In 2014 I wrote a short piece for this blog on Syrian animation and the changes the form had undergone during a time of civil unrest and war. With this new piece, I would like to delve deeper into one…
Animation and animals
The Reigning Rooster: A Critique on the Characterization of Cartoon Chickens
by Rebecca Rose Stanton • October 12, 2020 • 3 Comments
Whilst researching how animals have been depicted by Walt Disney Animation Studios (WADAS)[1], I found that chickens were featured in nineteen WDAS films (34%) (Stanton, 2019). This makes chickens the most commonly depicted species of bird in WDAS films. This…
Animation and animals
Ducks Don’t Back Down: Dream Voices and Dismissible Rage
by Devlin Grimm • October 5, 2020 • 0 Comments
Throughout human history, the labor of civil rights has been done by the oppressed. In disability advocacy especially, disability representation and media have been amplified, and critiqued, by the Disability Visibility Project. It is also the assertion of this community…
Book Review
Animating Atrocities: Bearing Witness in War Animation Films
by Genia Boivin • September 28, 2020 • 0 Comments
Review of Donna Kornhaber, Dream Sanctuary: War and the Animated Film. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2020. When one thinks about wartime animated films, propaganda film comes to most people’s mind. Indeed, since the 1990s, studies in animated propaganda developed…
Alternative/Forgotten Histories
Alosha and Claire (Part II)
by Giannalberto Bendazzi • September 21, 2020 • 1 Comment
When no film was in production, Alosha was busy engraving, while Claire was busy with the minutiae of daily housekeeping. Both read a lot. He knew Russian, French, German, and English. She knew English and French and had learned Russian…
Alternative/Forgotten Histories
Alosha and Claire (Part I)
by Giannalberto Bendazzi • September 14, 2020 • 0 Comments
I met Alexandre Alexeïeff at the Abano Terme Animation Festival (Italy) in the spring of 1971. He was standing in front of the cinema hall, solemn and gracious at the same time. I introduced myself and he greeted me warmly.…
Documentary, Genesis of New Animated Works
“Nobody’s Metaphor”: A Decolonial Film of Voices, Swords, and Brushstrokes
by Anna Sowa • September 7, 2020 • 0 Comments
In the short documentary, Nobody’s Metaphor (2019), Chouette Films worked with Maslaha to capture the unfolding stories of a group of Muslim girls and young women of color who try out fencing and poetry workshops after school. These workshops, run…
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
Troubling Transformation with the Ephemeral Double Trouble
by Alexandre G. Vermeil • August 10, 2020 • 3 Comments
Reminiscent of magical girl anime, Adora’s transformation into She-Ra (in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, 2018-2020) serves an empowering function by way of a stylistic and physiological change. Her transformation sequence borrows from two types of transformation made popular…
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
#Catradora: Industry and Influences
by Jacqueline Ristola • August 3, 2020 • 0 Comments
With the debut of its fifth and final season in May 2020, Dreamworks Animation’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-2020) made history as another children’s animated series with explicit queer representation. Led by queer creator Noelle Stevenson and a…
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
She-Ra and the Power of Princesses or: Wait, Weren’t We Supposed to Free the Magic?
by Timothy Jones • July 27, 2020 • 1 Comment
It has been several weeks since I finished watching She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-2020). As with so many things in 2020, it feels a lot longer, and in that time I have reflected on how much there is…