and output. Despite the working structures imposed by industrialisation, he does therefore reflect Schelling's individual notion of the artist.
We can now take this aesthetic forward, applying it not to the cel animation of Disney, but to the Hollywood film of the late 20th, and early 21st century, assessing whether it has any relevance to post-industrial digital technology or the culture of Postmodernism that informs it. Films such as Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi, USA 2002 and 2004) and Hulk (Ang Lee, USA 2003), similar to what Eisenstein noted on the illustrations of Busch in relation to Disney, have overcome their strip cartoon's status. The evocation of animism (Spider-Man), and union with natural elements (Hulk), allow an escape from the quotidian through the omnipotent freedom which nature bestows. Here, however, this union of conscious and unconscious essence is achieved not by the artist of genius but abiotically, by a technological function. I now wish to suggest that the digital combination of live action and software-based animation in the film image can also signify in a manner synonymous with the Romantic Imagination.
Post-industrial technology and Romantic theories of mind may appear incongruous, but to foreground my claims, I will employ an observation made by Rosen and Zerner. They write that Romantic theory 'is calculated for growth ... planned to allow the appropriation of anything human or even non-human'. It is within the non-human, in technology and in a culture often cited as threatening the freedom of the imagination, that I shall attempt to discover this element of Romanticism. Mind and technology are enthusiastically and sometimes optimistically linked, and I do not intend to make such far-reaching assertions in this essay. My suggestion is simply for a similarity of working practice. Malcolm Le Grice offers some illuminating insights that support this. In his concept of the intelligent machine, Le Grice points out that although all machinery employed in communication reflects the investment of intellect and the culture that informs it, digital technology is its most sophisticated embodiment. He contends that
all machines embody the application of the intellect to the fulfilment of a need or desire, the greater the complexity of the intelligent machine, the more difficult it is to differentiate the intellect of the machine from its user ... or the centre of authorship for any product.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Animated 'Worlds'"
by .
Copyright © 2006 John Libbey Publishing Ltd..
Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.