#to eric's conflict than juli was. eric is to juli's narrative a vehicle or a physical medium through which to process his grief

[cacaitos]

juli is a much more hard character to think in terms of relationships because, if you ask me personally, contrary to kazeki in which the gilbert and serge interact transform each other, their judgements of the other, their presence in the story etc in more or less equal proportions are for themselves the main motor of the narrative, while juli's arc alone overtakes so much of TnS'. like juli's and eric's *relationship* serves in function of juli's arc, but they very well resolved separate from the other.

#txt #like eric's interactions w juli dont change in almost any way his relationship with god so much as in *thomas* did *through* #eric. as an example. yeah juli and eric do grow closer and eric gets to understand and empathize w juli's conditions #but the opposite is not true all that much (may be misremembering) like oscar may have been more important relative #to eric's conflict than juli was. eric is to juli's narrative a vehicle or a physical medium through which to process his grief #his feelings of affection to thomas. the emotional implication of being observed (the judgement of god. expectations of correctness form #family and by extention society. 'being known' and thus being despised or in change worthy of love and all that) #but like all that has less to do with how people or god by that means *actually* percieve him but how he himself does #like him feeling unworthy of gods love or to love is not bc god said it to him in a dream or anyone saying he is bc of being SA'd #by the fact he told practically nobody. and you can argue the weight of homosexuality and how it permeates in all of this. #thomas stance on juli even is categorically loving and unconditional. but as long as it's not juli that allows to be understood #ie engage w the mutal and vulnerating dinamics that *any* sort of relationship entails then he doesnt progress in his arc. #so *allowing* forming genuine relationships to reach self acceptance > the specific character of the person in the relationship #or something like that. #so in those ways is that i say his conflict and not so much like. the origin or manifestation bc their personalities change them #fundamentally. to gilbert's but gilbert and serge's relationship WITH EACHOTHER has as much if not more relevance as their individual #characters. while juli's more introverted (not shy) and well thomas is dead and god has a not-presence so that's. a lively social circle #i guess. oscar and him know not to interfere seriously with the other and so on and so forth. #and it's not like that wildly changed even after his arc lol.

[patrick-yates]

Annotated Bibliography

1.      Zipes, J., Greenhill, P., Magnus-Johnston, K., Greenhill, P., Magnus-Johnston, K. ‘British Animation and the Fairy-Tale Tradition: Housetraining the Id’, in Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney. Routledge, 2015 : New York. pp. 48-63 An essay which deals with a timeless narrative device in the context of national identity and how animation is uniquely able to deal with both of them. Wells engages particularly with the ways in which British animated adaptations of fairy tales, or those which present characteristics he assigns to fairy tales, code or identify Britishness as a broader social phenomenon. As a British animator in a time when nationality and sovereignty are key topics in the political eye, this presents some really interesting arguments surrounding my practice and its place in these dialogues.

2.      Jenkins, E. ‘Animation’s Marvel and The Graphic Narrative Mode’, in ‘Special Affects: Cinema, Animation and the Translation of Consumer Culture’. Edinburgh University Press, 2014 : Edinburgh. pp. 87-109 A text which analyses the ways in which animated narratives and structures of representation (NB: not social representation, as in that of minorities or women eg, but systems of association with which pictorial art necessarily engages) have evolved and been cultivated. I am really interested not just in the perceived characteristics which animated media has adopted, its inherited identifiers and tropes, but also in the ways in which and the extent to which those have been propelled by consumerism. The dialogue is pressing, given animation’s commercially driven history compared to its radical potentialities.

3.      Ehrlich, Nea. Animated realities: from animated documentaries to documentary animation. Edinburgh University Press, 2015 : Edinburgh. A thesis focused on broadening the understanding of animation’s relevance within new media as a vehicle for insightful communication of abstract truths. Documentary animation contends with both the supposition that animated media is childish, and that it cannot represent the ‘truth’ of things, for this is what documentaries seek to expose. Yet Ehrlich’s discussion seeks to unearth whether what we think of as truth within the realm of traditional documentary and live-action can ever be reconciled with reality, or if the possibility of animated documentary may be regarded as just as valid, based on jhow our relationships with media and truth have changed recently.

4.      Payne, Simon. ‘Lines and Interruptions in Experimental Film and Video’ in Experimental and Expanded Animation: New Perspectives and Practices, ed Smith, Vicky & Hamlyn, Nicky. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2018. pp. 19-36 A chapter dealing with the concept of line and linearity in experimental animation, both geometrically and temporally, with reference to several theories of art ontology and cinematic affect. Payne does not make many strong arguments one way or the other, but rather reflects on certain experimental pieces through lenses which seek a deeper understanding of ostensibly simple material, including those of Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Sean Cubitt, often resulting in fascinating dissections of how line, form and meaning are each associated and interpreted in the context of cinema generally. Some experimental pieces are easily associable with one theory in particular, whereas some do not agree at all and may further complicate the issue, but the discussion itself is very enlightening.

 5.      Card, W. ‘Special effects and uncanny affect: CGI and the post-cinematic uncanny’, in Ubiquity: The Journal of Pervasive Media, Volume 5, Number 1, June 2016, ed. Phillips, Mike & Speed, Chris. Intellect Ltd., 2016: Bristol. pp. 75-88 This text, while not dealing with 2D animation directly, provides an interesting insight into what the author calls the ‘post-cinematic’ – the premise that traditional cinematic principles are being subverted by ever-advancing technology and increasingly photoreal effects. 2D animation, as a patently unreal practice, clearly stands to mirror the changes in this new post-cinematic landscape, as the relationship between live action and animation closes further and further. This closeness presents a symbiosis and a paradox within the post-cinematic framework, wherein perceptual realism (the border of the uncanny) is eroded and the unreal takes on new and different value.

6.      Halberstram, Judith. ‘Animating Failure: Ending, Feeling, Surviving’, in The Queer Art of Failure. Duke University Press, 2011: London. pp. 173-187 A chapter in which Halberstram addresses the multitudinous political capabilities of new media and various forms of animation, according to how the technology used to create them forms itself around particular narratives and how that technology and the ontological associations of certain forms may be used to express certain narrative themes (for example, she argues stop-motion may be geared towards a kind of existentialism more than other media). She rejects the idea that animation may be accepted as purely aesthetic or purely analogical, and instead attempts to identify it as a complex web of associations and cinematic historicity in stark comparison to the traditional logic of live action film.

7.      Cook, Malcolm. ‘A Primitivisim of The Senses: The Role of Music in Len Lye's Experimental Animation’, in The Music & Sound of Experimental Film, ed. Rogers, H., Bartham, J. Oxford University Press, 2017: New York. A text exploring the relationship between modernism and primitivism in the works of Len Lye, arguing his specific use of imagery and music elided the eras in a struggle against Western traditionalism and Enlightenment worship of ‘reason’. The chapter features some strong arguments for the direct affective quality of animation and music alongside each other, either in spiritual tandem or dissonance, and one which understands and informs contemporary discourses on how we respond to the idea of the 'primitive' and the cultural other through the lens of modernist practices such as animation and jazz music and what may be regarded as appropriations of ‘primitive’ cultural iconography.

8.      Vollenbroek, T. INTERVIEW: Sébastien Laudenbach On How He Created A Masterful Dark Tale, ‘The Girl Without Hands,’ Entirely By Himself [web article] CartoonBrew, 07/21/2017 (https://www.cartoonbrew.com/interviews/interview-sebastien-laudenbach-created-masterful-dark-tale-girl-without-hands-entirely-152473.html - accessed 22/11/18) An enlightening conversation with animator Sebastien Laudenbach about his method of animating via ‘cryptokinographie’ – creating images which only 'function' when moving. His process is a curious combination of practical and aesthetic sensibilities: born out of necessity, for he had so few tools at his disposal while away from home, he lists here how he thinks this style figures into animation as a whole, the strictures and freedoms of the cinematographic language, and why this mode of storytelling could be good for children. His deconstructive style contends with what makes animation work and flow, and is applied masterfully in conception and execution; this elucidates many of his thoughts on it.

9.      Herhuth, Eric. ‘Overloading, Incongruity, Animation: A Theory of Caricature and Caricatural Logic in Contemporary Media’, in Theory & Event, Volume 21, Number 3, July 2018. Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 2018. pp. 627-651 An article on theories of caricature and hypernormalisation; the condensation and acceleration of information and the conflicting ideologies of ‘caricature aesthetics’ and ‘caricature functionality’. A deep dive into how caricature in animation such as Disney’s Zootopia and skits on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert can blinker and amplify perceptions and biases, using theories of intuition/immediacy (Bergson) and psychoanalysis (Freud) to unpick potentially deep-seated effects of caricature logic. A phrase which Herhuth comes back to is ‘conceptual and perceptual entanglement’, the notion that we as audience cannot easily separate what we see and what we understand by the act of seeing, especially when faithful representation is already deliberately disavowed.

10.     Fubara-Manuel, Irene. ‘Revolting Animation: The Hierarchy of Masculinities in the Representation of Race and Male Same-Sex Desire in Adult Cartoons’ in Sex and Sexualities in Popular Culture: A Networking Knowledge Special Issue, Vol 10, Number 3. Meccsa, 2017: Bournemouth. pp. 71-82 An article which focuses on examining the representation of masculinity and homosexuality in American adult animated shows including The Boondocks and American Dad! It supposes a kind of forbiddenness attributed not only to their adult content, but the way in which animation, in its uniquely unreal and aggrandised presentation, is able to deal with some subjects that would be otherwise completely off limits. However, when taboo and the unreal are conflated, we are presented with the potential for underlying assumptions to be laid perhaps even barer than otherwise – Fubara-Manuel here examines the stereotypes perpetuated and sometimes invented by such an extremity of caricature within American popular culture and patriarchy.

#research & enquiry #annotated bibliography