The universal but ever-changing relationship between humans and non-human nature is constantly interrogated through the language of animation. It is enabled precisely by animation’s distinct formal and aesthetic properties, such as plasmaticness, the illusion of life, anthropomorphosis and metamorphosis. These are the traits that not only represent crossing boundaries on a formal level, but often, as Sergei Eisenstein (1988) noted, on a substantial level too. Metamorphosis has already been described by Erwin Panofsky (1947) as the essence of cartoon, but it is also a key concept for Alan Cholodenko (2007), Lilly Husbands & Caroline Ruddell (2019), and Paul Wells (2009, 2015). Metamorphosis as an extreme form of plasmaticness breaks from the confines of materiality, which allows animation to present abstract and elusive phenomena, essential to imagining ecological themes and issues. It is, in the words of Eisenstein (1988:43) “a direct protest against the standardly immutable”. Esther Leslie (2014) frames this property as the inherent subversive potential of animation, which can manifest itself in social and political issues as well as in an ecological sense. Metamorphosis means crossing boundaries, which can happen between animals and humans, humans and non-humans, between species, genders and races, the animate and inanimate etc. This transition and the dissolution of binary oppositions lies also at the heart of ecological thought. In her famous ecofeminist writing, Val Plumwood (1993) lists pairs of antagonisms that have defined Western philosophy and thought since the Enlightenment, and points to their permanent and omnipotent presence in ideology enabling dominance and oppression of women and for that matter nature throughout history.
In the age of ecological crisis, contemporary animation is also increasingly reflecting, even if indirectly, on these issues when thematizing environmental issues. In what follows, I will discuss the role of visual metamorphosis in this process, using two examples of contemporary, European-produced, mainstream animation. Four Souls of Coyote (2023, dir.: Áron Gauder) re-frames the Native American myth of creation with contemporary ecological devastation, by embedding it in the story of construction of an oil pipeline through indigenous land. Spirituality of the Navajo myth is presented on screen through animism, metamorphosis and plasmaticness. According to the myth, the Old Man Creator shapes a mate for each animal from the same primordial material, thus they can continue to reproduce. Creation and reproduction are represented visually in a cycle, the essentialism and unbroken circularity of the process embodied via metamorphosis. Couples of species merge and mate in a circular visualisation, foxes morph into raccoons, who then morph into grouse, etc. All animal species are created from the ancient material in the film, but also all plants and terrain elements except water. Crushing and throwing away the free-flowing clay, birds fly into the air, and from the liver of a slain bison, new ones form with plasmatic flexibility under the Old Man’s hand. Through metamorphosis, the smoke from the Old Man’s pipe draws out the four cardinal points of the heavens, marking the circle of creation in which all are equal, and at the end of the film, stars are formed from the white particles that fly from the victim of the title character, Coyote, who recognises and repents of his mistakes. In these cases, shape shifting is based on metaphorical and material identity. Sharing the fabric of life as a common matter is a characteristic of religious thought and spiritual creation myths. This ideology of oneness and identification is akin to the principle of biospheric egalitarianism claimed by Naessian deep ecology. However, when setting up the circle of creation some are excluded from it. In this case those who always desire more than what’s necessary for their survival, epitomised by Coyote and indirectly the colonising, exploitative white people.
Another characteristic metamorphosis of the film is the morphing of a snake into an oil pipeline. In addition to the obvious formal analogy of the tube-like shapes, the substantial identification is made possible by the animal as a cultural construct. Its insidious deviousness, a thousand-year-old topos of the Judeo-Christian culture, is what makes the snake akin to environmentally destruction.
In the other subject of this writing, Wolfwalkers (2020, dir.: Tomm Moore), metamorphosis is induced by human’s identification with animals and its emotions and desires, and its implementation crosses the boundaries between the immaterial and the material world. It is not the body of the protagonists that is transformed into a wolf, but the soul; the human body falls asleep, the soul, represented by golden lines protruding from it, first takes on the outline of a wolf and then materially becomes a wolf. Protagonists’ share one soul among their two bodies. As animals their sight and sense of smell are sharpened, they become faster and have all the biological attributes associated with wolves. Oscillation between the four categories of Wellsian (2009) bestial ambivalence is achieved through metamorphosis. As dangerous predators, wolves function as pure animals, as harmonious components of the ecosystem, as critics of the human race and as tamable creatures capable of controlling their instincts, as human aspirants. Finally, as humanimals, they initially treat humans with mutual suspicion and hostility. Essential one-ness, sameness of matter and the ability of zoomorphic identification is only attributed to the wolfwalkers. Along metamorphoses, a demarcation is thus unfolding: who are those who do not have the capacity for identification and shapeshifting? The answer in both movies is, the destroyers of the environment, in Coyote the colonising white people, in Wolfwalkers the conquering Britons. Thus ecological subversiveness carries with it the social. Even though visual metamorphosis of both animations easily lends itself to Naessian deep ecology, testing binary opposites of social categories such as male-female, rural-urban, dominator- dominated, elite-working class, colonised-coloniser draws attention to underlying socio-political power structures. Although a deep ecological egalitarianism is manifest on the surface, both films also convey a socio-ecological and, in the case of Wolfwalkers, an ecofeminist ideology.
This writing looked into the manifold ways of using visual metamorphosis as a tool for conveying different environmentalist ideologies. In the age of the ecological crisis, these forms and modes of expression can be of particular importance to challenge meaning making practices based on delimitations and fixed referentiality, which characterise public environmental discourse.
References
Gunning, T. (2013). The transforming image. Roots of animation in metamorphosis and motion. In S. Buchan(Ed). Pervasive animation (pp.52-69). Routledge
Husbands, L. and Ruddell, C. (2019). ‘Approaching Animation and Animation Studies’, in Dobson, N; Honness Roe, A; Ratelle, A. and Ruddell, C. (eds.) The Animation Studies Reader. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp.14–28.
Leslie, E. (2014). Animation and history. In Beckman, K. (Ed). Animating film theory (pp 25-37). Duke University Press
Leyda, J. (ed.) (1988). Eisenstein on Disney. London: Methuen
Panofsky, E. (1947). Style and medium in the motion pictures. na.
Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge.
Wells (2009). The Animated Bestiary. Animals, Cartoons and Culture. Rutgers University Press
Virág Vécsey is assistant professor at the Faculty of Humanities at the Eötvös Lóránd University (ELTE), Budapest. Her fields of research are animation studies, environmental communication and CEE cultural studies. Her doctoral research explores how European animation represents human-nature relationships in the past 60 years, in context of the changing social, political and industrial landscape. She is the founder and head of the BA media design specialisation at the Department of Media and Communication at ELTE.