The Flesh of Animation: Bodily Sensations in Film and Digital Media by Sandra Annett is an insightful exploration of the intertwining of the physical body and the ‘flesh’ of animation. The author plays with the concepts of body and flesh assuming a hermeneutical perspective on the worldliness and carnal dimensions of the intersection of body and animation. This is achieved through an examination of various perspectives of worldly embodiment emanating from the vertex of the animated work.
The book integrates concepts such as haptic visuality and proprioceptive aesthetics to explore the nature of animation spectatorship. Annett discusses how animation can evoke physical and emotional responses and challenges traditional views on embodiment relating to digital media. In particular, Annett contrasts with past postmodern ideas arguing that:
“animation presents heretofore unknown or overlooked ways of considering embodiment in its digital and posthuman dimensions. Indeed, animation reveals the paradoxical necessity of material embodiment to digital media.” (p.9)
Moving through the book the author takes different slants upon the idea of flesh relating to animation. Initially the discussion focuses on the author’s own visceral reactions to watching the animated film I lost my body, where the exploration is both of the flesh of the severed limb and the proprioceptive spectator-self-projection into this very embodiment. This juxtaposition of flesh relating to animation is re-oriented many times throughout the book. This connection between a spectator’s visual experience of bodies on screen and their own mirrored proprioception is articulated largely as haptic visuality. The author explores haptic visuality by examining various animated films which evoke bodily sensations. Annett develops her phenomenological approach by looking at such varied examples as anime, animation and live-action hybrids, commercial live-action remakes, animated music videos, and multidimensional media art. This dimension of hybridity, the blending of animation and real-world entities, in various forms is used by the author to repeatedly reposition the reader’s perspectives on embodiment relating to animation. The author does this drawing from hermeneutic film phenomenology, feminist film theory, as well as continental philosophy. The bridging of such diverse fields, articulated through a body of rich examples, provides a unique perspective into how animation modulates embodied experience. Each chapter builds upon the previous one exploring the relationship between animation and embodied experiences. This approach enriches the analysis and allows for a deeper exploration of themes related to embodiment in film and digital media. Overall, the book offers new perspectives that contribute to the study of embodiment in cinema and digital media.
The book is situated within existing literature in film and animation studies as well as embodiment theory. It draws upon and develops the works of scholars such as Vivian Sobchack, Steven Shaviro, Laura U. Marks, Scott Richmond and Sylvie Bissonnette. It extends this conversation on embodiment in film, using feminist critiques as well as concepts from Deleuze and Guattari relating to the virtual dimensions of experience and desire. It also situates itself within the ongoing debate on digital media and embodiment, building upon and challenging the dichotomy between analogue and digital forms as discussed by Katherine Hayles’s How We Became Posthuman. Finally, it adds its voice to feminist film theorists such as Elizabeth Grosz’s critiques of traditional Western male thinkers.
In the context of existing literature in film studies and embodiment theory, several critiques can be highlighted. First, the book engages with a range of frameworks but may lack diverse perspectives from non-Western or marginalised scholars. Secondly, there is perhaps an overemphasis on specific concepts like haptic visuality, the body without organs and proprioceptive aesthetics. While these concepts are valuable, their overemphasis might neglect other relevant theories and perspectives in embodiment studies. Thirdly, the use of the word flesh (le chair) in its carnal sense as expressed by both Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty is taken on a hermeneutical route literally relating to the worldly bodies of others, severed limbs, live-action, swing dancers and the digitally embodied posthuman. To this end the book may benefit from a deeper exploration of immanence, a term used by the author to define the flesh of animation (p.30). The term is alluded to but never really explored, possibly due to the book’s hermeneutical slant. To this end, it would be interesting to explore the immanent inward facing individual consciousness behind the phenomenon of animation, as experienced uniquely by the spectator themselves – a pure phenomenology of animation. Finally, as a practicing animator reading a text about embodiment and animation, I would have enjoyed a section examining the veritable flesh of animation, the animator.
In summary, The Flesh of Animation, enriches the existing literature in film and animation theory and embodiment studies bringing urgent attention to the necessary further research required into embodiment and the phenomenology of animation. In drawing from such a diverse range of theoretical frameworks, the book offers many valuable insights surrounding embodiment in film and digital media. Overall, The Flesh of Animation provides the reader with a perspective on how animation shapes embodied experiences.
Dr. Jack Parry is an animation lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. His research spans animation theory, philosophy of mind, existentialism and phenomenology as applied to cross-disciplinary work in biomedicine, engineering as well as education. His research interests orbit around themes of pure transcendental phenomenology as applied to animation practice and animation pedagogy. Jack uses pure phenomenology to tackle complex real-world problems ranging from neuroscience to AI. In Animation Production, Jack operates as both a filmmaker and an animation studio director. His films focus on the visual interpretation of philosophy and his business specialises in high-end biomedical and other technical animation.