Archives and Feelings

Vivat Inepta Archivo

Matthew Loudon

October 8, 2013

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Matthew Loudon; Dr. Alexis Lothian; ENGL 985; 8 October 2013 (written this way so it’s not addressed as four tiny paragraphs)

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Vivat Inepta Archivo

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 I wish that I could pinpoint an exact moment when I began studying animation. I had long been in line for studying English, having found, like most of literary scholars, the whole love for books and such at a young age. I had early set my path toward untangling literature, mostly as a way of fueling my own lust for books. It was not until I was over halfway through my Undergraduate career that I learned that you could actually study film in a similar manner that you could study a literary text, and even then, I had tied that to adaptations. In my master’s program, I learned that you could study film without attaching a literary text (though I still clung to adaptation and still enjoy digging into it to some degree). It was not until my doctorate program that I realized that the academic study of animation was a thing, something that I could sink my literary teeth into and begin not only becoming an expert in, but studying further.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 I believe it was from Dr. Alexis Lothian that I heard the idea of the “fan” carrying over to literature. Dr. Lothian suggested that most scholars end up writing about what they are fans of at some point in their career. She specifically brought up this idea in relation to Heather Love’s Introduction to Feeling Backward. In that work, Love used old lesbian romances as a focal point for studying a method of queer theory (or something along those lines). Lothian questioned the discussion group, asking us to wonder whether or not Love’s fan feeling toward these books had not come first. Perhaps, the idea went, Love enjoyed these books and was looking for a way of writing them into the canon to some degree. Thus, in some way, she shaped her theory to the works, but was also able to tie the literary work to them to some degree.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 1 I hope that my reason for bringing this up should seem somewhat obvious. I have always been a fan of animation, though it came with a high degree of shame (hmm, shame, that seems familiar, does it not?). Most teenagers and young adults do not want to admit to watching or enjoying cartoons. I can distinctly remember sitting with a few literature professors as an undergrad, and the topic of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends came up, as one of the professors was discussing what his children were watching. He made a judgment call, saying that the show was far better than most of the programming on, and this also led to a brief discussion of other such shows. I was able to contribute and did so with great fervor, but it soon became clear that I was the one engaging with these shows and programs for my own enjoyment and interest, not because of any imaginary children I had (I did own a cat at the time, but she has yet to express an interest in animation, despite my numerous attempts to get her interested).

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 2 So animation became my ghost, in some ways. I specifically state it this way to bring about the ideas expressed by Avery Gordon from her book Ghostly Matters. Throughout that work, Gordon points out how various ideas and objects haunt the world and haunt us as scholars. I feel like I should be mentioning how slavery haunted Beloved or how Latin American oppressions haunted the other work presented, or doing something along those lines. But in truth, my experience feels more akin to what happened between Gordon and Spielrein. Gordon mentions being distracted by the female psychologist, Sabina Spielrein who appears to be one of the first women psychoanalysts. Spielrein herself is fascinating and I encounter anyone reading this who has not investigated her to do so at some point. For me, the important part is that Gordon could not let Spielrein go, but had the idea of this woman, of her haunting presence, haunting Gordon as she continued her work. As I was writing my critical work on other things, putting together a final project based on Gulliver’s Travels and its adaptations, I could not shake the specter of animation hanging over me. It felt like I was not doing what I wanted, needed to be doing. Gordon mentions how the nonexistence of a psychologist haunted her and made her start thinking about Spielrein and people who were not there. For me, it was the non-addressed issue of animation.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 I got to confront my ghost, and, to my infinite and constantly growing delight, I have sense found that my ghost is most assuredly living. Again, I am tempted to get specific and mention one of the first animated films I tackled as a free standing text: Brave. That text is especially tempting in this light, as it is a decidedly haunted text. Its production history speaks of a feminist creator and director who was sidelined. Though Brenda Chapman was not sidelined due to her sex but due to creative differences, that does not make her any less a haunting figure in many ways. It certainly makes Brave, on some level, a haunted text. Many critics were keen to point this out, feeling that there was something missing from the film, something that was not there. It felt as though it was exactly what it was: a work that someone had started, lovingly nurtured, and then had shifted to someone else. I still believe the final project worthy of praise, and I am not alone; the film won Best Animated Picture (which should have gone to another film, but that is an another issue that I have actually addressed elsewhere). I was able to start digging into this text, uncovering some of these haunted portions, but more importantly, I began to address my own ghosts, and to see that what I was doing was worthwhile.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 The original prompt for writing this asked several writers to consider what importance their writing has in a larger picture. I have mostly danced around this idea, teasing it and poking it with the literary equivalent of a stick. My initial beliefs, and I still hold to these, is that animated films are highly cultural texts. These are often the first creative works, the first cultural products that we expose our children to. Whether intentional or not, we are essentially teaching the youngest generation that the values we put forth in these films are what we want them to learn. Animated films are therefore oftentimes the optimized dreams, the far away morals and values that we desperately want to believe are true and right in the world to some degree. The films become in some way products of culture, but, as they are films, they are both product and producer, or, as critic Greg Singh put it, “embodied works.”

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 1 That is not to say that all animated film and all animated film criticism falls in line with this. I have already mentioned Brave, one of the texts I have covered, and it does fit into the category to some degree. However, Brave also works in a different manner, one that resonates with another, I believe complimentary, view of looking at animation: finding the difference. Judith Halberstam, in her work The Queer Art of Failure uses animation a good deal, which pleases me far more than it rightfully should. Her take runs parallel to mine (some would argue counter, but I am writing this and I like what she has to say, so I get to phrase it how I want). She directly addresses the common concern that there is nothing to be found in animation, that cartoons are a “silly archive” (her brilliant term which I am stealing and dashing away with, chuckling like a madman the entire way). Halberstam insists that “I have found that new forms of animation, CGI in particular, have opened up new narrative doors and led to unexpected encounters between the childish and the transformative and the queer” (19-20). I am especially caught on the idea of “new narrative doors” and “unexpected encounters,” both of which I would argue are key to the study of animation. The medium is not only chosen to entertain children, but also because it allows those new doors, allows writers to imagine worlds that are highly different from the real, but still somehow resonate enough to draw our attention. One only has to watch a few minutes of Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki to realize that animation can be used to open the imagination and show the world the color and creativity that can occur if one does so. And animation can also allow us to encounter the queer, the unusual, the new, and laugh about it, even feel good. Brave does this to some degree, using silly moments to help us become comfortable even as it discusses the complexities of a mother/daughter relationship and a type of feminism that is not often discussed in film. The silly archive helps us better understand and address the world, and helps open up those new doors.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 I want to end with a quote that Halberstam ends with, which definitely feels like cheating. However, this text rings so much with not only what I study but what, on some level, I honestly believe, that I simply cannot help but use it, and it is a quote that I am likely to hang onto it for a while. I present it here in its full, and I am likely to attach perhaps a sentence of my own to hang it upon:

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 “But along the way to these ‘happy’ ending, bad things happen to good animals, monsters, and children, and failure nestles in every dusty corner, reminding the child viewer that this too is what it means to live in a world created by mean, petty, greedy, and violent adults. To live is to fail, to bungle, to disappoint, and ultimately to die; rather than searching for ways around death and disappointment, the queer art of failure involves the acceptance of the finite, the embrace of the absurd, the silly, and the hopelessly goofy… let us instead revel and cleave to all of our own inevitable failures” (187)

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 2 And here is that sentence to hang it on: animation is about failure, it’s about culture, it’s about realizing what we’re teaching to people and what kinds of ways we can go about opening up these narrative doors of imagination, but, at least to this critic, it is about looking at the world in a way that might seem dark at times, might lead to us falling, but is ultimately a bright world, one where we can embrace the silly and laugh, one where we can fail, fall, and become hurt, one filled with evil and ugliness, but one where ultimately, we realize that we can revel and cling to all that is good and silly in life.

¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 Vivat inepta archivo (Long live the silly archive… according to Google translate)

¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0

¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 Works Half-Assedly Mentioned:

¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 Brave. Dir. Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman. Disney/Pixard, 2012. DVD.

¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 Gordon, Avery F. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis, MN: Univ. of Minnesota, 2008. Print.

¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 Halberstam, Judith. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke UP, 2011. Print.

¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 Love, Heather. “Introduction.” Introduction. Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. 1-3. Print.

¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 Singh, Gregory Matthew. Film after Jung: Post-Jungian Approaches to Film Theory. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009. Print.

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