Experimental animation, through its unconventional narratives, offers a compelling medium for expressing surreal feelings, personal philosophies, spiritual concerns, and abstract psychological trauma. Specifically, the unstable psychological state of the traumatized individual can be seen as placing their identity in a surreal tunnel, a place outside the real world [1]. Moreover, the characteristics of the surrealist style can transfer trauma to fixed objects, allowing viewers to grasp the trauma through visual experience [2]. In this context, this article discusses several examples in which surrealist techniques are used to express trauma memories, illustrating how such visual strategies evoke emotional resonance and deepen our understanding of psychological trauma.
Surreal body-environment metaphor in Unforgotten (2021)
Unforgotten (2021)by Sujin Kim is a 3D animation inspired by the experiences of Korean ‘Comfort Women’ – women who were forced to serve primarily as sexual slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army to boost troop morale during World War II. In her animation, Kim places the sexual violence and discrimination suffered by “comfort women” in a surreal environment, which can avoid secondary harm to the victims to a certain extent. For example, she presents the transmission of sexual disease as a metaphor of a snake wrapped around the broken female body (A). The close-up of the woman gradually sinks to the bottom of the water, suggesting the intensity and depth of her injury. The body after sexual assault is metaphorically represented as a damaged surreal environment (B). More importantly, the charred body (C) and the dirty white sheets (D) both symbolize the victims’ unspeakable and socially incomprehensible fears in the form of surreal environmental and object metaphors. When the victims’ collective traumatic memories are woven into the surreal imagery of the animation, the work visualizes otherwise invisible aspects of life [3], adding emotional depth and complexity to trauma representations.
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The Body Metamorphosis in The Hat (1999)
Surrealism is the art of psychological states [4]. It can use techniques such as metamorphosis and unnatural movement to express profound psychological experiences. Such use of metamorphosis is exemplified by The Hat (1999), a 2D animation that follows a young exotic dancer as she confronts suppressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. The dancer’s experience is condensed into a haunting image of a hat. The hat functions as a narrative device, signifying the lingering presence of her abuser—implying that it may have originally belonged to the perpetrator and now serves as a recurring trigger for traumatic memories. As the film progresses, we witness the dancer’s increasingly frantic dance steps animated through constant dazzling changes between the dancer’s adult and childhood limbs, her sex organs, eyes and hats, corresponding to the nonlinear emergence of reproductive memories of trauma in the body. As the dancer performs on stage, the gradually emerging eye image on the body (E) serves first as a gaze upon the character’s body—invaded by traumatic memory—and second as a metaphor for the audience, who are compelled to witness and internalize the fear evoked by the dancer’s recollections. As the plot develops, further distortions and deformations express the reproductive horror of sexual trauma, while the dancer’s torso and the abuser’s genitals become less and less independent (F), emphasizing the subject’s inability to separate and escape. This proved the inevitable evolution of animation, including the use of the medium’s disruptive and mutable potential to depict violence perpetrated by the characters [5]. Cournoyer’s use of these surreal metamorphosis of body imagery is a key technique by which she explores notions of female subjectivity, pain, pleasure, and sexuality in the body and the subconscious [6].
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Layering and Erasure Techniques in Dreaming of Peculiar Creatures (2014)
In the point of trauma psychology, traumatic memories grow and exist in the subconscious, a chaotic and difficult-to-enter state [9]. Luneburg’s animation Dreaming of Peculiar Creatures (2014) narrates a woman’s memory of abortion trauma in her dream, which includes the use of many surreal images. When the character gives birth to a dead fetus with a hideous expression (G), the fetus gradually grows into a huge flower (H). This means that the pain caused by the character’s trauma is covered up by beautiful things in the subconscious, hidden under the mourning and melancholy emotions that permeate the dream. Later, the woman’s body (I) is replaced by an illogical jellyfish. This presents a complete defense process to hide painful memories [8].
Surrealist artists sometimes use dreams as a mechanism to reveal unspoken feelings and desires [7]. The images in Luneberg’s work flow freely through the creative process, as she disconnects from rational thought and fully surrenders to the random ideas and images that seem to arise from her subconscious [8]. Luneburg spontaneously seeks the subconscious in the process of creating her works, which leads her to emphasize transformation-based digital layering and erasure techniques. That is, after creating a new frame, part of the content of the previous frame layer is erased, and the new layer is dragged to reveal the new layer to form an animated sequence. This technique imitates the human process of forgetting and processing fragmented, dislocated, and repressing painful memories, which responds to the characteristics of traumatic memories that cannot be recalled in a normal way [9].
(G) Nathani Lüneburg, 2014, Dreaming of Peculiar Creatures, Abortion in a dream
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Conclusion
This blog post contributes to the ongoing discussion among animation creators and researchers on how to present traumatic topics by analyzing three films: Unforgotten (2021), The Hat (1999), and Dreaming of Peculiar Creatures (2014). These works demonstrate the sensitivity and expressiveness of experimental animation combined with surrealism in the visualization of traumatic psychology. Whether using environmental metaphors, body metamorphosis, layering, or erasure techniques, they provide a powerful and surreal exploration of trauma narratives. This reminds us that surrealism can not only help animation become a tool for artists to express themselves, but also a medium through which audiences can deeply understand and empathize with trauma.
References
[1] TuulikkiK(2018). Border Crossing Trauma Seen Through Hyper-Naturalist Prose and Surreal Forms of Narration. Mobile culture studies. The journal, 2018-04, 4(4) 39-56. https://doi.org/10.25364/08.4:2018.1.3
[2] Nemnom C (2021). Losing Sight to Gain Vision: The Eye in European Surrealist Painting [master’s thesis] Concordia University, accessed 6 September 2024. https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/988992/
[3] Roe A H (2019). Absence, Excess and Epistemological Expansion: Towards a Framework for the Study of Animated Documentary AU – Roe, Annabelle Honess. In N. Dobson, A. H. Roe, A. Ratelle, & C. Ruddell (Eds.), The Animation Studies Reader, Bloomsbury Academic, 111-132. https://www.screenstudies.com/encyclopedia-chapter?docid=b9781501332647&tocid=b-9781501332647-chapter9
[4] Paung Y T (2017). Surrealism: Art of Subconscious [bachelor’s thesis] Union College – Schenectady, NY. accessed 13 September 2024.https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses/68/
[5] Sammond N (2015). Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation. Duke University Press. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=JVBmCgAAQBAJ
[6] Richards R (2020). “Nothing But Paper and Ink”: Metamorphosis, Memory, and Trauma in The Hat. In M. van Gageldonk, L. Munteán, & A. Shobeiri (Eds.), Animation and Memory,143-160. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/9783-030-34888-5_8
[7] Wilette J (2011). Surrealism and Freudian theory. [O]. Available: http://arthistoryunstuffed.com/surrealism-freudian-theory/.
[8] Luneburg N (2017). A Unlocking Traumatic Memories Through Digital Stop-Frame Animation: Freudian Analysis [D.Phil], University of Pretoria (South Africa). accessed 6 August 2024. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2901494313?pqorigsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses
[9] Van Der Kolk B (1998) Trauma and memory. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 52(S1), S52-S64. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1440-1819.1998.0520s5S97.x
Yixin Sun is a Melbourne-based animator and designer whose work explores emotional and social themes through visual storytelling. After completing her Bachelor’s degree in Visual Communication from the University of Technology Sydney, Yixin further explored how motion design and animation can be used as powerful tools for expression. Whilst concurrently completing her Master’s of Animation, Games, and Interactivity at RMIT University, Yixin is collaborating with Psoriasis Australia to create a series of short films titled, “Different On The Outside, But The Same On The Inside”, which aim to raise awareness about various skin conditions.