Animation Studies Vol. 4

Animation Studies
Volume 4
2009
Animation Studies
Editor
Nichola Dobson
Independent Scholar
Managing Editor
Timo Linsenmaier
Staatliche Hochschule fr Gestaltung Karlsruhe
Editorial Board
Charles da Costa
Savannah College of Art and Design
Caroline Ruddell
St. Marys College, University of Surrey
Ethan de Seife
Gettysburg College
Paul Ward
Bournemouth Arts Institute
Pierre Floquet
ENSEIRB, Universit de Bordeaux
Karin Wehn
Universitt Leipzig
Maureen Furniss
California Institute of the Arts
Paul Wells
Loughborough University
Amy Ratelle
Ryerson University/York University
Animation Studies is published by the Society for Animation Studies,

c/o Dr. Maureen Furniss (President), Department of Film and Video,
California Institute of the Arts, 24700 McBean Parkway
Valencia, CA 91355 USA.
This journal publishes proceedings of the Society for Animation Studies conferences. For more
information on the Society, visit http://www.animationstudies.org.
Submission guidelines are available online at http://journal.animationstudies.org.
All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivs 3.0 license. For a full text of this licence, please visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
For purposes exceeding this license, please contact the author concerned at the editors address.
Cover illustration: Arthur Mason Worthington, Splash of a ball
ISSN 1930-1928
Animation Studies Vol.4, 2009

Contents
iii Letter from the Editor
by Nichola Dobson
1 Animation (Theory) as the Poematic:
A Reply to the Cognitivists
by Alan Cholodenko
17 Using chronophotography to replace
Persistence of Vision as a theory for
explaining how animation and
cinema produce the illusion of
continuous motion
by Paul St. George
27 Revolutionary cels: The Sydney
waterfront, Harry Reade and Cuban
animation
by Max Bannah
35 To Be or Not to Be: The Controversy
in Japan over the Anime Label
by Sheuo Hui Gan
44 Kinesic constructions: An aesthetic
analysis of movement and
performance in 3D animation
by Adam de Beer
53 Submission Guidelines &
Creative Commons
Letter from the Editor

Welcome to Volume 4 of Animation Studies.
This years conference was held at SCADs Atlanta campus and as usual there was a fantastic
range of paper presentations. This years
volume features a mix of papers from that conference and the previous year.
The volume begins with Alan Cholodenkos,
Animation (Theory) as the Poematic delivered at the 2008 Bournemouth conference as
a response to several aspects of some recent debates within animation and film studies. The
paper argues for theoretical approaches in the
field and defends against criticisms of some of
the methodologies used by contemporaries in
the society. Paul St. Georges Using chronophotography to replace Persistence of Vision as
a theory for explaining how animation and
cinema produce the illusion of continuous motion, was also presented at the Bournemouth
conference. His paper re-examines some established ideas about our perception of moving images and how there may be better tools to explain the cognitive process and our understanding of animation.
Though Max Bannah was unable to attend
the Atlanta conference, his paper Revolutionary cels: The Sydney waterfront, Harry Reade
and Cuban animation was accepted by the editorial board. The paper provides an in depth
look at a pioneering animator who is perhaps
not as well known as he should be. Bannahs
paper seeks to address this by highlighting some
of the gaps in this part of animation history.
Both To Be or Not to Be: The Controversy
in Japan over the Anime Label by Gan
Sheuo Hui and Kinesic constructions: An aesthetic analysis of movement and performance in
3D animation by Adam de Beer were presented in Atlanta. The former examines a hotly
iii

contested notion of genre and what anime
means within the Japanese animation industry.
The latter provides a close analysis of two Final
Fantasy films and compares their aesthetic qualities to establish the limitations of certain aspects of movement and the resulting performances in the films.
The next volume will build on this with
more papers from the Atlanta conference
already lined up. As I will be organising the
2010 conference in my home town of Edinburgh, UK, there will be two guest editors
working on the journal for much of the 2010
volume. Already working hard on the newsletter, Amy Ratelle and Caroline Ruddell will be
leading the call for papers in the spring.
I look forward to welcoming you to Edinburgh in July 2010.
Nichola Dobson
iv

Alan Cholodenko
Animation (Theory) as the Poematic

A Reply to the Cognitivists
This essay has two projects.

The first is intrinsic to the very question of what constitutes legitimate scholarly inquiry in the
study of film and of animation, marking out something ostensibly especially contentious in and
for the study of the latter: theory. Proceeding from two related queries Why theory? And why
animation theory? the paper offers responses based in and on my own theory-driven and
theory-focused work.1
The second project constitutes a reply to the cognitivists, or more particularly, those scholars
who propound and promote a cognitive theory of film and especially of animation, notably, those
who have wielded cognitivism as a weapon of total destruction against my work. Given the nature
of the paper, this reply is of a general and in any case partial character.
Let me pause to say: I ordinarily do not respond to criticism of my work. But given where
these criticisms have been published and their purport, I felt I have had to make an exception to
my rule.
Theory is a subject near and dear to my heart.
I dont stand outside what I theorise.
I theorise what I live, and I live what I theorise.
To ask Why theory? Why animation theory? these are of course themselves theoretical
questions, questions of theory, of the theory of theory.
Theory for me proceeds from a double inescapability, at once the inescapable necessity and inescapable impossibility of knowing (that is, knowing anything fully), including answers to these
two theoretical questions I have just posed.
Put otherwise, theory proceeds from a double necessity and a double impossibility, the at once
impossible necessity of knowing fully and the necessary impossibility of knowing fully.
The necessity animates the impossibility and the impossibility the necessity, and so on,
One word for knowing is cognition, from the Latin cognoscere, to know.
What I have just said about knowing, about its nature and limits, applies for me to cognition,
to the cognitive, and will inform my reply to the cognitivists, whose very name derives from the
word cognition.
Another key point: theory is for me a form of animation.
It is animate, animated and animating, including of the theorist.
And theory for me is a form of speculation.
Happily, thats one of its definitions.
1
This paper takes off from my elaboration of my theoretical approaches to animation in my Introductions to The Illusion of Life: Essays on
Animation (1991) and The Illusion of Life 2: More Essays on Animation (2007) and in my articles Animation-Film and Media Studies Blind
Spot and Why Animation, Alan? in Society for Animation Studies Newsletters (Cholodenko, 2007a and 2008). I obviously cannot here rehearse
all their points regarding theory, all that is for me at stake in theory in general and in my approaches to theory in particular, including the theory of
animation and the animation of theory, including all the aspects therein pertaining to my papers two projects, only ask the reader to consult them,
should they wish to learn more.

It comes from the Greek theoria, a looking at, viewing, contemplation, speculation, also a
sight, a spectacle, from theoros, spectator, looker on, from stem thea to look on, view contemplate
Which means that theres an implied spectator in every theory.
And for those who have read my work on the Derridean spectre and the Homeric spectre
psuch,2 theres a spectre in every spectator-speculator, and in every theory, too something
Jacques Derrida acknowledges in his declaration of the spectre as perhaps the hidden figure of
all figures (Derrida, 1994 p.120).
As for the word speculate, of all its meanings, the one that most attracts me is: to undertake,
to take part or invest in, a business enterprise or transaction of a risky nature in the expectation of
considerable gain, especially as it inflects with its risk other of speculates meanings to observe
or view mentally and to conjecture.
As speculation, as a kind of risky business, my work is what I call after Derrida and Jean
Baudrillard a kind of reality-fiction, theory-fiction, including of course this paper.
Let me add: for me, theory is never not there, operating and animating, whether explicitly
stated or not.
All propositions, all discourses, all practices, all ideas have a theoretical support, basis,
ground
Even those who might think theory has no place in animation studies have thereby a theory, a
theory not only about animation studies but about theory itself!
So not only is theory inescapable, those who think they can escape theory, have escaped theory,
are arguably the most in thrall to it (analogous to how Louis Althusser theorises ideology
(Althusser, 1970)).
And for me there is no meta-anything, including of theory, that would be the ground of all,
including of all theory, no transcendental signified where all knowledge would at last achieve its
final form, its resolution and definitiveness. Put otherwise, there is no theory that subsumes every
theory, no final theory, no TOE (Theory of Everything), except perhaps the TOE that there is no
TOE.3
I should also note: in being linked to Greek thea, theory is also linked to theatre, to spectacle,
to mimesis.
I come out of film theory, as I indicated in my Introduction to The Illusion of Life: Essays on
Animation (1991), where I explicitly stated that my work in film theory was a critique of late 60s
French film theory from the perspective of poststructuralist and postmodernist approaches to
film.4 As for my theorising of animation, I marked in my Introduction that it was to serve as supplement supplement to the scholarship already done on animation. It was and is a theorising
likewise poststructuralist and postmodernist, foregrounding animations special association
with the abject, the double, the uncanny, the sublime, seduction, diffrance, disappearance
and death (Cholodenko, 1991a p.14).5 Why do I and others privilege such approaches for the
2
My articles on the Derridean spectre include The Crypt, the Haunted House, of Cinema, The Nutty Universe of Animation, the Discipline of
All Disciplines, And Thats Not All, Folks!, Still Photography? and (The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix, Parts I (soon to
appear on the SAS website) and II. My articles on the Homeric spectre psuch include Still Photography? and (The) Death (of) the Animator, or:
The Felicity of Felix, Part II.
3
On the TOE, see my The Nutty Universe of Animation, the Discipline of All Disciplines, And Thats Not All, Folks!.
4
I include its English avatar whenever I write of late 60s French film theory in this essay.
5
In this sentence seduction specifically references Baudrillard, diffrance Derrida. See page 14 of my Introduction for the full text.

theorising of animation in our two volumes? Because we believe they not only offer the richest
ways to theorize animation (and the animatic), they are the most isomorphic with it, the most, as
it were, informed by and performing it.
Mine has been a theorising seeking to reanimate not only film theory, Film Studies but animation theory, animation studies, indeed the very idea of film. To that end, my first key, apparently
still radical, proposal of that Introduction is: not only is animation a form of film, film, all film,
film as such, is a form of animation.
No matter to the cognitivists Jayne Pilling, in her Introduction to A Reader in Animation
Studies (1997) and Andrew Darley, in his article Bones of Contention: Thoughts on the Study of
Animation, in Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 2, no. 1, 2007, that I stated my work
was a critique of late 60s French film theory. Disregarding that, they illogically make my work
subject to cognitive film theorists David Bordwell and Nol Carrolls so-called critique of Grand
Theory (Bordwell and Carroll, 1996 pp.xiii-xvii; Bordwell, 1996; Carroll, 1996), which critique is,
ironically, just like my work, a critique of late 60s French film theory (though approached from a
dramatically different direction).6 Nor do Pilling and Darley argue any case for so identifying my
work as Grand Theory, which, once done, is meant automatically to spell its banishment from the
magic kingdom of animation studies or even its liquidation. Say the magic words Grand Theory
and poof! Youre history! Terminated with extreme prejudice.
Nor, significantly, do Bordwell and Carroll name the work of Baudrillard and Derrida the
lynchpins of my work Grand Theory. Nor ironically, inconsistently, given they do identify my
work as Grand Theory do Pilling and Darley so name that of these lynchpins of my work.
While Pilling says nothing on the matter, Darley takes a different tack. He declares deconstruction (the term associated with Derridas work) a crucial approach to culture per se, while at the
same time insinuating my kind of work perverts deconstruction, becoming ironically, inexplicably,
thereby, as he puts it, so-called theory (Darley, 2007 p.71), the dreaded theory (short for
Grand Theory)!
Needless to say, I challenge this charge.
For a start, I would refer him to my Who Framed Roger Rabbit, or The Framing of Animation
essay in The Illusion of Life, an essay that is a meeting place of animation and deconstruction. In
fact, in that essay I deliberately quote Derridas use of the term cinematography as form of what
he calls writing to valorise my deconstructive theorising of film and animation (Cholodenko,
1991b p.214). I would add: not that it is conclusive but years ago Derrida told me he liked The Illusion of Life book and my Who Framed Roger Rabbit essay in it; and more recently, he told me
he thought my likewise Derridean essay The Crypt, the Haunted House, of Cinema (Cholodenko,
2004), which like The Illusion of Life I had given him to read, was wonderful. His word.
Some cynics might suggest that my citing here of Derridas approval is purely gratuitous, selffulfilling, that it was automatically guaranteed that Derrida would be nothing other than acknowledging of my work for the simple reason that I drew upon his. But the matter is not nearly so
simple. It would not have been enough to draw upon Derridas work to gain such a response, one
would have had to do so in a way that respected and accorded with that works testing complex6
Pilling so subjects my work on pages xiii-xiv, plus xviii, note 19; Darley on pages 70-75. A large-scale, focused critique of cognitive film theorys
critique of Grand Theory is unfortunately beyond the reach of this essay. But I must say that Christian Metz told me in 1982 that, while he aspired to a science of cinema what would qualify for me as a TOE of it through the adding of the economic instance of cinema to his psycho analytic semiotics of cinema, it had not yet been achieved. Not only did he never to my knowledge elaborate that economic instance or otherwise
declare the goal had been reached, he also told me at that time that there was a tremendous amount of work to be done in the theorising of film,
work which I took to be part and parcel of what would have to be done before a science of cinema could for him be achieved.

ity, richness, and rigour, that understood, represented and used its challenging logics correctly. It
is a fact that the demanding complexity, richness and rigour of the work of theorists like Derrida
and Baudrillard means that their work, including their exacting logics, can all too easily be not
only misunderstood and misrepresented but used incorrectly. I have seen that aplenty. Even the
term deconstruction is almost as commonly misused as used (Cholodenko, 2007c pp.47-48). So
Derridas acknowledgement of my work, to say nothing of praise of it, means I got it right for
him, which likewise means, contrary to Darleys insinuation, I did not pervert Derridas work, as
well as argues that at best Darley does not understand deconstruction.
To pursue that further, it seems rather perverse in general and rather a perversion of Derridas
work in particular for Darley to declare deconstruction crucial for the understanding of culture per se (p.73), yet at the same time to state Im afraid I view rather conservatively attempts to
import, willy-nilly, so-called theory (usually French and post-structuralist) into the study and
understanding of animation (p.70). Since Derrida, an Algerian born French citizen, was the
founder of deconstruction and deconstruction is a mode, indeed one of the most prominent
modes, of French poststructuralism, how can Darley at once declare deconstruction crucial and
issue a blanket savaging of French poststructuralism as so-called theory?! There is no logic,
no sense here. Is he saying not merely that my work perverts deconstruction but Derridas work
perverts deconstruction?! (Certainly the one time he names Derrida he speaks of Derridas approach to deconstruction and of a discussion in my Introduction to The Illusion of Life as inspired by Derridas approach to it (Darley, 2007 p.71).) Is he saying deconstruction is fine for
understanding culture per se but not for understanding animation per se?! If so, is he suggesting
culture per se and animation per se are totally unrelated?! These propositions make no sense
either. And beyond that, since deconstruction challenges the very notion and being of the per se,
the in-itself that would be entire to itself, how can Darley even claim deconstructioncrucial for
the understanding of culture per se?! The only way is if he believes erroneously that deconstruction is allied, isomorphic, one with the ontological rather than is the at once enabling and disenabling condition of the ontological.
In light of these queries around Derrida, deconstruction and theory, I must pause here to contextualise briefly Darleys cognitivist critique of my work in terms of its theoretical framework
and philosophical commitments, his assertion of Bordwells and Carrolls approaches as the measure of the ultimate worth (Darley, 2007 p.75, note 15) of theory in respect to film studies and
his bringing of them to assess animation studies. Cognitive film theory, as formulated in the Introduction to Bordwell and Carrolls anthology Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (1996) is
based in the field of cognitive science [which spans] linguistics, anthropology, psychology, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind (Bordwell and Carroll, 1996 p.xvi)-neuroscience and artificial intelligence, too is not a unified field but rather one of vivid and irreconcilable differences (Ibid)
and A cognitivist analysis or explanation seeks to understand human thought, emotion, and action by appeal to processes of mental representation, naturalistic processes, and (some sense of)
rational agency (Ibid).7 The one thing that binds differing, even diametrically opposed, cognitive
film theories is their rejection of the psychoanalytic framework that dominated film academia
(Ibid). Anti Grand Theory, Bordwell and Carroll promote what they term middle-level and
piecemeal theories, respectively (Bordwell, 1996 p.3, pp.26-30; Carroll, 1996 p.40). I must say, I
find their characterisation of late 60s French film theory in large measure a caricature of it, as
does Slavoj iek (iek, 2001), as I likewise find risible Bordwells characterisations of Derrida,
7
For an explication of these terms, see Bordwells A Case For Cognitivism, Iris 9, Spring 1989.

Baudrillard, poststructuralism, deconstruction and postmodernism (Bordwell, 1996). Crucially
too, I see Bordwell and Carrolls work as a continuation in its own way of the 100 Years War (!),
especially as Carroll is also an Anglo-American analytic philosopher, and he and Bordwell
American cognitivists are attacking continental (i.e. French) philosophy and theory. And Darley
in his own way as their avatar continues that war.
My work, as an astute person said recently, is a philosophy of animation. Yes, and based in
continental philosophy, but with this crucial qualification. Insofar as my work is that of Derridean
deconstruction, what I said of Derridas work when introducing him in 1999 at Sydney Town
Hall to 2000 people applies also to my work. Declaring that his work had reanimated philosophy,
I said:
Deconstruction is at once both most faithful to philosophy and most violent to it. Operating
on both sides of the horizon of philosophy at the same time, deconstruction is at once both
philosophy and not-philosophy, therefore neither simply philosophy nor simply not-philosophy.
It is the frame, the hymen, the pharmakon, [etc.,] of philosophy. It not only thinks the limit,
the between, the undecidable, the impossible, including of philosophy, but performs them, and
vice versa.
This is why I refer to my work as theory, not simply philosophy a theory of animation, of animation as the animatic.8
Derrida is a thinker of the limits; deconstruction a recognition, a re-cognition, of limits, including of cognition. The purport of Derridas famous statement The concept of writing exceeds and
comprehends that of language (Derrida, 1967 p.8) is that no matter how well-made, even if by
cognitive scientists and analytic philosophers drawing upon linguistics,9 language cannot surmount the play of writing writing for Derrida the structure always already inhabited by the
trace (Spivak, 1967 p.xxxix) and of diffrance for Derrida the systematic and regulated play
of differing and deferring in and of language, and more.10 Nor can definition surmount that play,
especially the pursuit of a definitive, final definition of animation, the call for which has rung insistently of late in e-mails to the Society for Animation Studies mailing list.11 In other words,
knowledge, language and definition come up against their limits.12
For my definition of the animatic, see my Introduction to The Illusion of Life 2: More Essays on Animation, pages 43-44.
Here I reference Suzanne Buchans advocacy of Bordwell and Carrolls critique of Grand Theory and promotion of piecemeal approaches
(Buchan, 2006a p.viii; Buchan, 2006b p.22), though her call for the concentration of such approaches on individual films (Buchan, 2006a p.viii)
flies in the face of Bordwell and Carrolls turn away from the one film-one essay format, for that for them in fact characterises work under the banner of Grand Theory! I reference here as well her championing of the goals for animation studies that Etienne Souriau sought for film: 1. anima tion studies being a science, a scientific discipline (Buchan, 2006a p.vii), one for Buchan modelled on Souriaus structuralist science, filmologie,
and enlisted by her to a cognitivist science of animation; and 2. the precondition to films being a science, a scientific discipline, that is, the development for Souriau, after Condillac, of a well-made language, enlisted by Buchan to a well-made language of animation (Buchan, 2006a p.vii;
Buchan, 200b p.36)), one specific to the animated form (Ibid), including definitions, terminology, etc. In both her Introduction to and essay in
Animated Worlds, The Animated Spectator: Watching the Quay Brothers Worlds, Buchan cites Souriaus La Structure de lunivers filmique
et le vocabulaire de la filmologie as support for her call for a science, scientific discipline and well-made language of animation, all three for me
always already deconstructed. As well, she explicitly names eight cognitive film theorists in her essay in that book (p.22) in support of that work of
cognitive film theory, which theory for her represents a major turn and a major discourse in Film Studies (which is for me and many others a most
questionable understanding), and of that works application to animation theory.
1 0
It is especially anti-Derrideans who continue to purvey the false idea that for Derrida all there is is textuality, ignoring, or perhaps being ignorant of, just for openers, what is known as Derridas affirmative phase from 1990 on, where he takes up such subjects as the gift, responsibility,
friendship, justice, hospitality, etc.
1 1
Here I reference Brian Wells northern hemisphere Spring 2008 e-mails to the SAS mailing list on the subject, calling for that definitive, final
definition of animation. At the same time, I am pleased to acknowledge his recognition in his e-mails of the inextricable complication of theory
and practice and his call for such recognition on the part of the SAS, including in its mission statement and by explicit promotion of scholarship
in both areas, a recognition for him and for myself integral to an understanding of animation.
1 2
Put in terms of animation, language and definition come up against animation as the animatic. The animatic not only perturbs language, it per turbs the very possibility of definition, including of itself. It disseminates itself, as it does all it defines.
9

But Derrida is not saying that such efforts to know fully and finally should not be made. To
the contrary. They will and must be, and must be as complex, sophisticated and rigorous as possible.13 But that will not prevent these efforts from meeting their limits, from failing to accomplish
or fulfil their desire for presence, for essence, for identity, for self-identity, for closure, all of
which are, pardon the pun, foreclosed. And fortunately so. Their accomplishment or fulfilment,
says Derrida, would be death itself; the good, the absolute good, would be identical with death
(Derrida, 1987 p.260). So their failure becomes their paradoxical success, even as their success
would be the ultimate failure.
In other words, it is the irresolvability of the question of who authored Felix that keeps the
theorist and what the theorist theorises animate, animated and animating.14 The irresolvability animates research and scholarship, keeps them going. Its resolution, on the other hand, would
render that animation inanimate.
Here another crucial point, one marked in my use of the term supplement earlier: my work,
like Derridas, is not opposed to traditional scholarship. What Derrida declares of philosophers I
say of animation scholars. He states:
I do not think we need to choose between the two. We should have philosophers trained as philosophers, as rigorously as possible, and at the same time audacious philosophers who cross the borders and discover new connections, new fields, not only interdisciplinary researches but themes that are not even interdisciplinary. (Derrida,
1997 p.7)
Such themes (and problems and objects, too) would be new, of no legitimacy, recognition or
even identity in existing academic fields and universities, necessitating the invention of a new
competency, a new type of research, a new discipline (Derrida, 1997 p.8). Such new entities
would be constitutively at once faithful to and disturbing of the propriety and authority of existing understandings, forms, systems, discourses, institutions, etc.
So we need traditional animation scholars doing their time-honoured work, animation scholars doing interdisciplinary work and for me animation scholars deconstructing that work!
And fortunately, whether theorists theorise it or not, deconstruction as process of world is always going on.
You see, Derrida is a robust pluralist15 when it comes to theorising, as am I. Too, I say of my
approaches what he says of his: No one is obliged to be interested in what interests me (Derrida,
1992 p.65).
And to say approaches means that in this essay I must confine my remarks mostly to the work
of Derrida, leaving Baudrillard for another day.
1 3
This, of course, includes my own work, in which I insist on bringing as much sophistication and rigor as possible to bear upon analysis, which
includes for me striving for as much clarity as possible. So I dispute Ethan de Seifes criticising, in his e-mail to the SAS mailing list on April 7,
2008, my use of terms such as animatic as a further, jargonistic blurring of terms which could, frankly, use more clarity, if anything. The same
goes for Darleys accusation against that indiscriminate blending as Theorythat has led some to esoteric and jargon-ridden flights of elliptical rhetoric (p.73). I am relentless in the pursuit of clarity in what I write, including in the elaboration of the term animatic, while at the same
time not traducing the complexity required by the object of analysis, even if de Seife and Darley do not see it. And beyond that, there is a clarity
that comes in the use of terms of art of a field, too. This is to say that I dispute the notion that, while it is legitimate that professions and disciplines
such as the sciences each have their own language that their practitioners use to speak with and among each other, this is barred to the arts and humanities, even terms from philosophy, deconstruction, etc., being characterised by definition as jargon. To attack jargon can be a highly loaded,
ideological tactic, a mode of war against the ideas of others.
1 4
See my (The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix, Part II, Animation Studies, vol. 2, 2007.
1 5
Here I inscribe Carrolls distinction, in Prospects for Film Theory, pages 62-63 and 67-68, between robust methodological pluralism and
peaceful coexistence pluralism.

The biggest critique people seem to make of my work is that it evacuates animation from the
discourse of animation film and animation studies in order to prioritise my own philosophic meditations on theory. I disagree on multiple grounds, for openers evidenced by the historical work
on animation film in my Introductions to the two anthologies. Furthermore, insofar as my work
opens the term animation to the history of its ideation, it cannot but enrich the understanding of
the pertinence animation in animation film and animation studies.
Moreover, I see my work in accord with Paul Wards crucial suggestion in his apt article Some
Thoughts on Theory-Practice Relationships in Animation Studies that this whole debate is not
just about how other disciplines can be used to illuminate animation but how animation can and
should be used to illuminate other disciplines, ideas and concepts. Thats what I am never not doing.16 My work is never not facing at least two ways at once, as one can see from my working
between animation film and live action film, between animation theory and film theory, between
animation studies and Film Studies, arguing for their inextricable complication, as well as
between animation and other disciplines, not only bringing the work of Derrida, Baudrillard et
al. to the theorising of animation but animation to the theorising of their work. And that of others. Two points: the in-between is for me the very domain of animation, operating not only
between disciplines but within them, making every discipline interdisciplinary.17 Second, in terms
of the work of the theorists I privilege, through my work their theories can be seen for the first
time, as it were as themselves of the order of animation, making these theorists not only theorists of animation and the animatic but animatic theorists of them.
Having said this, I will now return to Darleys text for further elucidation of its terms of criticism and to offer my responses to them. To facilitate that process for the reader and myself, I will
quote a key portion of Darleys condemnation:
In particular, one wants to believe that the kind of diversions into so-called theory which occurred in relation to live action would not be repeated in animation studies. For the increasingly
poetic character of such theorizing its reliance on metaphorical, associative and speculative
routines which are divorced from real phenomena and practices leads not to rational understanding, but rather to forms of rhetorical extemporization: a kind of poetical riffing with theoretical concepts and ideas that bear very little relation to the real-world practices into which they
are being shoe-horned.
1 6
The importance of Wards article has been acknowledged, and boosted thereby, by its being awarded the 2008 SASs McLaren-Lambart Prize
for Best Scholarly Article on Animation. So what it says, including on the theory of animation, has every chance of being influential in the thinking
by many animation and other scholars on the subject. Given that, I would be remiss in not stating that for me the Mike Wayne typology of cultural
practitioners reflexive, theoretical and critical (from least to most self-conscious and desirable) that Ward endorses for application to animation studies in his essay needs qualification and challenge, at least its initial characterization by Ward. For two pages later that characterization undergoes not one but two shifts, shifts that for me dramatically reanimate it. First, theoretical suddenly shifts to join critical as broader, as follows:
the broader theoretical and contextual dimensions. Then, critical suddenly becomes itself subject to the theoretical, as follows: There is little theorizing of the broader contextual issues at stake. Which means that Wards Wayne model suddenly metamorphoses into one much closer to my
modeling, in which theory is not separate from but rather at work, or better, both at work and at play, in all three of Wards categories, where
none of them can escape theory, and where text and context are always already imbricated, so a simple either/or opposition of text and context is
always already deconstructed, as is any belief in context as an escape from theory.
As well, of course, the Marxist model that dominated late 60s French and English film theory and that Ward promotes for animation studies insofar as that model informs his use and elaboration of this typology in particular, at least in its initial characterization, and his essay in general-one
where production, including cultural production, is privileged, dialectics is the watchword, and critique, critical practice, as the interrogating of
the politics of representation, becomes the highest activity-is one with which my work parts company. That includes his notion that animation
needs to offer a critique in order to define itself (p.239), which implies that animation that does not do so is by definition not animation for
him. See my Introduction to The Illusion of Life 2, pp. 39-40, for my criticisms of Marxist film theory, including of its either/or modellings.
1 7
On animation as in-betweener, as of the order of the in-between, see my Introduction to The Illusion of Life, pp. 13-14, and my Introduction to
The Illusion of Life 2, pp. 70-71.

An example of such theorizing occurs in the introduction to The Illusion of Life: Essays on
Animation (Cholodenko, 1991), where, in a discussion inspired by Derridas approach to deconstruction, it is claimed that a theoretical account of animation film implies a deliberate collapsing and liquefication of distinct categories and senses of the idea of animation. Thus we are
informed that
to account for animation film, the theorist would be compelled to approach the idea of animation precisely not as
delimited to and by the animation film ... but as a notion ... implicating the most profound, complex and challenging questions of our culture, questions in the areas of being and becoming, time, space, motion, change indeed, life itself. (Darley, 2007 p.71)
Now, to reply further to Darleys critique, first of my work in general, then of my work as poetry in particular. Let me begin by pointing to a few additional ironies. First, while my deconstructive writings on animation foreground animation as (non)essence, which means that I qualifiedly share with Darley his stated anti-essentialist stance,18 he ironically nonetheless issues a total,
blanket denunciation of my work, as Pilling did before him!19 Second, their denunciations ironically exemplify a Grand Theory on their part, the Grand, that is, totalising, overarching, Theory
that Grand Theory is per se unacceptable, void, of no value. 20 Third, while he mistakes my work
for Bordwell and Carrolls Grand Theory, nominating and condemning it as sole exemplar of
theory in the field of animation studies, at the same time he does not notice or ignores that
their Grand Theory is in animation studies but in a form different from mine. To wit, insofar as
Paul Ward and others draw their modeling of animation from late 60s French and English Marxist film theory and promote that for animation studies, despite Darleys wish to believe that the
kind of diversions into so-called theory which occurred in relation to live action would not be
repeated in animation studies (Ibid) in other words, that the incursion of theory that my work
represents would not be repeated the film theory virus is already in animation studies in this
form, even as those promulgating it become subject to the critique of Grand Theory!
And a fourth irony: Darley mounts his polemic against all my work while explicitly referencing
only my Introduction to The Illusion of Life!21 This is a far cry from scholarly and professional
practice. And a fifth: though published in 2007, his article addresses all of its criticisms to pre2000 publications, as with my 1991 Introduction, while presenting itself as a response to not only
the past but the current state of affairs in the field! Like my own post-2000 publications, Paul
Wells publications after Understanding Animation (1998) go unaddressed, too. This is another
telling deficiency on Darleys part.
1 8
And I as well share his and Carrolls fallibilism (see Carroll, 1996 p.60), the belief that no system of thought is or can be conclusive, which I
have already referenced in terms of the TOE and Kurt Gdels Incompleteness Theorem in The Nutty Universe of Animation.
1 9
Given both their blanket disparagements of essays in The Illusion of Life, and without their even naming those essays, when I say my work, at
points I mean to include those essays. A further and crucial point must be made. For me, there is a key issue here of what criticism is, how one
does criticism. I believe in an approach that looks for what is good as well as what one finds problematic, acknowledging the former as well as indicating the latter. As Stanley Cavell has famously said, there is no knowledge without acknowledgment. Which is why I part company with those
who engage in blanket denunciations of the work of others, who find not one good word to say about that work. And that necessity of acknowledgement as precondition to knowledge must as well include for me acknowledging the work of others upon which one has drawn, to which one
owes a debt, something I find too often absent in recent scholarship.
2 0
See my Introduction to The Illusion of Life 2, p. 44, for what I call a corollary Grand Theory, that is, that only piecemeal theorising (Carroll)
and piecemeal approaches that concentrate on individual films (Buchans Animation Research Centres web announcement for her Animated
Worlds conference in 2003) are worthwhile and legitimate.
2 1
I use the word polemic advisedly here. Polemic is from the Greek polemikos, meaning war. I reply in kind, as Carroll requests of his interlocutors, for he wants such an agonistic debate among theories. See Carroll, Prospects for Film Theory, pp. 62-63 and 67-68. Darley himself identifies his approach in Bones of Contention as the polemic (p.72). The abstract of the article calls it a polemical response (p.63). And Buchan, in
her Introduction to the issue, calls Darleys article a welcome polemic (p.6), though welcome to whom is the question I pose. On the other hand,
while Carroll favours speculation, Darley is averse to it.

And beyond that, Darley operates from the self-appointed, superior position of not only judge
determining guilt, adjudicating what is legitimate and what is not, but executioner, casting out
from animation studies what he finds illegitimate. But I would ask what qualifies him to assume
such a role, especially when he himself ironically declares in his opening paragraph that the article
involves what are still only partially resolved reactions to a variety of claims made in and for the
field! (Darley, 2007 p.63). Not that for me one ever achieves a resolution, but this reads as decidedly premature! He is the grand poobah, the grand legitimator and deligitimator, whose article announces and denounces, or, as the abstract at the head of his article declares, confronts
what it views as significant obstacles (and cul-de-sacs) with respect to the progress and consolidation of the subject as a legitimate field of scholarship (Ibid). The body of his text is only criticising, only negative, except for registering agreement with Mark Langer on a point (only in the
endnote then to criticize Langer), and his tone is pompous and derogatory. Apart from the nod to
Langer, Darley has not one good word to say about scholarly work done in animation studies in
the body of his essay, including not one acknowledgment of good aspects of what he criticizes.
Nor, I would add, does he seem to think he needs to justify his criticisms with reasoned explanation and argumentation, his mere assertion of them being enough to carry conviction!
For me, there is a key issue here of what criticism is, how one does criticism. I believe in an approach that looks for what is good as well as what one finds problematic, acknowledging the
former as well as indicating the latter. As Stanley Cavell has famously said, there is no knowledge
without acknowledgment. Which is why I part company with those who engage in blanket denunciations of the work of others, who find not one good word to say about that work. (And that
necessity of acknowledgement as precondition to knowledge must as well include for me acknowledging the work of others upon which one has drawn, to which one owes a debt, something I
find too often absent in recent scholarship.)
What praise Darley gives to animation scholars is, apart from the Langer in the text, saved for
the endnotes, Suzanne Buchan receiving acknowledgement in endnote 8, and then the following
in endnote 16: Of course, it goes without saying that I do not wish to deny the considerable work
that has already been undertaken by to name but a few Crafton (1984), Thompson (1980),
Langer (1992), Klein (1993), Pilling (1997), Furniss (1998) and Wells (1998) (Darley, 2007 p.75).
Coming as it does in the penultimate endnote of the article, this reads as but an ersatz afterthought, too little, too late.
Furthermore, though the abstract at the head of the article states An overall approach is suggested in it, the only overall approach I can discern is the negative one, what is not to be done,
not what is to be done. Of course, the very figuring of the overall approach raises the spectre of
Grand Theory!, his overall approach deducible as following on from Bordwells and Carrolls
approaches. In that regard, one of the oddest moments for me is his endnote 8s praise of Buchan
for looking for similarities as well as differences, when that is what he has not done in terms of my
work, as for example, his attributing the critique of essentialism to Noel Carrolls 2000 discussion
(Darley, 2007 p.66), when I offer that in The Illusion of the Beginning: A Theory of Drawing and
Animation, likewise published in 2000. But, as I indicated, he mounts his blanket critique of my
work on the basis of only my 1991 Introduction to The Illusion of Life; and an acknowledgment
of my article would have to perturb the total negativity he has toward my work.
As for my 1991 Introduction, Darleys treatment of it constitutes a totalising, tendentious
misrepresentation of what I claim there, which misrepresentation does to my work what he says I
do to animation, that is, shoe-horns, collapses and liquefies (Darley, 2007 p.71) it, or better
liquidates it! For the record, nowhere do I claim that a theory of animation film implies a deliber-

ate collapsing and liquefication of distinct categories and senses of the idea of animation nor does
such a theory operate in my thinking of animation. Nor could it, since distinct categories alone
provide the material with and through which deconstruction operates, unless the mere opening of
animation film to the idea of animation, and vice versa, would be such a collapsing and liquefication for him! Or unless, by liquefication, he means dissemination, deconstruction! But they are
radically different, as different as are anything goes and the systematic and regulated play of differing and deferring in and of language that is diffrance.
My idea was that animation as idea (concept, process, etc.) informs the animation film, and
vice versa, so the animation film is open to the idea of animation, and vice versa. While Darley accuses me and many of the essays in The Illusion of Life of appropriating animation (Ibid), it is
arguable that he seeks to do so with his own sequestering vision, wanting to keep animation film
safe, safe from animation as idea!, indeed not only closing it off from animation as idea but confining it to a mode of representation and art (Ibid), as a particular cultural practice of film making (p.73). Such a sequestering and confining would supposedly for Darley keep animation free
from theory, styled by him theory. This is of course his theory. But for me, insofar as there is no
proper, no essence, to animation, animation is always already expropriated. This means that, despite Darleys theory that my approach appropriates and subjugates animation to theory (pp.71,
72), exploiting animation as alibi (p.71), mere grist to the mill (p.72) and pretext or illustrative
crutch (p.73) for theory, animation cannot be appropriated nor subjugated by any one or any
thing to any agenda, including that of trying to keep it safe, and any effort to do so only expropriates and liberates it all the more (as that effort to protect it as well demonstrates for me a very
condescending attitude not only toward idea, toward theory, but toward animation).
Here I turn to Darleys critique, indeed condemnation, of my work as poetry. For me, Platos
animus toward psuch (the spectre), including poetry as spectre, as second order mimesis, as pernicious, duplicitous evil simulacrum lying at two removes from reality, finds an avatar in Darleys
denunciation of poetry in and as my theorising of animation, including his characterising my kind
of work as a diversion (p.71). Mark Edmundson, in his book Literature Against Philosophy, Plato to Derrida, tell us that for Plato, poetry is a harmful diversion, best repudiated in the self and
cast from the state (Edmundson, 1995 p.7), as the poets must lie, for they live among phantoms
(Edmundson, 1995 p.4).
Poetry is a pejorative term for Darley, but I thank him for identifying my work with poetry,
giving me the lead to align it shortly with Derridas notion of the poematic and in contrast to
Bordwells notion of poetics.
But before I do that, I first have to sketch and reply to the constellation of terms of criticism
that Darley models and mounts against my work as poetry. Here I take a cue from his apparent
identifying of my work with intoxication, too (Darley, 2007 p.73), another thing censured by Plato, another thing I thank him for. Perhaps it is that intoxication that leads Darley beyond merely
criticising my work as poetry to censuring it as rhetorical extemporization (p.71), i.e. improvisation! And as poetical riffing (Ibid.)! But, and here we have to counter any notion of an exclusive operation of intoxication here, to see my work as only intoxicating perhaps he means playful, seductive even is to miss the other side of it, for it is a very rigorous, painstaking form of
thinking and writing, attentive to the mind-challenging complexities, including of logic, that
animation sets in play and requires for its theorising. Indeed, I would argue that, though Darley
contrasts his cultivation of reason and logic against my putative lack of it, ironically my work
pushes logic further than he does in his attack on it.
10

Which is to say that, despite his criticism of either-or ways of looking as oversimplistic
(Darley, 2007 p.73) and my criticism of either/or logics in a number of articles, another thing he
and I share Darley ironically models and structures his critique with the self-same simple
either/or logics (Bordwell and Carrolls, too), such as: rational understanding vs. rhetorical extemporization and poetical riffing; real phenomena and practices vs. speculative routines; real-world
practices vs. theoretical concepts and ideas including his demarcating and centering of animation in the rational and the real, the real-world (p.71), and his commingling of the rational with
reality. For me, such simple, reductive bi-polar modellings do an injustice to the complexity of
animation (and of the subject and the world, and of the commingled relations among them) and
hence to the theoretical work called for by that complexity, work I and others have tried to undertake.
Such an injustice is done too in another aspect of Darleys simple anti-poetry approach to animation, his centering it in and confining it to reason and logic as ultimate guarantors of truth
an example of what Derrida calls logocentrism (from Greek logos, meaning word, speech, reason,
logic). Logocentrism is part and parcel of philosophy as ontology, as a metaphysics of presence
from Plato on; and it is that which Derridas work deconstructs. In centering everything in
reason and logic, logocentrism seeks to exclude all that is not reason and logic; but what it seeks
to exclude, to repress, is irrepressible, that which is not only opposed to logocentrism but anterior to it, indeed its very enabling and at the same time disenabling condition, as it is of what logocentrism seeks to center, that is, reason and logic. Let us call that excluded condition poetry,
speculation, theory. What is traced in, what spectres, logocentrism, reason and logic is their at
once excluded and included radical other, what cannot be subsumed by logocentrism, reason and
logic but rather subsumes them, instituting and at the same time destituting them, never not animating, disseminating and seducing them, what I call the animatic. It is what Plato wishes to exclude to establish his Republic of Reason, including in the form of poetry, which is not only informed by but performing of it, but which cannot be excluded, by him or anyone.
Here lies the injustice to animation in Darleys easy associating of animation solely with the ontological, the simple per se of animation as form of presence, essence, being, etc. (Darley, 2007
p.70), to say nothing of his possible and staggering insinuation that my work, and/or work like
mine, seeks ontological/metaphysical legitimation (Ibid.)! The ontological, and the simple association of animation with it, are precisely what after Derrida my work deconstructs, including
with the trace, the spectre, the hauntological.22 In consequence, while Darley criticises the work of
others for reductivism and essentialism, he ironically falls prey to those critiques himself. Indeed,
for a person espousing exclusively reason and logic, he seems to have rather a few nonreasoned
and nonlogical aspects and elements to his text.
Another such injustice lies in Darleys simple, total condemnation of the speculative. The
speculative is not the opposite of real, rational, logical, as Darley believes and would have the
reader believe. It is of the order of the in-between-in-between the real and non-real, the rational
and non-rational, the logical and non-logical, like the animatic. And theory for me, after Gilles
Deleuze, is not the opposite of practice, it is itself a practice, a practice of concepts that for us animation gives rise to,23 even as the practice of animation is itself never not in-formed by theory, at
2 2
In terms of the hauntological, see my The Crypt, the Haunted House, of Cinema, The Nutty Universe of Animation, Still Photography? and
(The) Death (of) the Animator, or: the Felicity of Felix, Parts I and II.
2 3
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, p. 280. Here a crucial, indeed radical, point: the one paragraph in Cinema 1: The Movement-Image
where Deleuze explicitly addresses animation (p.5) serves for us to reanimate his two volumes on cinema as volumes on cinema as form of animation!
11

the least theory of animation and theory of theory. For me, for the cognitivists to make reason,
including in the form of classical Aristotelian logic, formal logic and/or Carrolls normal, ordinary,
garden variety (Carroll, 1996 p.54) type, the rule, the authority, for the thinking of film this
central Platonic principle of cognitive film theory to make it the rule, the authority, for the
thinking of animation!, indeed of anything, means that the limits of reason are the limits of such
thinking of these objects.
In light of the great decentrings of western culture I marked in my last SAS paper, (The)
Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix, Part II, including the decenterings wrought
not only by Derrida but before him by Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Einstein, chaos theory, quantum
science (with its non-classical logics, counter-intuitive modellings, violations of Aristotles principle
of non-contradiction, non-deterministic processes, confoundings of cause and effect, etc.), etc. such
a reasonable and rational limitation and limitation to the reasonable and rational by cognitivist
theorists seems quite unreasonable and quite irrational! And quite unreal, given the real world
(i.e. the quantum world, which at once makes possible and impossible Darleys real-world)! And
quite anachronistic! The ostensible cognitivist wish to erase those great decenterings, to conduct
an Operational Whitewash (Baudrillard, 1993a p.44) of the last 150 plus years!, a reversal of history nostalgic for what has disappeared or is increasingly disappearing, just wont wash, no matter
how hard they redouble their efforts to preserve what has disappeared or is disappearing.24
I must add: at the same time, the cognitivists hyperrationalism, hyperlogics and hyperproductivism, and connections of some to AI (Artificial Intelligence), are very much a part of Baudrillards third order, that of our contemporary hyperreality, perfect for todays hyperreal, virtual,
simulation university todays hyperacademy for me the hyperreal form of Michel Foucaults
disciplinary regime of power/knowledge, where now the human is treated as more computer than
computer, his mind as information processor, and knowledge as information and data, which is
precisely the model of cognition of some cognitivist theorists. Perfect for an accountancy, a Quality Assurance Process, or rather Quantity Assurance Process (where quantity is the new quality)
of animation, missing but one thing for me: animation itself.
Now, having deconstructed key elements of Darleys rationalist, Platonic animosity toward poetry, I will turn to Bordwells and Derridas takes on poetry. Against that form of Grand Theory
he calls SLAB theory (for Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser and Roland
Barthes) (Bordwell, 1989a pp.385-392) and drawing upon the definition of Greek poiesis as active making (Bordwell, 1989a p.371), Bordwell aims to construct a cognitive film theory that he
calls a historical poetics of cinema (Bordwell, 1989a p.369), a poetics avatar of Aristotles Poetics, which work for Edmundson served as cure to Platos banishing of poetry (that is, mimetic arts
and literature) from the ideal Republic centred in and ruled by reason and at the same time for
Edmundson served as poison insofar as in the Poetics Aristotle reinstates poetry as a set of formal
categories, structures, species (Edmundson, 1995 pp.8-10) for me poetry thereby ostensibly
tamed, domesticated, fixed, rendered inanimate. Hardly the best model for the theorising of animation!
2 4
This recalls Stalins efforts to whitewash Soviet history that Timo Linsenmaier tells us about in his article, Why Animation Historiography?
Or: Why the Commissar Shouldnt Vanish, Animation Studies, vol. 3, 2008. I must note: in his article Linsenmaier less felicitously characterises my
statement of the felicity of Felix in my (The) Death (of) the Animator as not entirely unaffected by aspects of the aforementioned indefinite language-games that we have seen to curtail research-based modes of investigation. But I ask: have we seen that curtailment or is this not simply an
assertion, indeed a theory, on Linsenmaiers part? For me it is the latter, and it therefore begs the question, or rather questions, historians questions even: What and whose research has been curtailed? Is he implying my work has done that? Where is the evidence for such curtailment? Is it
not possible that, instead of a simple curtailment, even if such could be proven to exist, research might as well and at the same time have been
stimulated by such language-games? Let me add: I find much to challenge in Linsenmaiers for me theory of history and in his critique of Derrida,
but this is not the place to elucidate those criticisms.
12

I counterpose to both Darleys Platonic dismissal of poetry and Bordwells Aristotelian formal,
categorial, structuralist, productivist, constructional poetics, which subordinates poetry to reason,
the inescapability, and indeed superiority, of the poststructuralist, deconstructionist poematics of
Derrida, deconstruction being the condition of possibility and at the same time impossibility, the
limit of possibility, of construction, of constructional poetics, of cognitivist science and cognitive
film theory. Put otherwise, deconstruction re-cognises cognition, re-cognises what it is to know
(here we return to the nature and limits of knowing, of cognition and cognitivism), recognizing
what comes from and of the other that precedes, subtends, enables and at the same time disenables that is, disseminates, seduces cognition and that cognition does not and cannot recognise, except when looking awry.
The experience of the poematic is near and dear to Derridas heart. This to quote Derrida
multiply (Derrida, 1991 pp.223-237) demon of the heart teaches, invents, the heart. At once
singular and iterable (that is, repeatable), it is the lifedeath of poetry, of constructional poetics, of
poiesis, a benediction dictated from and of the other, a stranger to all production, especially to
creation (creation meaning for me the creationist vitalism of Nietzsche, Bergson, Deleuze). Its
event always interrupts or derails absolute knowledge. It is a certain passion of the singular
mark, the signature that repeats its dispersion, each time beyond the logos, ahuman, barely domestic. While for Plato and Aristotle, Darley and Bordwell, passion, including as poetry, ought
always to be controlled by reason, the poematic is never controlled, including by reason, It never
gathers itself together, rather it loses itself, gets off the track (delirium or mania), exposes itself to chance. Its play (jeu in French) is not at all well-ordered, you see.25
The poematic is animated and animatic, of the order of my Cryptic Complex the uncanny, the
return of death as spectre, endless mourning and melancholia and cryptic incorporation. The
poematic makes the heart its crypt, the poematic crypt the innermost heart of hearts (Rand,
1986 p.lxviii). It and its heart lie beyond the knowledge of sciences and technologies, of philosophies and bio-ethico-juridical discourses (Derrida, 1991 p.225). The poematic is a catastrophic
event, event for Derrida of the strophe, the turn. Of wound, of trauma, of pathos, of peripeteia! Irreconciled and irreconcilable, the poematic turns on itself, like deconstruction, like seduction.26
The poematic is at once the condition of possibility and impossibility of poetry, constructional
poetics and poiesis; as the animatic is of animation; as dissemination is of presence; as diffrance is
of essence; as deconstruction is of construction and of philosophy (as logos); as seduction is of
production; as psuch is of psyche (soul, spirit, mind!, as in science of mind-psychology and
philosophy of mind!) the second of each couple the special case, the reduced, conditional form,
of the first. Insofar as the poematic is animatic, and vice versa, and insofar as it can attach to any
word, to any language, it deconstructs them, reanimating them with its spectres, its psuchai, its
demons, its singular leave-taking of the singular.27
As Derrida declares, The life of language is the life of spectres; it is also the work of
mourning; it is also impossible mourning (Derrida, 2005 p.103).28
2 5
On the jeu and Che cos la poesia?, see Derrida, This Strange Institution Called Literature, pp. 64-67.
Like Baudelaires figure and poets experience of the widow in black-the passante-as marked in my The Crypt, the Haunted House, of Cinema
and Still Photography?, and like Benjamins aura, as traced in the latter, On Baudelaires passante and Benjamins aura, see too Samuel Weber,
Mass Mediauras, or: Art, Aura and Media in the Work of Walter Benjamin, Mass Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media, Alan Cholodenko (ed),
Power Publications/Stanford University Press, Sydney/Stanford, 1996.
2 7
On the singular leave-taking of the singular as Benjamins second notion of aura, see Webers Mass Mediauras, pp. 104-105, and my Still
Photography?, p. 5.
2 8
While a large-scale, focused critique of cognitive film theorys critique of Grand Theory is unfortunately beyond the reach of this essay, I must
note this regarding the games the spectering, animatic life of writing can play on the theorist, despite the best efforts of cognitivists even: instead of
situating poststructuralism, which conventionally includes Derridas work (though he rejected the term for his work), and postmodernism, which
2 6
13

And like Derrida, I, I the theorist am the crypt, the haunt of a host of [such] ghosts (Derrida, 1986 p.xxiii), whose theorising is poematic, not simply constructional poetics, poiesis.
If theory is speculative, a kind of risk, gamble, game, then why not play, as well as be played?
For one will be played, as is the photographer/scholar/theorist (including of the Platonic, Aristotelian and cognitivist varieties) by the butterfly in Karl Armens exemplary allegory Birdie, an
animation film for me uncannily at home on the home page of the SASs web site and even carrying the Societys name near and dear to its heart, one might say. Its butterfly cannot but remind me of the one whose name in Latin is Leptosia nina but which is called, uncannily so, by the
Greek word Psyche, whose equivalent in Latin would be anima, which term gives us animation.
The butterfly called animation. But which I call Psuch, the animatic, poematic butterfly, given
how it makes all too painfully, tragically, yet happily, clear the limits of all modalities the human
establishes to achieve mastery over the world and its objects, including by means of reason, logic,
language, cognition, perception, science and technology, how it eludes all the nets deployed by
the human to capture it and pin it down, to know it, especially those of psychology, including a
cognitivism based in and on psychology, for me, like psychoanalysis, deconstructed and seduced
by psuch.
In such a light, Psuch the butterfly figures for me the ill- or a-logical butterfly of chaos theory that flaps its wings on one side of the planet, causing a hurricane on the other, as well as the
revenging object of quantum theory on the subject,29 on all knowledge, including scientific, telling
us that, as Baudrillard proposes, science aims not at certainty but at uncertainty (see Baudrillard,
1993b pp.42-43), including by definition sciences of language and of cognition, of mind demonstrating for me the animus never not in anima (soul, spirit, mind) and that one cannot theorise
animation by theorising just the life of the subject but must as well theorise the life of objects, their
superior, seductive, disseminative, animatic, poematic, nutty30 life.
As the croupiers announce at the roulette tables at the Casino of Monte Carlo: Faites vos jeux.
Place your bets, make your play, your move, your gambit, your bid.
And with this thought I bid you adieu, au revoir, or rather, aux renvois sto the sendings back,
^
returnings, deferrals, echoes.
Alan Cholodenko is an Honorary Associate of the Department of Art History and Film Studies
at the University of Sydney. This paper was presented at Animation Unlimited, the 20th annual
SAS conference, held at the Art Institute at Bournemouth, 18-20 July, 2007.
References
Althusser, L (1971), Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation), Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, NLB, London.
conventionally includes Baudrillards work (though he too rejected the term for his work), as themselves Grand Theory, Bordwell claims these as
movements that can be present in not only the two overarching (Bordwell, 1996 p.3) modes of Grand Theory-late 60s French film theory (what
he calls subject-position theory) and culturalism (overarching being his damning descriptor of Grand Theory)-but in, as he puts it, the three
overarching trends [my italics] (Bordwell, 1996 p.4) (!), the third being what he barracks for (!), middle-level research. With that damning
descriptor he ostensibly, unwittingly thereby turns middle-level research into Grand Theory and poststructuralism (Derrida) and postmodernism (Baudrillard) into movements whose multiple conceptual affinities and historical connections (Ibid) include middle-level research and
which are not only not themselves Grand Theory but are all the more not requisite for Grand Theory to be Grand Theory.
2 9
In classic quantum theory, the disturbance of the observed by the observer is matched at the least by the disturbance by the observed of the observer.
3 0
On the nutty, see my The Nutty Universe of Animation.
14

Baudrillard, J (1993a), Operational Whitewash, The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme
Phenomena, Verso, London.
Baudrillard, J (1993b), Superconductive Events, The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme
Phenomena, Verso, London.
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of Wisconsin Press, Madison.
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Buchan (ed), Animated Worlds, John Libbey Publishing, Eastleigh, UK.
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15

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Alan Cholodenko
Edited by Nichola Dobson
16

Paul St George
Using chronophotography to replace Persistence of Vision as a theory for

explaining how animation and cinema produce the illusion of continuous
motion
Chronophotography was developed at the end of the nineteenth century by Marey, Demen
and later Gilbreth and used as a tool for investigating movement. At the beginning of the
twentieth century chronophotographys potential as a research tool was ignored as aspects of
chronophotography were developed into cinema. Now, in what many call the post-cinematic era1,
artists and researchers are beginning to return to chronophotography to continue some of its
unfinished stories. A chronophotograph contains information about interval, duration, speed and
other derivatives of space and time. This information can and has been used to answer questions
about motion and mechanical efficiency. In this paper I want to demonstrate how
chronophotography can be used to better understand two of its descendents: animation and
cinema.
We are familiar with the evidence. In the cinema, we know that a sequence of still images is
projected one after another onto a viewing screen. We also know that the differences between any
two consecutive images must be small and that the sequence of images must be shown quite
quickly. We might even know that this system works whether the images are recorded
photographically, as in cinema, or hand-made by drawing or some other method, as in animation.
What we do not know is how the system works. We can guess or use trial and error to determine
how small the differences between consecutive images should be and how quickly the sequence
of images must be shown. But, why does a sequence of still images appear to be a continuous
moving image?
The answer that is most often given (usually in the first chapter of film books, cinema books
and animation books) is Persistence of Vision. The idea is that the visual system retains each
static image for a short time and so a rapid succession of slightly different still images will appear
to be fused together into one continuous moving image. Persistence of vision exists. Persistence
of vision is an accurate description of the effect we notice when a small bright light is rapidly
moved about in a dark room or other relatively dark space. If the conditions are right, we will see
this rapidly moving dot of light as a static line. Persistence of vision exists, but it is not the answer
to our question. Indeed, persistence of vision and cinema are in opposition. We want to avoid
persistence of vision if we want a sequence of still images to be seen as a continuous moving
image, for if persistence of vision was involved in a sequence of rapidly changing images the
images would intrude into one another and the highlights of the images would fuse into a number
of static blurs. Because this, the wrong answer, has been repeated often and for many years it has
reached the status of a myth and it persists because it is invoked without hesitation to answer the
question: how do animation and cinema produce the illusion of continuous motion?.
I would argue that the correct answer to this question could inform the practice of filmmakers
and animators and might even help to create new forms of practice.
Manovich has charted this story from the emergence of cinema to post-computer cinema in Manovich 2001, p 296.
17

This paper will demonstrate that the correct answer to our question is to be found in two
parts, in two neglected corners of chronophotography. The first part of our answer is prompted
by an analysis of Mareys chronometric dial. This device appears in many of his
chronophotographs and is clearly shown in Figure 12, a photograph of a chronophotographic
recording session.
The chronometric dial is essentially a one-handed
clock without any numbers. The hand is highly
reflective, and so appears white in a monochrome
photograph, and it is turned at a constant rate against a
circular black velvet background. The clocks hand
makes one complete revolution in 90 seconds and the
circumference of the circular dial is divided into 18
equal sectors. This device was used by Marey to
measure the duration of the intervals of time between
successive positions of a moving object. So, a
chronophotograph (such as Figure 1) will show several
images of a moving object and several images of the
clocks hand (this detail is shown in Figure 23). The
images of the moving object will be various distances
Fig. 1 Photography of the movement of a
from each other and these distances are proportional to
falling body (see footnote 2)
the space that the object has moved. The time taken to
travel these distances is indicated by the angles in-between the corresponding positions of the
images of the rotating clock hand. The device is useful for at least one other purpose. If the
exposure is relatively long the image of the needle is blurred, as shown in Figure 34, and the
extent of this blur is proportional to the duration of the exposure. In this way, the one
chronophotograph has many uses. The continuous movement of the object is broken down into a
number of images of the object in successive positions.
Fig. 3 Needle spinning

around the chronometric dial
and measuring the duration of
exposure (see footnote 4)
Fig. 2 Successive positions of

the needle on the chronometric
dial, measuring the intervals of
time separating the successive
exposures (see footnote 3)
2
3
4
The image shows Mareys assistant and a recording session in Naples, 1890 and is published in Marey 1894, p 51.
Image showing successive positions of the needle on a chronometric dial (Marey 1894, p 17).
Image showing a needle spinning around the chronometric dial (Marey 1894, p 15).
18

The analytical use of chronophotography has been well documented, but the use of the
chronometric dial to determine the speed and acceleration of a moving object has largely been
overlooked.
In my practice as an artist I have attempted to complete some experimental work using
chronophotography. My first steps were to recreate some of the demonstrations that I had read
about. To do this, I looked for a clock that could be used as a chronometric dial. It is important
that the second-hand rotates continuously and uniformly, but the second-hand on a quartz
movement clock rotates in discrete steps. The frequency of the mains electricity (50 Hz or 60 Hz)
is stepped down to 1 Hz and this frequency is used to time the movements of the second hand.
So the quartz movement clock pulses from second to second. As well as 1 Hz quartz movement
clocks there are 16 Hz quartz movement clocks. I attached a second-hand to a 16 Hz movement.
When I watched the hand rotate it appeared to move continuously but in fact, the second-hand
moves intermittently, in pulses, sixteen times per second. These shorter, more frequent pulses are
also silent. Hence, this is called a silent sweep quartz movement.
There are important differences between our perceptions of a normal 1 Hz clock and a silent
sweep 16 Hz clock. To understand the implications of these differences we need to compare
what we know to be happening with what we are seeing.
Fig. 4 Successive
positions of the secondhand of a 1 Hz clock
Fig. 5 Successive
positions of the secondhand of a 16 Hz clock
The silent sweep quartz movement clock moves at the same speed and intermittently stops
in the same way, but at a higher frequency of 16 times per second (16 Hz) and the distances it
moves in-between static positions is reduced to 3/8. The angle moved in 1 second by the secondhand of a 16 Hz clock is shown in Figure 5. The second-hand moves across the gap of 3/8 in
1/32 second.
The difference between our perceptions (of the second-hands) of the two clocks is that we see
the second-hand of the lower frequency clock as if it were jumping from position to position, but
we see the second-hand of the higher frequency clock as if it was moving continuously and
smoothly. This suggests a relationship between the frequency of what is seen and our perceptual
ability to resolve that frequency. The power to visually resolve fine gaps and short time intervals is
called spatial and temporal acuity.
Simple graphs can demonstrate the relationship between the frequency of what is seen and our
acuity. The lines in the graphs represent the times when the hand of the clock is stationary. The
spaces between the lines in the graphs represent the times when nothing is seen.
19
Fig. 6a Graph of a low frequency (1 Hz)

clock
Fig. 6b Graph of a high frequency (16 Hz)

clock
Fig. 6c Part of Figure 6b enlarged (x 16)
Figure 6 Graphs show the relationship between the frequency of what is seen and our acuity.
Figure 6a is a graph of a low frequency (1 Hz) clock. When the frequency is higher than our
acuity can resolve (This is shown in Figure 6b) we see the gaps and the intermittent signal as
continuous and smooth. There is a relationship between frequency and acuity. If our acuity were
more powerful, as simulated in Figure 6c, the threshold between an intermittent signal and a
continuous signal would be raised. So, whether we see the intermittent signal as smooth and
continuous, or not, is the result of the interaction between the frequency the signal and the acuity
of the viewer.
This relationship between the frequency of the signal and the temporal acuity of our
perception is the first part of our answer. This interaction is exploited by animation and cinema
in two ways. The frequency of the signal corresponds to the frame rate of the projected film. If
the frame rate is too low we see the individual static frames and the intervals in-between frames,
but if the frame rate is higher than we can resolve then we see one continuous image. The gaps
between frames are when the projection beam can be shut off and the picture can be changed.
We will return to this use of the gaps in-between frames when we have understood the second
part of our answer.
The second part of our answer is to be found in the work of another chronophotographer.
Figure 7 shows Arthur Mason Worthingtons Splash of a ball (Worthington
1865). It is worth understanding how Worthington made this sequence of still images.
Two balls were held, suspended, by electromagnets. Both were released at the same time
by turning off the electric circuit. One ball
triggered a flash-light that exposed the photograph. The other ball fell into the mixture of
milk and water. By varying the height of the
Fig. 7 Arthur Mason Worthington: Splash of a ball
ball that triggered the flash Worthington
could record different moments in the other
balls descent. He then put the images together in a sequence to give the illusion of a continuous
series, one ball in descent. This is a simulation, by Worthington (with our willing cooperation), of
a continuous set of images. Even though we know that each image of a ball falling into milk was
20

taken independently of the other images in the presented sequence we are strongly tempted to
dampen our powers of discrimination and instead see the whole sequence as representing the
same ball falling into the same milk.
This demonstration suggests that if we are shown a number of images in a sequential structure
(in a row, in a column, one after another on the page or on the screen) and if each pair of adjacent
images appears to show a progressively incremental change then we tend to interpret each image
in the sequential structure as an ordered component part of a sequence. We tend to perceive a
relationship between the images even when there is none. The sequential structure cues us to
make the economical assumption that each image is one of the many views of this one object in
motion.
This tendency to make economic assumptions is independent of perceptual acuity and it
involves both assuming that each image in a
sequential structure is part of a sequence and
overlooking substitutions. These assumptions
are voluntary, rather than perceptual.
All these aspects are elegantly demonstrated
in Figure 85. If you have chosen to see this
illustration as one object gliding from the top Fig. 8 Translating pattern (see footnote 5)
left corner of one grid to the bottom right
corner of the same grid then you have assumed motion and you have chosen to overlook the
substitution of the first object by other, very similar, objects on the other grids. The two
assumptions are related. If you do not assume that the eight different objects represent successive
views of the same unique object you cannot assume that this one object is moving diagonally
across the grid.
It can be shown that these eight objects are not views of one object in motion, and that to see
them as such is voluntary, by revealing what they actually represent. These eight views are every
fourth generation of a null-player game called Conways Game of Life.
Each cell in the grid interacts with the cells that are directly horizontally, vertically, or
diagonally adjacent. This is illustrated in Figure 9. At each generation, the following rules are
applied:
If a cell is white and three of its neighbours are black then the cell will turn black.
If a cell is black and two or three of its neighbours are black then the cell will stay black, but
otherwise it will turn white.
Now that you know what the pictures are
intended to represent you can choose whether
to see them as successive generations of an
evolving culture or successive images of an
Fig. 9 Four generations of glider
object in motion.
I have avoided using its familiar title, Glider, because this title would suggest movement.
21

Our willingness to overlook substitutions is worth closer examination. If you choose to see an
object moving across the grid you have chosen to see the cluster of adjacent cells as one evolving
object. Even if the moving object were to change colour and form, provided the changes were
interpretable as such, we would tend to interpret what we see as one, rapidly changing, moving
object rather than a relay of different objects appearing along a motion path.
A sequence will be interpreted as motion when, as in Figure 8 and Figure 9, an object appears
in different locations in successive images. This is exploited in the simplest kind of animation.
Using the cut-out animation technique one can cut out a simple shape and simply move this
shape between exposures of the film. When the film is projected the shape will appear to move
autonomously. There are many other kinds of change that can be analysed into or synthesised
from a sequence of progressively incremental changes. Examples include changes in point of view
such as zooms, pans and tracking shots; physical changes such as scale and colour; changes in the
environment such as lighting; and biological changes such as growth, rotting, patination and
aging.
Muybridge, and later Eisenstein, demonstrated how the viewer and the filmmaker could
collaborate to integrate successive views to manufacture scenes that are more than a sum of their
parts.6
Here, in Figure 107, Muybridge combines a
number of shots taken on different days and in
a different order and then presents these
disparate shots, with and without racket, in an
edited order to represent movement of one
subject on one occasion.
This tendency to overlook substitutions and
to make economic assumptions is the second
part of our answer and is exploited by
animation and cinema in a number of ways.
The successive images are the frames of the
animation or film. The projection of these
frames one after another on a screen is the
sequential structure that prompts us to inte- Fig. 10 Muybridge, Montage from three different
grate the successive views into motion or some photographic sessions
other kind of change. The size of the incremental change between successive frames corresponds
to spacing.
Spacing is a term used in animation to refer to the change between each frame. It applies
equally well to the differences between each frame of a film. The difference between spacing in
animation and spacing in cinema is in the method of manufacture. Spacing is automatic in film,
but must be determined by animators. Spacing in film would only become an issue (the movie
would look jumpy) when the projection frame rate is much slower than the recording rate. The
spacing, or the amount of change between each frame, is related to the frame rate and to the
speed of the animated object. The term, animated object, can refer to an object animated by
the animator or by the cinematic apparatus.
6
Braun shows how Muybridge used this technique to deceive his audience into believing that posed shots were part of a sequence. Later, the same
tendency of viewers to make economic assumptions is used by Eisenstein to develop cinematic montage (Braun 1992, p 240 and text).
7
Movements, Female, Playing With A Ball (Muybridge 1886, Plate 299)
22

If we look again at the relationship between the frequency (frame rate) of the signal and our
temporal acuity we will see that for any given speed (of the animated object) the spacing (amount
of change between frames) is inversely related to the frame rate.
Frame rate () x Spacing () = s (speed of movement of an animated object)
For a given frame rate, an animator would increase the spacing to increase the speed of
movement of an animated object. If the frame rate were increased, then for a given speed of
movement the animator could decrease the spacing. Of course increases in spacing and decreases
in frame rate are limited by the need to retain smooth and continuous animation. If the spacing is
too large or the frame rate too low then the animation becomes jumpy.
We can now develop our earlier expression of this relationship. For any given speed of
movement of an animated object when the frequency is higher and the spacing is smaller than our
spatial and temporal acuity can resolve we see the gaps and the intermittent showing of the static
frames as continuous and the movement as smooth. This, and not persistence of vision, explains
why a sequence of still images appears to be a continuous moving image.
Each of these, continuity and motion, can be independent of each other. We can see
continuity without, necessarily, seeing motion and we can see motion without, necessarily, seeing
continuity. When they come together we can see continuous motion and we have the conditions
for animation and cinema.
Although continuity and motion can be independent of each other, our perceptual response
and our tendency to make economic assumptions rely on each other. A faster frame rate gives the
viewer, with a given temporal acuity, less time for consideration and so it is more likely that the
economic assumptions will be made. If two images are presented side by side on a page (as in
figures 7, 8, 9 and 10), a viewer has time to choose whether to see them as two images in a motion
sequence or as something else. This choice is scarcely available when it is presented 24 times a
second. Similarly, the economic assumptions make the temporal acuity more effective. That is,
the threshold frame rate, at which the sequence of static images is seen as continuous motion, can
be lower.
The overlooking of gaps and our willingness to overlook substitutions can be exploited
because we can use the gaps (when the lights are off) to change the picture (in one frame) for a
slightly different picture (in the next frame). We see the intermittent signal as a continuous image
because of the interaction between the frequency of the projected images (frame rate) and our
perceptual acuity. When this is combined with our tendency to integrate a sequence of
incrementally different pictures into one change or movement we have a continuous and
changing image, a continuously moving image.
In this paper I have sought to correct a faulty explanation of some basic aspects of the film and
animation experience and to demonstrate the value of using chronophotography as a research
tool for investigating space, time and movement.
A large number of diverse aesthetic codes and strategies are used within visual art to represent
and construct our experiences of space, time and movement. The ideas that inform the making
and viewing of these works can be clustered under a number of key ideas. These ideas include
simultaneity, duration, subjective time, objective time, the instant and pace. A small number of
examples will illustrate the interrelationship between the works, the ideas that inform them and
the use of particular technologies.
23

In works such as Two Consciousness Projection(s) (Graham 1972) Dan Graham uses video to
explore subjective time and the difference between time, as it is experienced, and immanent
objective time. In this work, a performer is recorded whilst she is watching a monitor that shows
her performance. A second performer, who is behind the camera, attempts to give an objective,
distanced account of this performance. In a work such as Two Monitors and two Mirrors at
opposite sides of a room (Graham 1975) Graham uses two cameras, two mirrors and time delays
between the two monitors to show different modes of perception simultaneously and to bring out
the discontinuity between different realities.
Nam June Paik also manipulates time to show different concepts of time and uses technology
that was new at the time to exploit the phenomenon of the simultaneity of different events taking
place at different times in different places. In his Good Morning Mr Orwell (Paik 1984) Nam June
Paik used a satellite link to present a number of artists who were performing in Paris and New
York as if they were appearing live and together on 1 January 1984.
Artists have used different strategies to force the viewer to experience time passing slowly. In
Michael Snows film Wavelength (Snow 1967) the camera takes a single uninterrupted 45-minute
shot that slowly zooms in on a loft wall. Similarly, In Andy Warhols film Empire (Warhol 1964)
eight cameras record, in real time, nothing more than the light changing on the side of the Empire
State Building. In both these films, processes that have no intrinsic interest cause the viewer to
introject the passage of real time.
In contrast, artists such as Goya and Monet have represented the experience of time moving
rapidly in different ways. In Goyas Saturn devouring one of his children (Goya 1823) the indexical
movement of the brush and the application of paint is used for the first time to express speed or
the rapidity of movement. Saturn is the Roman name for the Greek God Cronos who is both the
God of Chaos and of Time. If we consider Monets works in series, such as his many paintings of
Rouen Cathedral (Monet 1894), then we can see that he was attempting to paint a sequence of
related instants of time. Particular codes had to be invented by Monet and other Impressionists
because the act of painting a canvas clearly takes longer than the event that is being recorded.
There are many events and processes that happen too quickly for the eye to see. At the end of
the nineteenth century artists and inventors started to develop strategies and to use new
technological methods such as photography and chronophotography to help them see, understand and represent these events and processes. Philosophers, such as Bergson, conceptualised
new descriptions of time. Bergson reacted against a purely mechanical description of time in
which time was merely a parameter that allowed trajectories to be plotted. Mechanical time was
considered to be isomorphic to a straight line and the present is reduced to a point on this line.
Bergson described a kind of time that was more than a border between the past and the future.
He called this time Dure (Bergson 1889, pp 75-139). Dure is time as it is experienced and it
enfolds both the memory of the past and the anticipation of the future. Bergsons ideas
influenced Marey who captured time and movement by representing space-time as a continuum
of overlapping images. Marey used technology that he invented to record successive moments.
On some occasions he made sculptures that contain successive positions of an animal in
movement. For example, in Flight of a Seagull (Marey 1887) the flying bird is shown as a long
stretched-out composite of overlapping birds. These new ways of thinking about time were
assimilated and condensed by writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Apollinaire, who filtered the
ideas through to artists such as Picasso and the other Cubists. Two examples of the indirect use of
Bergsons ideas are the Portrait of Wilhelm Uhde by Picasso (Picasso 1910) and The Watch by
Gris (Gris 1912).
24

The new visual codes were also directly used by Futurists such as Giacomo Balla in his Flight
of a Swallow (Balla 1913). In turn, Bergson was himself influenced by Marey. In Creative
Evolution (1907), he writes about Mareys instantaneous pictures of reality as it passes us by and
he claims the mechanisms of normal visual knowledge are by their very nature cinematic
(Bergson, 1907). These ideas are later developed by Deleuze in his Cinema 1, The MovementImage who refers to Bergson and then writes Not only is the instant a motionless section through
movement; movement is a moving section through duration (Deleuze 1983, pp. 13-18). The
ambiguity that Deleuze describes brings this brief survey back to the starting point for my
research.
I have shown that we use chronophotography and animation as a metaphor for space, time and
movement. A metaphor is a way of seeing one thing in terms of another. For example, time can
be described as instants or planes of simultaneity and these can be likened to images in a
chronophotographic sequence or single frames in an animation. If our understanding of these
abstract ideas is based on a faulty understanding of animation, that is Persistence of Vision, our
understanding will be faulty. I want to suggest that chronophotography can be used as a research
tool that will enable us to better understand animation and I also want to suggest that a better
understanding of animation will lead to a better understanding of space, time and movement. ^
Paul St George is an artist who uses research of chronophotography and other late nineteenth-
century visual practices to inform his work. Recent examples include the Telectroscope and the
AHRC funded Chronocylography. He is also the editor of the imagetime series of books for the
Wallflower Press. Paul is Principal Lecturer in Digital Art at London Metropolitan University.
References
Balla, G. (1913), Volo di Rondini (Flight of the Swallows) [Painting]

Bergson, H. (1889), Essai sur les donnes immdiates de la conscience, Paris, Flix Alcan, (Time
and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Translated from French by
Pogson, F L., New York: Harper & Row, 1960)
Bergson, H. (1907), LEvolution cratrice, Paris, Flix Alcan, (Creative Evolution, Translated
from French by Mitchell, A., New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911)
Braun, M. (1992) Picturing Time: The work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904), Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Deleuze, G. (1983), Cinma 1, LImage-mouvement, Les ditions de Minuit, (Cinema 1, The
Movement-Image, Translated from French by Tomlinson, H and Habberjam, B., University
of Minnesota, 1983)
Goya, F. (1819 to 1823), Saturn Devouring his Children [Painting]
Graham, D. (1972) Two Consciousness Projection(s) [Video installation]
Graham, D. (1975) Two Monitors and two Mirrors at opposite sides of a room [Video
installation]
Gris, J. (1912), The Watch (The Sherry Bottle) [Painting]
Manovich, L. (2001), A Brief Archaeology of Moving Pictures in Manovich, L., The Language of
New Media, Cambridge: MIT Press
Marey, E-J. (1887), Vol du Goland (Imbricated Phases of the Flight of the Seagull) [Sculpture]
Marey, E-J. (1894) Le Mouvement, Paris: Masson (Movement, Translated from French by
Pritchard, E., London: William Heinemann, 1895)
Monet, C. (1894) Rouen Cathedral in Full Sunlight [Painting]
25

Muybridge, E. (1886) Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigation Of Consecutive
Phases Of Animal Movements, Pennsylvania: University Of Pennsylvania, 1887
Paik, N J. (1984), Good Morning Mr Orwell [Satellite installation]
Picasso, P. (1910), Portrait of Wilhelm Uhde [Painting]
Snow, M. (1967), Wavelength [Film]
Warhol, A. (1964) Empire [Film]
Worthington, A M. (1865) Splash of a ball [Photographs] (Science & Society Picture Library)
(With permission)
Paul St George
26

Max Bannah
Revolutionary cels
The Sydney waterfront, Harry Reade and Cuban animation
In 2008, the noted Cuban journalist and art critic, Pedro de la Hoz, contended that, Whats
most important is that with animation and other graphic media we have an extraordinary
weapon for the formation and transmission of revolutionary, patriotic and human values, and for
cultivating the sensitivity, love and intelligence needed to help us conquer the future (Stock
2009, p.126). In 1959, when the revolutionary government established an animation studio
(Dibujos Animados) within the Cuban Institute of the Art and Industry of Cinema (Instituto
Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematogrficas, ICAIC), it also identified animation as a tool of
the Revolution charged with the task of serving the interests of the new state and its people
(Agramonte 1996). Thus, for fifty years, artistic innovation in Cuban animation has sought to
coexist with political and social struggle.
An Australian artist who was attracted by the opportunity to combine political commitment
with creative expression and contribute to Cubas social and cultural reform process was the
social realist, Harry Reade (1927-1998). In 1961, Reade went to Cuba where he was to have an
influence on the development of the educational sector of that countrys animation production
(Bendazzi 1994, p.386). This paper examines Reades progression towards involvement in the
Cuban Revolution, and the way in which he used animation to serve an instructive social function.
It also considers how his work in Cuba was informed by a network of political alliances and social
philosophies that grew out of his experiences and creative development in Australia.
Reade was a waterside worker, journalist, author, dramatist, cartoonist, illustrator and
animator who linked creative expression with radical action in society. He is a little known figure
in documented Australian animation history but he had an influence on the early development of
the educational sector of Cuban animation. Given the intense conservatism and anti-communist
feeling that prevailed at the height of the 1950s and 60s Cold War years in Robert Menzies
Australia, how was it that a Sydney wharfie could emerge to straddle two worlds with opposing
ideologies to make a cultural impact on revolutionary Cuban society?
Harry Reade recounts the poverty and harshness of his childhood in the first volume of his
autobiography, An Elephant Charging My Chookhouse.1 This personal account of social reality
during Reades formative years evokes the atmosphere of general hardship experienced by the
Australian jobless and their families in the Great Depression. It helps explain his relationship
with the society in which he lived, and provides an understanding of the intellectual framework
that guided his personal development and his identification with working class communities. His
story focuses on the conditions that determined his ideological beliefs and his rejection of
capitalist life. Abandoned by his mother at the age of four, he spent ten years on the road during
1
A chookhouse is a chicken roost. The books title was prompted by the response to a question Reade asked his father:
Whats capitalism, Dad?
An elephant charging a chookhouse, shouting, every man for himself! ( p.101).
27

the Great Depression with his tough, militant, unemployed and politically active Wobbly father,
Tom.2 Living from hand to mouth through rough conditions experienced together forged an
extremely close bond between father and son.
During the worst of it, my bed was the ground, my blankets the clothes I wore. My fire was the
warmth of Dads body; my only shelter his strong brown arms. He was the house that sheltered
me and the church at which I worshipped (Reade 1987, p.34).
They slept wherever they could find shelter on the edges of settlements in southeast Australia under bridges, in empty railway stations, and in shantytowns of hessian-clad humpies. Many of
the walls of these derelict shelters were covered with graffiti, which aroused and influenced
Reades early interest in drawing (pp. 51-52). Popular comic strips in the Sunday papers were
another stimulus. From an appreciation of his fathers ability to tell him what the comic-strip
stories were about, Harry developed a keenness to read and, in time, a desire to write. This early
literary enthusiasm - conjuring stories around comic strip layouts - enriched his formative years.
Despite the absence of any formal training he taught himself how to construct drawings that
carried messages (pp.66-67).
Throughout their travels, Reades father carried one of his few possessions, a small parcel of
books wrapped in oil-skinned cloth. These were to form the cornerstone of Harrys social and
political credo.3 Their texts focussed on themes of collaboration and peoples liberation from
labour. Radicalised by their influence and the experiences of his upbringing, Reade adopted a
position in a class struggle that set him in conflict with the conservative culture of his Australian
community. He had little formal education and from the age of thirteen he worked at many jobs.
At various times he was a pastry cook, labourer, fisherman, able-bodied seaman, cane-cutter,
foundry worker, rabbit shooter, museum assistant, and wharf labourer.
Always vehemently anti-capitalist, Reade was attracted to work in sectors of industry
represented by militant trade unions. During the 1949 Coal Strike, he was employed at the
Broken Hill Proprietary Companys (BHP) steel works in Newcastle. As a known communist, his
activities were monitored by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Their files
note that at public meetings during the strike, Reade was regarded as a Communist Party strong
arm man. Further, he was suspected of being responsible for a fire, which destroyed a section of
the BHP works known as the subliming plant (ASIO, File 17). Although he was not charged
over the incident, he was blacklisted and found it hard to continue earning a living in Newcastle.
In 1954, Reade began work on the Sydney waterfront where the cultural activity of the
workforce was sustained by the support of its militant industrial trade union, the Waterside
Workers Federation (WWF). The WWF had adopted the Communist Partys official directive
on cultural production which was based on Lenins 1917 edict, art is a weapon(Milner
2
Wobblies were members of the International Workers of the World, an organisation founded in Chicago in 1905. In terms of worldwide trends
the Wobblies were anarcho-syndicalists in that they fused an emotional anarchistic revulsion at organised society with the idea of a giant industrial
union emancipating the workers by means of a general strike and seizure of the means of production (Farrell 1981 p.14).
3
In his unpublished manuscript, Reade particularly acknowledges the influence on his intellectual and political life of The Martyrdom of Man
(Winwood Reade, 1872), which dealt with the four progressive stages of human development: War, Religion, Liberty, and Intellect. William
Winwood Reade gave a glimpse of humanitys future by examining the past. In it he believed science would replace humanitys dependency on
religion, and predicted people would be liberated from labour by three inventions: air travel, a fuel to replace coal and oil, and the production of
food in factories. In honour of William Winwood Reade, Tom Reade changed his surname from Reed to Reade. His book parcel also included, On
the Origin of Species (Darwin, C., 1859), The Communist Manifesto (Marx,K. and Engels, F., 1848), The Right to be Lazy (Lafargue, P.,1883), and
Mutual Aid: a factor of evolution (Kropotkin, P.,1902). Kropotkin had argued in Mutual Aid:A Factor of Evolution, that despite the Darwinian
concept of the survival of the fittest, co-operation was the chief factor in the evolution of the species. The human race became the dominant
species because it had the capacity to collaborate. From his understanding of the Communist Manifesto, Reade concluded that the logical epitome
of collaboration was the commune in which all worked for the common good, and took from the common wealth according to individual needs.
The logical extension of communal collaboration was global cooperation as envisaged in the Martyrdom of Man (Reade 1998).
28

2003,p.20). This exhorted artists to use creativity as a political tool to defend workers rights. For
many artists and intellectuals, casual employment on the wharves gave them flexibility and extra
time to devote to interests outside of work. Reade joined the Wharfies Art Group, a collective
whose work integrated cultural endeavours with the industrial and political struggles of the
union.
While working as a wharfie, Reade drew cartoons and illustrations for left-wing Australian
publications such as the Eureka Youth Leagues Challenge, and Tribune, the CPAs national
newspaper. Both papers opposed the policies of the Menzies government, which had
unsuccessfully sought to outlaw the Communist Party through a referendum in 1951. Reade
found in press cartooning a creative form with popular appeal. It enabled him to act as a
spokesperson and a working class social lever capable of educating an audience or asserting
views counter to the prevailing political mood. This was in contrast with Fine Art, which he
rejected because in his view it was elitist and did not connect with the masses. He was
unambiguous in his view that the artist was capable of mobilising an audience into action:
I always wanted to be a cartoonist. At the same time I wanted to do something. I thought,
well Art never moved anybody. But you could fire cartoons like bullets in the front line. I used
to get a kick out of, you know, up in the coal mines theyd get one of my cartoons and cut it out
and stick it up. I used to like that in Cuba too. Id go around and see my cartoons stuck on doors,
all over the island (Gunzburg 1996).
In 1953, Reade also had his own Challenge column called Reade between the Lines, which he
used to express his views and to hone his writing skills. He was awarded a prize judged by the
noted Australian left-wing novelist and writer, Frank Hardy, when he entered a Challenge short
story competition(ASIO, Files 12-13).4
Reades eagerness to critique society and explore new ideas was also stimulated by the
activities of the Sydney Push a congregation of freethinkers who operated from the late 1940s to
the 1970s in downtown Sydney pubs. The group espoused an unsentimental approach to life and
members were generally atheists, supporters of sexual freedom, and opponents of repressive
institutions(Baker 1975). While Reade empathised with the Pushs rejection of conformism and
critique of authority, he was not amenable to being told what to do and was content to move in
and out of the quasi-anarchist circles of the Push (McGuinness 2005).
Throughout the 1950s, the output of the Wharfies Art Group was stimulated and supported
by the Studio of Social Realist Artists (SORA), an artist collective established in Sydney in 1945,
to generate a climate sympathetic to radical action in society through creative activity. 5 Images
painted by SORA artists, depicted the conditions of the working-class and were imbued with
critical comment on the social circumstances that engendered those conditions. SORA initiated a
program of activities supportive of labour ideals and forged direct links with the trade union
movement through lectures, art classes, social events and plans for communal art projects. In the
1950s, Reade and other wharfie artists had produced placards, billboards and banners for May
Day parades. However, through their association with SORA artists such as Roy Dalgano, Rod
Reades piece was titled, The Needles Eye. Hardy praised Reades work for the real excellence of the prose and stated that he would have
placed it first if its message had been explicit.
5
For further reading on SORA, see: Merewether, C., Art and Social Commitment: An End to the City of Dreams 1931-1948(Sydney: Art Gallery of
New South Wales, 1984); Haese, R., Modern Australian Art (New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, Ltd., 1982); Smith, B., Place, Taste and
Tradition: A Study of Australian Art since 1788 (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1945).
29

Shaw, Hal Missingham and James and Dora Cant there was a rich cross-fertilisation of
information, ideas and energies. From this involvement wharfie artists were encouraged to
integrate cultural projects into social comment.
An enduring example of SORAs collaboration with wharfie artists is the Sydney Wharfies
Mural. Initiated by Rod Shaw, the mural was painted between 1953 and 1961 on the walls of the
Sydney Waterside Workers Hall canteen. It illustrates key aspects of Australias economic and
social life and parallel histories of the Australian labour movement, trade unions and the
Waterside Workers Federation over a period of almost a century (Reeves 1991-1992). Reade
made a major contribution to the mural during the mid to late 50s. A section is on permanent
display in the National Maritime Museum.
In 1956, Reade discovered another popular graphic medium - animation. He became involved
with an initiative of the small radical film production unit, the Waterside Workers Federation
Film Unit (WWFFU). The WWFFU operated in Sydney from 1953 to 1958 and made fourteen
films that gave voice to the workers point of view.6 Its work stood in opposition to that of the
dominant Australian media on several fronts. Technologically, it used rudimentary equipment
and 16mm rather than the 35mm format. Institutionally, it maintained a communal working
arrangement as opposed to a corporate production structure. Economically, its prime motivation
was education rather than profit, and politically, it explored marginal and disenfranchised culture
instead of focusing on mainstream life. Many of the Units films countered what the union saw as
misinformation and anti-worker propaganda (Milner 2003, p.5). As the Unit gained recognition it
began to employ a wider range of techniques to communicate to the broader community and to
take advantage of new opportunities created by the beginning of television in Australia in 1956.
The Unit made the decision to use animation as a vehicle for public education and devised a
series of animated short films, Land of Australia: Aboriginal Art. The series aim was to raise
awareness of Aboriginal culture. The choice of subject matter illustrates the Units sense of social
responsibility and desire to champion issues other than industrial conditions affecting union
members. Reade was asked to be involved because of his expertise in graphic and cartooning
skills. Although he had no experience in animation he was supportive of the Units work and its
commitment to social justice. The Unit members had resolved to adapt their filmmaking skills to
the process of animation and with Reades involvement they devised a technique that was quick,
effective and cheap to produce. The cinematic narratives for the first two episodes, Bohra, the
kangaroo, and Wyamba, the turtle, were told without using the conventional process of popular
animation. The character designs referenced the flat two-dimensional graphic styles of indigenous
ancestral spirit images. These were drawn with oil pastels and painted on celluloid sheets. The
illusion of movement was achieved by means of optical effects, camera zooms and pans over still
images. The Units 16mm Bolex camera was mounted on a table sitting on roller skates, which
ran on two lengths of angle iron and the artwork was fixed to a sliding aluminium framed
window. These simple methods did not require the costly features of theatrical animation
(Bannah 2007, pp.72-77).
The third film in the Land of Australia series was an animated interpretation of the Australian
bush ballad, Click go the Shears. This project was a response to the popular 1950s folk revival in
Australia. The appeal of folk music for the Left was its support of popular national icons
associated with the labour movement.
6
In general, the work of the WWFFU was a response to mainstream medias support of the government and shipowners criticism of wharf
labourers efforts to improve their working conditions. For an understanding of the social and political contexts for the establishment of the
WWFFU see Lisa Milners Fighting Films pp.9-19.
30

On its release in 1957, the Land of Australia series was screened to both national and
international audiences in a variety of locations.7 However, after unsuccessful attempts to find a
distributor for the series, the Unit reconsidered the notion of extending its work to a wider
audience and no further animation projects were pursued. Despite this outcome, the project
convinced Reade that animation was, indeed, a mass medium with the potential to service the
needs of education, social comment and change.
In 1960, Fidel Castro sought the support of international unions to overcome problems facing
the Cuban Revolution. Inspired by the ideal of an international movement of solidarity, Reade was
stirred into action. In early 1961, armed with introductions provided by several left-wing trade
unions, he went to Cuba to participate in its revolutionary transformation from capitalism to
communism (ASIO, File 39). He took with him the imprint of the general hardship he had
experienced on the road with his father. His working class background and self-education had
shaped him as a resourceful person who could go it alone. He had an anarchist streak and he
didnt fear authority. He had experience in the creative skills of writing, painting, cartooning and
animation, and through cultural activity supported by the WWF he had learnt to adapt and
integrate his political views into cultural expression (Bannah 2007, p.87).
When he arrived in Cuba on 23 February 1961, Reade volunteered his creative skills to the
service of the Revolution and was offered work as a cartoonist for the Cuban Communist Partys
newspaper, Hoy. He enlisted in the Brigada Internacional, a militia unit comprised of foreign
volunteers, and supported Castros army at the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion by USA backed forces.
Following this incident, Reade participated in the mass mobilisation of 280,000 volunteer workers
who helped teach Cuban peasants how to read and write during the 1961 National Literacy
Campaign (Campaa de Alfabetizacin).
For Reade, 1961 was an extremely active year. He drew editorial cartoons for Hoy, became a
childrens book illustrator for the publishing house, Editorial Gente Nueva (Publishing New
People), did cartoons for the youth magazine Pionero and the satirical paper Palante y Palante,
and designed and made puppets for the newly created National childrens theatre, Guiol
Infantil De Cuba, in Havana (Padrn 2004). In addition, he wrote articles on the Revolution for
Tribune and the Eureka Youth League newspaper, Challenge, in Australia.
The growing success of the newly formed State film institute, ICAIC, as a tool of the
Revolution also appealed to Reade. Late in 1961, he presented himself to ICAIC and screened his
16mm copy of Land of Australia: Aboriginal Art. He stressed his support for the organisations
commitment to public service and its spirit of social concern, and offered his creative skills to the
service of ICAIC. The institute offered him a position as a writer and director of animated films
(Henriquez 2006). Reade accepted the role and submitted the storyboard concept, La Cosa (The
Thing), which ICAIC produced in 1962.
La Cosa is a Marxist parable about the world created by capitalism and the society it sustains.
It illustrates how human beings can organise the production of the means for their own
subsistence. Passing figures representing social institutions of commerce, science, clergy and the
military assess the value of a lively bean-like thing. None can find a use for it. A peasant boy
recognises its value. He plants it, nurtures it, and the thing grows into a tree bearing fruit. The
themes of La Cosa make the audience aware that modern industrial society, as argued by Marx in
7
Land of Australia: Aboriginal Art was screened at the 1957 Sydney Film Festival, the Sydney Film Society and the Sydney University Film Group.
Copies of the film were purchased by the Visual Education Centres in Sydney for use in NSW schools. It was also shown at the Tenth Jubilee
International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia and at the 1957 Edinburgh Film Festival.
31

Das Kapital, had changed the relationship between humankind and the world. Under capitalism,
Marx contended that where everything is a product for sale, human lives, relationships and values
become products with exchange values. This leads to dehumanisation and workers, who are
incorporated into the machinery of production, are alienated from the product of their labour.
With La Cosa, Reade adopts Marxs method of seeking a more discerning way of seeing the
realities of life. Thus the intention of the film is didactic. The organic bean thing, in La Cosa, is
linked to common sense and the removal of an alienating element or gulf that estranges man from
nature. For a society embracing the principles of Marxism-Leninism, the film gave public voice to
debates confronting Cubas social transformation.
La Cosa received Cubas first international award for animation at the 1963 London Film
Festival. The honour was a genuine boost for Cuban films and vindication of the establishment of
an animation studio within ICAIC. International recognition of this kind helped to promote a
positive image of the Revolution abroad. Not that ICAIC sought foreign approval. On the
contrary, its guiding principle was that foreign recognition would follow if the films were
authentic expressions of the Revolutions own needs (Chanan 2004, p.131).
Following the international success of La Cosa, Reade continued to write and direct animated
projects with an emphasis on didactic content. He joined the department of the Instituto Cubano
de Radiodifusion, ICR (TV), as an animation director. His first project accepted for production
by ICR (TV) was Viva papi! (Long live Daddy!, 1963) - the tale of a boy who wishes that his father
had a more important job than just making nuts and bolts. He dreams of his father working as a
locomotive driver, or as a pilot flying a plane, or as a knight in metal armour. He learns, however,
that if there were no nuts and bolts, the locomotive, the plane, and the armour would fall apart.
This realisation makes him appreciate that his fathers seemingly insignificant labour advances the
work and well-being of others.
For the production of this film, Reade was assigned a 16 year old animation assistant, Juan
Padrn. While Reade could be fiercely judgemental and confronting, he did recognise and
nurture raw talent, and boosted confidence in those he supported. His personal charisma made a
huge impact on the young Padrn who would later become Cubas foremost animator/humorist.
Padrn acknowledges Reades influence on his career:
He was a guru for us He taught me a lot about scriptwriting and the need to work hard in
improving my drawings; to study classic novels and films; that culture is also learning to do things
with your hands; to learn from the farmers and very poor people; to learn to call trees by their
[given] names. He was like a big brother or a father to me he wanted to teach me to be the best
(Padrn 2006).
It is interesting to note that in 1975 Cubas second international prize for animation was
awarded to Padrn, twelve years after Reades award for La Cosa. Padrns short animated film,
La Silla (The Chair, 1974), won a prize at the International Festival of Cinema for Children at
Girn, Spain.8 Both films have an educational purpose and comment on how humans interact
with their world. In 1982, Padrn found a deteriorating 16mm print of Viva papi!. In his view,
the film was in poor condition and he feared that it could be lost to posterity. As a tribute to the
strength of Reades original concept and the musical soundtrack featuring one of Cubas most
La Silla focuses on the history of chairs and isolates the school chair as being the most important of all. This is because the school chair facilitates
education, which in turn supports human development.
32

popular singers, Bola de Nieve, he remade the film changing details here and there(Padrn
2006). In 1989, Viva papi! was selected by the Cultural Council of the Cuban Institute of Cinema as
one of its thirty best animated films.
In an attempt to encourage viewers to become participants in the Revolution, Reade and ICAIC
colleague, documentary director Harry Tanner, developed an animated series with the popular
animated cartoon character, Pepe, who addressed day to day predicaments faced by Cubans. The
character provided comic relief to subject matter associated with agriculture, civic responsibility,
and health.9 Cubans responded positively to the Pepe series because for the first time they could
watch a cigar smoking mulato Cuban character in animation doing the same things and solving
the same problems as themselves (Padrn 2004).
By 1969, Reades interest in the direct didactic approach of short animation projects began to
wane. He felt a greater need to refine his writing skills, which in his view offered greater scope for
dealing with complex issues (Tanner 2006). In 1970, he abandoned any further involvement with
animation and returned to Australia where he worked as a journalist with the Sunday Australian,
wrote plays and illustrated books he had written for children.10
On 7 May 1998, Harry Reade died on Nugra Farm near Girvan, New South Wales. He had
requested that one half of his cremated remains be sprinkled around an apple tree on the farm,
and the remainder in the Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Memorial Park in Havana. Documentary
filmmaker David Bradbury delivered the remains to Cuba (Bradbury 2002). In a moving sub-text
in his film, Fond Memories of Cuba, Bradbury recorded Juan Padrn, Reades former animation
assistant, scattering them in the park to the tune of Waltzing Matilda played by Cuban
saxophonist, Francisco Sanchez.
The spreading of Reades ashes signified much about a person who had invested a great deal of
his creative energies in two ideologically opposed communities. His beliefs about the value of art
for the working class were not reached by accident, but by taking part in class struggles with the
communities in which he lived. While he had limited response to his creative efforts in Australia
he found in Cuba a more dynamic ideological framework, a critical mass of fellow conspirators,
and a society receptive to the mission of the socialist animation script writer. The basic set of
interests that informed his work was set by his Australian experience. The politically heated
environment of Cuba, however, allowed him to fulfil his ambition to use art as an agent of
revolutionary social change.
^
Max Bannah lives in Brisbane, Australia, where he works as an animator producing illustrations
and cartoon graphics, television commercials, and short films. He teaches Animation History and
Practice, and Drawing for Animation at the Queensland University of Technology where he
completed his Masters thesis, A cause for animation: Harry Reade and the Cuban Revolution.
This paper was accepted for the 21st Annual Society for Animation Studies conference.
Titles in the series include: Pepe Trinchera (Pepe the Trench-maker), 1968; Pepe cafetmano(Pepe the Coffee maker), 1968; Pepe Esparadrapo
(Pepe First Aid), 1969; Pepe Voluntario (Pepe the volunteer), 1969.
1 0
Childrens books by Reade: Reade, H. 1984. Whitefellers are like Traffic Lights. Perth: Artlook Books. Reade, H. 1987; How Many Ropes on a
Boat? Frenchs Forest: Little Lilyfield. Plays include: Reade, H. 1981. The Execution of Steele Rudd. University of Queensland, Fryer Library,
Brisbane; Reade, H. 1982. Bucks night at Susys Place. Montmorency, Vic.; Reade, H. 1982. The Naked Gun. Montmorency, Vic.: Yackandandah
Playscripts.
33

References
Agramonte, A. 1996. Cronologa del Cine Cubano. Havana: Ediciones ICAIC.

ASIO. File on Henry Garbutt Reade: ASIO, Series: A16119, Item 1334.
Baker, A. J. 1975. Sydney Libertarianism & The Push. Broadsheet (No.81, March).
Bannah, M. 2007. A cause for animation: Harry Reade and the Cuban Revolution, Visual Arts,
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane.
Bendazzi, G. 1994. Cartoons: one hundred years of cinema animation. Bloomington, Ind.:
Indianna University Press.
Bradbury, D. 2002. Fond Memories of Cuba. Australia: Ronan Films.
Chanan, M. 2004. Cuban Cinema, Cultural Studies of the Americas, Volume 14. Minneapolis;
London: University of Minnesota Press.
Farrell, F. 1981. International Socialism & Australian Labour: The Left in Australia 1919-1939.
Sydney: Hale & Ironmonger.
Gunzburg, D. 1996. Twilight Rebel. In Australian Story. Australia: television series, Australian
Broadcasting Commission.
Henriquez, H. 2006. 25th January, Interview with author.
McGuinness, P. 2005. 11th April, interview with author.
Milner, L. 2003. Fighting films: a history of the Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit. North
Melbourne, Vic.: Pluto Press.
Padrn, J. 2004. 13th October, interview with author.
Padrn, J. 2006. 16th January, interview with author.
Reade, H. 1987. An elephant charging my chookhouse. Frenchs Forest, N.S.W.: Lilyfield.
Reade, H. 1998. A Funny Kind Of Leftwing Animal. In Harry Reade estate held in trust by
Patricia Evans.
Reeves, A. 1991-1992. The Sydney Wharfies Mural. Museums Australia Journal Vols 2 - 3:195 203.
Stock, A. M. 2009. On location in Cuba: Street filmmaking during times of transition: University of
North Carolina Press.
Tanner, H. 2006. 20th March, interview with author.
Max Bannah
34

Sheuo Hui Gan
To Be or Not to Be
The Controversy in Japan over the Anime Label
Outside Japan, anime is mainly used as a term referring to animation made in Japan. Inside
Japan though, the word anime, an abbreviated pronunciation of animation in Japanese has
been used widely as an abbreviation for all animation. However, despite the escalating popularity
and attention in the worldwide media, the meaning and usage of the term is still ambiguous and is
not employed with a uniform meaning. There are a number of people, especially in Japan, who
persist in differentiating the meaning of anime and animation, arguing that anime is just a part of
the bigger genre of animation. They assert that not all animations produced in Japan are anime,
emphasizing the distinctive character and meaning of the works that do not conform to the
existing popular anime image. How works are labeled, whether as anime or animation, does seem
to matter. This issue within Japan is important, as it reveals the heterogeneous understandings
and expectations of contemporary animation in Japan. This paper explores this controversy about
labeling through investigation of the varying usage and reception of the anime label among
Japanese animators and major animation related associations in Japan.
The origin of the term
In 1910, at the end of the Meiji period, foreign animations, including the French animation
Fantasmagorie by Emile Cohl were imported by Fukuhd and screened in the Teikokukan
(Imperial Theatre) in Asakusa, Tokyo. The phrase dekob shingach ( Dekobs
new sketch book) was written before the titles of these foreign animations.1 This dekob
shingach series became very popular and the term itself became synonymous with animation
(Yamaguchi and Watanabe 1977, p.8). Later, the term senga eiga ( line drawing film)
or senga kigeki ( line drawing comic film) was used to refer to the locally produced
animation. On some occasions, cartoon comedy written in katakana ()
was also used (Yamaguchi and Watanabe 1977, p.10). In the 1920s, the term manga eiga (
manga film) became dominant, often used to refer to works with a strong narrative element.
On the other hand, senga ( Line drawings) was often used to refer to works with diagrams
and educational purposes. Around 1937, the term dga ( moving images) was introduced
by Masaoka Kenzo, but the term did not spread widely. Much later, around 1965, a similar term,
dga eiga ( moving image film) became popular along with animation film (
) written in katakana (Yamaguchi and Watanabe 1977, p.13). In 1962,
the word anime first appeared in Eiga hyoron, a well known film magazine.2 In the late 1970s
and 1980s, the term Japanimation was used briefly due to the sudden popularization of anime
in foreign countries, but faded away rather quickly due to its being associated with eroticism and
violence overseas. Nowadays, animation and anime, both written in katakana, have become the
most established terms.
According to the sixth edition of Kjien, dekob derives from the meaning of children having a big forehead. It is a playful way to address a
naughty boy in Meiji and Taisho period. On the other hand, chame was used to address a naughty girl.
2
According to Tsugata Nobuyukis research, the word anime first appeared in Mori Takuyas column: The genealogy of dga eiga in the issue
9 and 10 of the 1962s Eiga hyoron. Tsugata presented this research outcome at the 2001 Japan Society of Animation Studies (JSAS) annual
conference.
35

Anime which has been conveniently regarded as an abbreviation for all animation within the
country are largely represented by drawn animation in TV series, theatrical works or DVDs
which have been produced and released by a strong networking of seisaku iinkai, or joint
ventures of several companies, for risk sharing as well as promotional purposes. However, works
that are produced independently and art animations are usually addressed as animation rather
than anime. At the moment, the strong ties that link the commercial production, distribution and
exhibition networks seem to have formed a fluctuating consensus to distinguish what is anime
and what not. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) of Japan has identified the
category of anime (referring to the bulk of commercial anime and its related merchandise) as a
content-related industry like manga, games and music.
On the other hand, the overseas view point often sees the styles, voices, character design,
selective animation (limited animation) and so on as typical of Japanese animation, as these are
convenient features to distinguish Japanese works from other national, regional, or company
styles. As Miyao Daisuke points out, anime is now widely used to distinguish Japanese animation
from other forms. Around this entity of anime, there is a growing sense that we know what anime
refers to, what kind of object it is. In the United Sates, this sense of what anime is has been
shaped by television programming and product marketing (Miyao 2002, p.192). Miyaos
arguments describe one of the key issues that surround anime: the specific features of anime (i.e.
science fiction, giant robot, girls with magical powers, school uniforms, and shrine costumes)
which continue to form a children-oriented image that marginalizes the image of anime overseas.
This pervasive anime image has attracted scholars from different fields to study them from the
perspective of popular culture, globalization and the diffusion of cultural influence, sociological,
physiological, consumerism, business and many others. However, this popular anime image also
has distanced many creators, film lovers, animation enthusiasts and film scholars from anime,
who often consider anime as merely current fashion, not a serious art form.
The ambiguity involved in defining anime, and the varied usage of the term is an ongoing
process, within Japan and overseas. My purpose here is to provide a glimpse into the current state
of the term inside Japan, through close range of observation of everyday usage together with
surveying various materials in Japanese. Setting aside how anime is defined outside Japan, it is
important to note that anime does not have a homogenous meaning inside the country, which
complicates the task of attempting to establish a consistent meaning of the term.
Anime as abbreviation of animation
Studio Ghibli is one of the major animation studios in Japan famous for its high quality
feature-length animated films, popular with children and adults. Ghiblis audience is not limited
to anime or animation lovers but also includes people who are interested in film and
contemporary culture in general. Studio Ghibli aims at producing works that maintain a balance
between an engaging narrative and attractive motion design. Works from Ghibli are often
considered as artistic productions, both entertaining and meaningful.
In the two large collections of Miyazakis writings3, Shuppatsu ten 1979-1996 (Point of
Departure, 1996) and Orikaeshi ten 1997-2008 (The Turning Point, 2008), he often refers to his
works as eiga (films), pointing out they are fundamentally different from what has been called
anime (Miyazaki 1996, p.101-115, Miyazaki 2008, p.82).
See references for other writings by Miyazaki.
36

Miyazaki explained that the rapid development of the anime industry was closely connected to
the rich manga culture in the country. However, when many visual conventions from manga were
directly transferred into anime, he was dissatisfied with artists who simply relied on these
established norms to convey action and meaning. For Miyazaki, artists should observe and digest
different experiences, including film and manga, to finally create their own expression (Miyazaki
1996, p.106). Besides that, he emphasized the everyday experience of the presentation of space
and time in animation that should break away from simply relying on visual conventions that
evolved from manga expressions. However, Miyazaki also made the point that it does not make
sense to completely ignore the rich possibility of expressions found in manga. He thinks creators
should treat manga as a departure point and learn and be inspired by it (Miyazaki 2008, p.82).
Miyazaki disliked the term anime because it represents a narrow world view of animation
that is limited to celluloid animation, ignoring other techniques possible in animation expression
(Miyazaki 1998, p.103)4.iv Miyazaki also criticized the tight production schedule of anime that
had encouraged the reduction of details in drawing and relied on deformed images that focus on
depicting the impact of the moment instead of choreographing the motion through carefully
executed in-between drawings (Miyazaki 1998, p.107).
Another organization close to Studio Ghibli is the Tokuma Memorial Cultural Foundation for
Animation. Tokuma is in charge of the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka and provides funding for young
scholars to carry research about animation inside and outside of Japan. Even though it is not
stated clearly, it is clear that their aim is to promote the understanding of animation through
scholarly discussions and debates, encouraging the creation of animation and its culture in a
bigger context than anime.
Based on this standpoint, it is natural that Studio Ghibli always addresses Miyazakis works as
the works of Miyazaki or the films of Miyazaki in their own publications, related activities
and official website. However, some changes occurred recently. In their 2009 exhibition catalog
Studio Ghibli Layout Design, anime is used as abbreviation in the Japanese text, while it is
carefully translated into English as animation. This minor example could be a coincidence, yet
it hints that Studio Ghibli and Miyazakis attitude toward anime has softened, accepting the use
of anime as abbreviation for animation, following the majority usage in Japanese media.
Suginami Animation Museum, established in 2003, is the first animation museum that aims to
promote Japanese animation as a whole. The size of the museum is comparatively small, but it
displays panels exhibiting the full history of Japanese animation. It also has a library that contains
many TV animated series from the past and present, racks of animation related references
publications and some scholarly books on animation. In my interview with the curator of the
museum, Suzuki Shinichi5, he stated that anime is used as an abbreviation in this museum, which
is not intended to indicate any particular visual style. The current display tends to have more
things on TV animated series compared to the theatrically released feature-length animation. The
celluloid animation that has been dominant in Japan is also well reflected in the museums
display. In an interesting contrast to the museums display, Suzuki emphasized that the museum
aims to inspire young people to become artists who can work creatively, independent from the
popular industrial style.
4
The attitude towards encouraging a wider animation world view is also reflected in Studio Ghiblis official website. Cf. e.g. Studio Ghiblis
Library, a main section of their site.
5
Interview with Suzuki Shinichi on May 1, 2009.
37

Searching for the Trajectory of Japanese Animation (Nihon anime no hisyki o sagaru
), a major exhibition on Japanese animation held in the year 2000, traced its
history from the first theatrically released animation Hakujyaden (1958) to other feature-length
animated films that Toei Doga produced throughout the 1960s. The show aimed to introduce
how Japanese animation developed after the war and looked into the rapid expansion of TV
anime in the 1970s. Here, anime was also used as an abbreviation in the exhibition catalog.
There are many popular references which have been using anime as abbreviation for animation
such as, the two volumes of the Toei doga chhen anime dai sensh (
), Mangaka animesakka jinmei jiten ( ) and Nihon no anime
zenshi (). Common animation technical books such as Dare mo wakaru! anime
no kihon baiburu jinnbutsu no ugoki hen (
), Anime sakuga no shikumi kyarakuta ni inochi o fukikom (
) also tends to adopt anime as an abbreviation.
Anime no kykash (the official English title is The Animators Text), a four-volume reference
recently published by the Committee of the Anime Human Resource Training and Educational
Program, is mainly written by bodies that are closely connected to the anime industry 6. They
acknowledge the use of anime as an abbreviation for animation, but also stress that anime is
usually represented by TV animated series based on the celluloid animation technique. In the
segment titled Auteurs of Japanese animation, Kawamoto Kihachiro, Yamamura Koji and
Shinkai Makoto are included. They are introduced as artists whom anime fans might not be
familiar with, but are all internationally recognized animation creators (Fukui, volume 1, 2008,
p.9). This text book foregrounds the concepts and techniques of commercial animated series and
is clearly intended for those who aim to be employed in the anime industry as indicated in the
books subtitle. Anime, used here as an abbreviation reveals a sense of dominance of the
commercial anime industry and the esteem coupled with segregation accorded animation
people like Kawamoto or Yamamura who are well recognized, but not commercially significant
in the industry.
Listed above are examples of the term anime used as an abbreviation. When examined closely,
these individual organizations clearly have distinct attitudes towards their understanding of the
ideal form and purpose of animation, despite adopting anime as an abbreviation. Studio Ghibli
has been extremely careful when it comes to describing their works. However, other examples
seem to be more media driven, not especially aware of or concerned with the varieties of the
meanings implied by animation and anime.
Anime as a category not a contraction
There are a number of Japanese creators of animations that have taken care to assert that their
works are not anime. They appear to feel that the popular usage of the term anime to
represent the culturally specific type of Japanese animation commonly found in TV series and
franchise theme theatrical productions is so strong, that they want to clearly dissociate their own
works from this use of the anime term. Prominent among those who hold this position is
Yamamura Koji, an independent animation artist who has expressed his concern in
differentiating the usage of anime and animation. In the introduction to his book Welcome to the
World of Animation, he stressed his works are animation and not anime. He went on to explain
6
The overall supervision of this series is by The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA). Other organizations and companies that involved
include Nihon Gakuin College, Toho Gakuen College, Sunrise (Gundam, Keroro gunso), Toei Animation (One Piece, Dragon Ball) and Celsys
(Graphic Related Software Development & Multimedia Creation).
38

that anime is just part of the bigger category of animation, yet anime has nonetheless become the
established term referring to all forms of animation in Japan7. At the moment, Yamamura also
lectures at Tokyo University of the Arts, where he trains students by introducing them to
different animations from around the world. Recently, he has also started to organize a series of
public lectures which focus on introducing worldwide contemporary animation artists to the
audience, to further expand the understanding of animation in Japan8.
Japanese Animated Films: A Complete View from Their Birth to Spirited Away and Beyond
( ), a 2004 exhibition on Japanese animation, refused to use anime as an
abbreviation. Instead, they went back to an older term, manga eiga. This interesting exhibition
reviewed Japanese animation as manga eiga in order to educate a younger generation about
another category of animation, as manga eiga embodies values and aesthetics different from their
familiar anime. In this exhibition, there was a sense of pride and legitimacy of animation that
looked back to the golden era of Toei Doga. The short essay in the catalog written by Suzuki
Toshio, the producer of Studio Ghibli pointed out that Japanese manga films have a more
director-centered approach while western animated film are more centered on the films concept
itself (Suzuki 2004, p.13). Animation researcher Kano Seiji also commented in the same catalog
that designing character movement and performances should be the main job of an animator.
However, having a low budget, a short production period, subcontracting works to other
production companies and relying too much on freeze images (tome ) to express the
emotional state of the character has become a common scene in the industry. Kano quoted
Otsuka Yasuo, a famous veteran animator to describe this symptom as limited anime-ize
(shseru anime ka ) (Kano 2004, p.167).
Here, even though it is not clearly stated, TV anime are shown in contrast to be a mere fast
food-like commercial product that does not carry much of the authors signature. Avoiding anime
as abbreviation in order to highlight the difference between anime and animation is here intended
as a meaningful distinction. However, this exhibition also has its own prejudices, as it just sheds
light on the lineage of Toei Doga and its successor, Studio Ghibli, which are presented as
carrying on the values of making real animation, and completely ignores the importance of other
studios9.
A number of independent animators, most represented by Kuri Yoji, Furukawa Taku and
Aihara Nobuhiro have also expressed their dislike of the use of anime as an abbreviation. This
group of creators tends to have a wider interpretation of animation, emphasizing individuality
and originality in their work that does not conform much to the existing anime style. Many of
them are creating short animations and actively participate in world wide animation festivals.
Setting aside that the works by this group are often art-oriented and have little exposure in the
mainstream media, they continue to share their passions through lecturing at universities. Laputa
Art Animation School, a small animation organization inspired by Yury Norshtein, is a place
where many of them provide lectures and hands-on training for those who are interested in using
animation as an expressive medium10.
Yamamura reconfirmed this statement in an interview with the author at Yamamura Animation, March 30, 2009.
http://animation.geidai.ac.jp/ca2009/
9
Mushi Productions was quite important in the historical development of Japanese animation. However, the fact that it was disliked and blamed
for initiating the era of cheaply produced TV animated series is well demonstrated here.
1 0
According to the history written in Laputas official website, Yury came to Japan as the judge for the Laputa Animation Festival in 2000. He
commented that Japan had no school to provide training for artists. Laputa Art Animation School was established to bridge the gap between
artists and the heavily commercialized anime world in Japan by providing training to encourage individuality.
8
39

Anime as a culturally distinct form of Japanese animation
The worldwide popular reception of anime and the promotion by the Japanese government of
anime are both clearly centered on this category of works that usually includes a mixture of the
following characteristics:
(a) Based on manga
(b) Specific voice mannerisms
(c) Extensive use of selective animation
(d) The use of the camera work to provide motion to still drawings.
(e) Specific patterns of character design and facial conventions
(f) Complicated storylines with long episodic narratives
Currently popular series such as Naruto, Bleach, Full Metal Alchemist, Death Note, Mushi-shi
and many others that match dominant images of anime all have the above characteristics. These
particular characteristics have separated them from mainstream animation from the West.
However, setting aside their popularity and enormous commercial viability, they are still often
criticized as second rate due to their limited use of motion, repetitive narrative patterns, and
focus on preteen and teenage audiences. In 2008, there were 140 new titles screened on TV and
cable. Yet among this large number there were many interesting works with ambitious creators
that inserted their signature styles into the works despite the tight working schedules, low
budgets and various demands from the production committees and sponsors11. xi
Yuasa Masaaki, the talented director of the feature-length animated film Mind Game (2004),
and anime series such as Kemonozume (2006) and Kaiba (2008), is one of those who is attempting
to resist these commercial pressures while working within the mainstream of the industry. Before
working as a director, he worked as an animator for the long running popular TV anime series
Chibi Maruko-chan and Crayon Shin-chan. His works often demonstrate highly personalized
character designs that at the same time employ many conventional anime characteristics. The
movement designs in Yuasas works are interesting as he tends to play with selective animation,
superseding what some see as its limitations. In an interview with Yuasa, he is obviously
comfortable to be addressed as an anime director, and like many freelance animators, he is always
trying hard to generate works that satisfy the audience while maintaining a unique sense of style.
The Tetsuwan Atomu series from the 1960s, Uchusenkan Yamato from the 1970s, Gundam from
the 1980s and Evangelion from the 1990s all have unique styles that were distinct from much of
the mainstream animation of their day.
In reality, there have always been some complications when the Japanese Government has
pushed anime as their representative contemporary cultural industry. Despite the huge income
derived from anime and related goods each year, the anime scene is not an unproblematic entity
as can be seen from the large quantity of sexually explicit hentai anime. Another example is the
Akihabara district in Tokyo, the so-called dreamland for otaku, which poses another delicate
issue that the government struggles to address when promoting anime12.
1 1
The information is based on the online data from the Association of Japanese Animations. This number excluded OVA titles and titles that
screened at theatres. Eighty-seven titles were screened on TV (including broadcast channel TV) according to the July, 2009 statistic.
http://www.aja.gr.jp/
1 2
Once most famous for cheap electronics, anime, manga, games and figures are now among the most publicized attractions of Akihabara. See
Morikawa Kaichiro Learning from Akihabara: The Birth of a Personapolis for his lengthy and informative discussion about the history of
Akihabara.
40

Akiba-kei is the current slang term for people in the Tokyo area who are active in the anime
and gaming scene in Akihabara or adopt an anime-related lifestyle. They are often viewed as the
extreme example of the people who are into anime, manga, games and idols. It is also common to
spot them dressed in varied cosplay costumes walking around or performing in Akihabara.
Not everyone in Japan in pleased about this image of Akihabara, but the trend has certainly
attracted attention throughout the nation. Many people see it as a kind of street theater with
mixed feelings. The recent hit movie Densha Otoko (Train Man) depicted an otakus inner
insecurity and alienation in Japanese society and his search for a love life. It helped to improve
some peoples negative perception of otaku. The Anime Center located in Akihabara that tries to
promote a non-Akiba-kei image for anime, is another interesting effort to create a healthier
cultural image of anime for the district. On a national level, Japan International Contents Festival,
supported by METI that connected with the contents industry like games, animation, manga,
characters, broadcast, music and film can also be viewed as part of the government effort to
rationalize or upgrade the cultural image of anime13.
Conclusion
It can be seen that there are two basic groups that view anime as a term with entirely different
meanings and image, whether the word is used as an abbreviation or not. In conclusion, I would
emphasize the importance of two main definitions of anime, each with its own pattern of usage:
(A) anime as a simple abbreviation of animation and (B) anime as a culturally specific type of
Japanese animation that excludes some forms of animation made in Japan. It is not my intention
to promote either definition or type of animation, but to simply clarify these several meanings and
uses of the term. As mentioned earlier, there are extremely creative and aesthetically sensitive
anime (B definition) available in the market. Very often the media talks about anime as though
this specific form represented the entirety of animation made in Japan, while in reality anime in
the cultural specific mode is only one of many forms of animation in Japan. Specifying whether
anime is used as an abbreviation or a culturally specific mode of Japanese animation can help to
clarify our perception and analysis of the variety of animations produced in Japan. These
distinctions are not only important within the cultural context of Japan, but also have an
important role in clarifying the analysis of Japanese animation from an international standpoint.
The current controversy over the Japanese governments promotion of anime (B definition) as a
cultural ambassador for contemporary Japan, to the more spontaneous delight taken in Japanese
anime (B definition) across Asia, Europe, and elsewhere, can all be investigated more clearly with
care taken to identify these several definitions and patterns of usage for the term anime. Some
parts of the meaning of this international meaning of anime refers to Japanese culture in specific
forms, such as kimono, samurai, geisha, sword play, archaic style armor, Japanese gothic-Lolita
style, fashion, cosplay etc. Even the perception of Miyazakis work as Japanese, especially
Mononoke hime (1997) and Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001), fit this image of anime as being
culturally Japanese. Using a Japanese abbreviation like anime represents this cultural difference
outside of the country. Inside the country, the Japanese cultural context is a given- the distinction
that some want to achieve between animation and anime as applied to works produced in Japan
is more technical and stylistic than cultural. It also involves issues of production, audience,
distribution (TV and theatre versus festival); in addition, some creators desire to be known
foremost as quality animators rather than quality Japanese animators.
1 3
The government motives and policies that may be exploiting and controlling a peoples art movement for its own unrelated ends have been
criticized by Otsuka Eiji.
41

The desire of some members of the government and some politicians to use anime and the
related forms like manga and cosplay as cultural ambassadors represent an attempt to co-opt their
worldwide popularity to form an appealing face for government policies and an international
image useful for promoting tourism and international trade. Considering these issues internal and
external to Japan, it becomes clear that such terms as animation and anime are far from
being simple or neutral descriptive terms. Instead, multiple viewpoints and usages reveal a
contested ground that cannot fairly be reduced to a simple definition. It also exposes differences
in use and meaning between the still largely separated worlds of discourse inside Japan and
outside of it. A heightened sensitivity to these terminological differences in future studies of
animation in Japan will help to clarify the different trends and viewpoints in the scholarly world
as well as society at large.
^
Gan Sheuo Hui is a postdoctoral fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
at Kyoto University. This paper was initially presented at the Society for Animation Studies
conference in Atlanta, 2009. This paper is intended to help prepare the groundwork for a book of
essays and interviews on Japanese animation.
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Sheuo Hui Gan
43

Adam de Beer
Kinesic constructions
An aesthetic analysis of movement and performance in 3D animation
In animation the issue of movement is central to any discussion of its nature, irrespective of its
form, style or process of creation. As an animator, Norman McLaren believed the most
important thing in film is motion, movement (in Bendazzi, 1994:117), whilst Wells describes
animated films as the artificial creation of the illusion of movement in inanimate lines and
forms (1998:10). Movement is of primary concern in this simple definition and in earlier critical
analyses of animation, Sergei Eisenstein recognised if it moves, then its alive [italics in
original] (Leyda, 1988:54 quoted in Wells, 1998:14). This paper considers the concept of
movement in animation films expressed in the kinesic performance of the character(s).
The analysis focuses on movement in computer generated animation, specifically Final
Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001: dir. Hironobu Sakaguchi), and Final Fantasy VII Advent
Children, (2005: dir. Tetsuya Nomura and Takeshi Nozue) and will draw on the work of Gunther
Kress and Theo van Leeuwen. It should be noted that this paper is an exploration of the social
semiotics grammar of Kress and van Leeuwen, as applied specifically to movement. This latter
aspect is somewhat neglected in their work and the analysis in this paper highlights the
applicability of their concepts to the analysis of movement in animation.
I have chosen the title of this paper to specifically echo this focus on movement. The word
kinesics comes from the Greek kinsis or movement and is the study of body movement and its
contribution to communication (OCD, 1982). The focus is therefore not only placed on
movements associated with the body, appreciably differentiated from movement as performance
or as gesture, but also how movement itself can contribute to communication or meaningmaking. The problem, as highlighted in this paper, is that movement slips between and into these
other concepts and becomes a part of them and as such, becomes a difficult element to analyse.
Discussions of animation tend to blend movement with these other concepts (of gesture,
performance, etc.) and although movement is inherent in these concepts, they do not necessitate
movement, nor are they made up of movement alone. Movement is therefore subjectively
transformed in relation to other concepts. So although Wells does state that animated motion
carries with it implied meaning, sometimes metaphoric or symbolic, he does also aver that
motion could be simply blocking, i.e. the movement from A to B (Wells, 2009)1. It is these
movements of the body from A to B that this paper considers as a starting point.
Since the advent of the moving image, theorists have repeatedly explored the nature of the
real in film and its relationship to indexical reality and the photoreal (see Arnheim, 1966;
Bazin, 1971; Earle, 1968; Kracauer, 1960 and Lotman, 1976). With the increase of digital
technologies, the issue of what is real in the construction of a visual narrative becomes even
more complex, highlighting nuanced understandings of how reality is interpreted from the screen
(see Keane, 2007; Manovich, 2001 and Elizabeth Menon, Damian Sutton and Jenna Ng all in
Sutton et al., 2007). The central theme of many of these discussions tends to focus on the
relationship to the photograph and such elements as lighting, colour, and composition all static
aesthetic elements; movement as an indicator of reality is seldom the focus of the argument.
However, Metzs (1974) seminal discussion on Film Language not only considers the issue of
1
Personal correspondence with Paul Wells 2009
44

reality in the cinema from a semiotic perspective but, drawing on the work of earlier theorists,
comes to the conclusion that the secret of the motion picture is the injection of motion into the
unreality of the (static) image, thus foregrounding movement as an important factor in the
interpretation of the real. In an attempt to create an alternative theory to explain the viewers
response to the unreality on and of the screen, Princes discussion of Perceptual Realism
highlights movement as one of the three most important cues to create a synthetic reality that
looks as real as possible (1994:33). Motion therefore plays a vital role in determining the
audiences sense of the real in the world of the imagination.
In the moving image context however, movement can be defined from a number of different
perspectives. Zettl (1999) uses the concepts Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Motion to
respectively isolate movement in front of the camera, movement of the camera and movement
created through the process of editing the images together. Primary motion focuses on movement
of the objects in front of the lens, or in the case of animation, the illusion of movement perceived
as having been captured in front of a lens. Secondary and Tertiary2 motion play a significant part
in the interpretation of the moving image, but are outside the scope of this paper, therefore the
focus is on Primary Motion alone.
It should be noted at this point that this paper is not a philosophical discussion of the nature
of movement. It is not challenging epistemic discussions, highlighted by such authors as
Broadfoot and Butler (1991) utilizing Deleuze, or Zettls (1999) exposition of both Zenos at-at
theory and Bergsons notion of dure (Zettl, 1999:226-228). These authors in the case of the
former, successfully make the case that motion does not exist or cannot exist, and in the case of
the latter, argue for the differences in the perception of film and television as different mediums.
Nor do I want to challenge Norman McLarens notion of what happens between each frame [as
being] more important than what happens on each frame (Solomon, 1987:11 quoted in Wells,
1998:10, italics in the original). It is what is on each frame and how these frames show perceived
movement that is the data for this discussion and I therefore start from the assumption that I am
analyzing the illusion of movement, irrespective of its complex philosophical vagaries and
physical and psychological construction. Furthermore it is necessary to clearly differentiate
movement from its related concepts of inter alia gesture, performance and dance.
In Heather Crows discussion of gesture and the uncanny nature of gesture that animates the
inanimate, she repeatedly slips between concepts of gesture, movement, performance and
animation to discuss gesture as performance, without separately identifying these different
elements. She does hint at this separation though, [t]o say that bodies are animated by gesture is
not just to say that they are put in motion (which of course they are). (Parenthesis in the
original) (2006:50). Crows discussion shows that movement is only part of what creates gesture
and therefore what gives life to the inanimate. In the case of gesture, emotion comes to play in the
interpretation of the gestural movement, adding a separate and additional level to the meaning
created by the gesture itself. Gesture and movement are therefore separate elements.
Likewise when the actor performs, this performance includes movements, gestural or
otherwise, especially if these are specific to the character or used to stereotype, such as a shuffling
walk for an old man or a young girl skipping; however the performance is not limited to the
movement. Paul Wells discussion of acting and performance (1998) considers movement as the
motivated result of considerations of performance to show expression and behaviour (similar
2
Zettls (1999) discussion of these motions shows how the movement of other elements in the construction of the cinematic image, e.g. the moving
frame or the edit tempo, also shape the viewers perception of the on screen movement. For the purpose of analysis however, he separates these
different elements.
45

conclusions are found in Hooks, 2000). As such the most important part of the animator-asactors performance process is the necessity to re-educate the senses in how the body executes
simple mechanistic acts (1998:106). The suggestion is that even simple movements of the body,
embodied and not considered by a human being (unless having to relearn those movements
already learned at a very early age), become something difficult to recreate, especially in light of
the time and effort required to create each movement and the necessity for the movement to play
a part in the performance itself. Wells discussion of acting and performance focuses on
movement and the cognitive notions behind realizing movement as part of a performance and not
performance per se. But again in Wells discussion, gesture, attitude, action, posture and
movement are all interchangeable terms in a discussion of performance with no significant
differentiation between the concepts.
This interchangeability is also found in Laura Ivins-Hulleys article on the ontology of
performance in stop animation (2008), with slippage between the concepts of movement and
performance in the case of this particular animation technique. Again we see an application of
Hooks intersection where Ivins-Hulley explains how the animator must determine the
appropriate movement to express the desired action and emotion and the animator must have
an understanding of movement to effectively construct performance (Ivins-Hulley, 2008).
Performance is therefore built up from the action to create an emotion that will be interpreted as
a performance.
For performance therefore, as with gesture, it is clear that emotion will impact on the
interpretation of the movement, but several other semiotic modes become additional levels of
meaning. These can include; other sound elements, such as dialogue and the related paralinguistic
elements; and elements within and of the diegetic space itself, such as the onscreen elements of
mise-en-scene (make-up, costume, props, etc.) and the cinematic elements of mise-en-scene
(camera angles, lighting and editing). These elements all add to the meaning of the image and are
therefore interpreted by the audience as the performance. This individualized interpretation
adds the concomitant personal ideological filters to its reading. An interesting test to the idea of
movement as performance is to consider the nature of static performance, i.e. performance
without or with only minimal movement. Some street performers engage with audiences by taking
on the nature of a statue, posing for hours in a frozen moment. This too is performance but
clearly without any need for movement. Thus there should be a clear distinction between
concepts because while movement can be a performance, performance does not necessitate nor is
it made up of movement alone.
And finally dance has a strong symbolic structure to the movement adding multiple
connotative levels of meaning, depending on the spectators knowledge of the movement style or
contexts. The above should highlight that it is important to separate and isolate movement itself
from the other emotional and ideological elements. Anthony Baldry and Paul J. Thibault bring to
light this conflation in their work on multimodal analysis (2006) and how the audience tends to
interpret the denotative and symbolic along with the connotative, rendering the latter
transparent.
For Thibault (1991) the main undertaking of social semiotics is to develop analytical and
theoretical frameworks to explain the social context of meaning-making. Social semiotics
investigates human signifying practices in specific social and cultural circumstances, and tries to
explain meaning-making as social practice. By looking at elements of movement in animation the
argument is that something can be said about animation itself, and animation within society,
highlighting for example both visual and/or ideological trends and their related social contexts.
46

Semiotic systems are therefore shaped by social interests and adapt as society changes and thus
new social identities and projects can, according to Hodge and Kress, change patterns of usage
and design and must explain how the social shaping of meanings works in practice (1988:22).
Animation and the movement in animation is one such a semiotic system. Kress and van
Leeuwens work forms part of the social semiotics project and two of their concepts are
considered for the analysis in this paper, namely Salience and Framing. Salience creates a
hierarchy of importance amongst the [compositional] elements [of the image] (1996:212).
Framing constitutes devices which connect or disconnect parts of the picture (ibid:182). In the
analysis that follows, these concepts are specifically applied to the kinesic movement of the
characters on the screen, analysing if there is a hierarchy of different movements and how these
movements interact to create meaning or impact on the interpretation of meaning. Kress and van
Leeuwen partially elaborate on these concepts (1996, 2001) in relation to movement but this in
itself is a complex discussion that falls outside of the scope of this paper.
The analysis that follows considers two computer generated animation films that are essentially
photoreal. These two films were chosen to contrast movement within similar visual contexts,
though arguably with different styles and aesthetic influences. Spirits Within sets out to push the
limits of what is possible in achieving photorealism, whereas Advent Children, though still
strongly photoreal, did not have the latter as the main objective, being driven rather by a fan base
desirous of a cinematic narrative3. Spirits Within tries to create a synthetic indexically referential
diegetic space4, whereas Advent Children whilst visually photoreal, references the styles of both
the original game and a more general anime aesthetic.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) is a three dimensional computer generated film set in
2065 on an earth ravaged by phantoms. Dr Aki Ross and her mentor Dr Sid try to understand the
nature of the phantoms and thereby discover how to defeat them with the help of Akis old
acquaintance Capt. Gray Edwards. The plot follows a standard post-apocalyptic scenario, where
the hero (in this case Aki) must put her life and the lives of those she loves on the line to finally
save the world. Spirits Within was the first CG film to attempt[s] to create animated characters
that look like actual people (Plantec, 2008). Peter Plantec in his article Crossing the Great
Uncanny Valley draws our attention to the psychological reaction when faced with these types of
realistic CGI characters that are at the same time both real and unreal. Lev Manovich (2001) also
considers this problem of being too real in his discussion of the illusion of synthetic realism.
Plantec however highlights some of the elements that affect this reaction saying as she [Aki]
moves, our minds pick up on the incorrectness. And as we focus on her eyes, mouth, skin and
hair, they destroy the illusion of reality (Plantec, 2008:1). It is noteworthy that Plantec refers
here to movement, as opposed to performance or gesture, but movement is not necessarily the
focus of his discussion as most of the elements discussed are static. Also what Plantec suggests we
are focussing on is unclear. Is it the moving hair that distracts us or is it the manner in which it
moves that destroys the illusion? In Vivian Sobchacks discussion of Spirits Within she also
focuses on how technology detracts from the photoreal, quoting the online comments from the
IMDB website that speak to the errors of movement (2006:178). Sobchacks argument focuses
on how the uncanny nature of these errors meant that the film failed to engage with the audience
to suspend their disbelief, which while important in the perception of movement and worthy of
mention, is not the focus of this paper.
3
4
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0385700/trivia for Final Fantasy IIV: Advent Children

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0173840/trivia for Final Fantasy: Spirits Within
47

Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, (2005) is based on the 1997 console role playing game
Final Fantasy VII and the narrative follows on from the game events set in Midgar on Gaia, but
two years later. The central character, Cloud Strife, tries to unravel the mystery of the Geo-stigma
plague, ultimately coming up against the reincarnation of his nemesis Sephiroth, inhabiting the
body of another rival Kadaj. The narrative has strong links to the Final Fantasy franchise, not only
bringing in numerous game characters and references to storylines and themes, but also with the
game style narrative structure, a fairly disjointed and complex storyline interspersed with
fantastically dynamic chase and fight scenes. The film also has a strong anime influence in its
visual design, specifically the use of limited or reduced animation (Wells, 2006:90) in terms of
economy of movement. These design elements stem from Japanese animations roots in the
economics of television, i.e. most effect for the least expenditure (Clarke, 2004:120) and with
the process of creating fluid movement in animation being time consuming and therefore
expensive, it is here that production techniques can be made more cost effective by simplifying
how movement is created in the image. Clarke states that in Japanese animation movement does
not tend to accompany dialogue but instead body movements are directed towards goals or
very specific poses that express a state of mind (ibid) and in lip-syncing there is less of a strong
match between mouth movement and the words spoken (ibid).
The following analysis of the films using Kress and van Leeuwens concepts of Salience and
Framing will demonstrate that these can potentially become important tools in the semiotic
analysis of kinesics in animation.
Salience, an element of composition but related to movement, essentially considers aspects of
movement that create hierarchies of some kind within the composition of the moving image.
From the analysis, two main elements appear, namely technology, in the form of software and
programmes that take over some of the more tedious processes of animating, and the shot frame,
i.e. the visual as delimited by the edge of the screen, e.g. a close up or long shot.
Being computer generated, technology impacts on both films in terms of what is given
preference in the frame. In both cases there is an abundant use of flowing hair, but only for
certain characters. Dr Aki, Sephiroth and Kadaj have permanently undulating hair, whereas most
male characters have short hair, or in the case of Dr Sid are bald, and female characters may have
their hair bound up tightly so it does not flow freely. This is both a technical and aesthetic
consideration. It is impractical to animate each individual hairs movement, and so software is
developed to essentially take over this function. The software becomes the technological gimmick
until replaced by another, but becomes for a time the compositional fad. Technology, as
software or programme, is therefore for a time the deciding factor in the use of a certain motion
element in the frame.
However, this application of movement impacts on the image aesthetically. In the case of Dr
Aki, where the film makers were aiming for photo-realism, though moving hair was an important
software innovation at the time, it distracts from the realism. Even though the movement itself
seems very realistic, its application in the image detracts from that synthetic photorealism.
Although technological innovations leave aspects of movement up to software programmes,
allowing more time to tweak the animated performance, the limitations of computing power
ultimately force aesthetic choices on the animator, for example in terms of how many of these
autonomous movement programmes can be applied in the rendering process.
Advent Children also has flowing fabric, with garments that react to implied wind and
apparent surfaces, creating highly realistic random movement in some of the more dynamic fight
sequences. However, this movement is not uniformly applied and not all fabrics have the same
48

level of realism, again dependent on the character and the situation, lead characters and action
sequences taking preference. In some cases the level of application is absurd and potentially
completely overlooked by a spectator. Cloud, in Advent Children, wears a tight fitting leather
body suit, but each shoulder carries a metal wolf insignia with a ring through its mouth. It is only
in slow motion viewing of the film that it becomes apparent that this tiny silver ring swings with
accurate pendulum motions with each movement of Clouds body. One could argue that whereas
the movement of Akis hair draws your attention and therefore detracts from the realism, that the
unobserved movement of Clouds shoulder insignia somehow shows the success of a movement in
achieving realism in the very fact that it is unobtrusive.
Therefore we can see that technology is both boon and bane; adding potential elements to
enhance realism and allowing more freedom from monotonous and repetitive animation tasks,
but through overuse, potentially distracting and detracting from that same desired realism.
The shot frame (and here shot frame is used in the traditional filmic sense of how what we see
is delimited by the edge of the screen) also defines a hierarchy of use of certain movement
elements. For scenes or sequences seen in Long Shot (LS) or Extreme Long Shot (ELS), showing
either full figures or crowds of figures, overall body movements, such as walking, running, etc. are
distinctly more realistic for both films. In Advent Children a number of scenes involve scores of
human figures walking across a central square in ELS and in an important fight scene with
Bahamut Sin the crowds movements scattering in LS are equally realistic. Also, the central
antagonist, Kadaj, has two dialogues, one with Rufus ShinRa at Healin Lodge and another with
the children he takes back to a forest river, where his fluid body movement and actions are
extremely convincing and life-like. Shortly after we are introduced to Dr Aki Ross in Spirits
Within she lands in a deserted street, elevators down to the surface and picking up an enormous
firearm, strides out over the broken terrain. As far as her body movement is concerned, her
cautious progress over the rough terrain is again highly realistic. By contrast, minutes later into
the sequence, she is apprehended by a team of soldiers determined to ensure that she does not
become another victim of the phantoms. She is grabbed by Capt. Edwards and a short dialogue
ensues in Medium Shots (MS) and Close Ups (CU). In the latter sequence, the various elements of
movement in the shot seem less coordinated, less sinuous than in the LSs.
Furthermore both films have teams of Motion Capture (MoCap) staff in the credit lists and it is
possible to conjecture that in shots where there is less emphasis on performance and more on
simple movement, there is less intervention from an animator and more reliance on capturing
movement via software. The coordination and timings of the animator controlled movements in
the tighter shots seem more disjointed than the performed movements for MoCap in the long
shots. The shot frame therefore determines the use of and by implication the focus on certain
technologies, where shots with less noticeable movement detail show less direct intrusion from
the animator. The performed movement of the MoCap artist, e.g. by a dancer, mime artist or
actor, is palpably different from the animated movement interpreted into a performance via the
animator.
From the above we notice that technology and shot framing are both important determinants
of Salience with regards to movement. With the introduction of any new computer software this
becomes the focus (i.e. the salient element in the composition) of the animators attention though
not always aesthetically warranted. And the shot frame plays an important part in deciding the
extent of the animators manipulation of the characters movements, either when creating
movement from scratch or tweaking captured motion. Again the salient element for the animator
in composing the movement becomes, in this latter case, the shot frame.
49

Framing considers some of the devices which connect or disconnect parts of the image, and
more specifically movement in the image. In terms of body movement, such movement consists of
both robust and fine movements, i.e. movements that are either large or small. To clarify though,
this is dependent on the object size on the screen. A blink in LS is fine movement, being
comparatively small in relation to the screen area and other movements of the body, whereas, in
an extreme CU, it fills the screen and becomes a robust movement in relation to other smaller
movements of the eye and iris. In Spirits Within and Advent Children the focus tends to be on the
robust movements in either LS or CU, leaving the emphasis on fine movements, when applied,
solely to the CU or ECU. It is however the fine movements that tend to add to realism and these
relate mostly to the eye, the fingers and speaking.The most important fine eye movement that is
deficient for both films is saccadic movement. These subtle and continuous movements are the
rapid and random shifting of the eye as it takes in the scene and are indicative of a real eye. Both
films tend to create realism of the eye through blinking and, much like the flowing hair, it
becomes a distraction. In Advent Children CUs of Kadaj show high levels of realism through the
fluid robust movements of the head and flowing hair and to some extent capture the intricate fine
movements of the eyes especially for eye-lines. However the unwavering fixed stare of the
character is most disturbing, the eye in fact shows almost no saccadic movement. This may have
been a part of characterization, however, the same can be said for Clouds eye movement and as
the hero the audience is presumably not meant to be alienated by his stare. There is one ECU shot
of Cloud where during a moment of deep introspection, attention is paid to saccadic movement
and a realistic performance is achieved, his rapid eye movement representing his inner thought
process and the timing and rhythm of which is highly realistic.
Likewise, movements of the hands in these films show variations of realistic movement
through the dexterity of the digits. Spirits Withins most realistically animated character, Dr Sid,
demonstrates many more fine movements in CU, especially in the movement of the eyes and
fingers. Dr Sids hands are more expressive than other characters showing not only more realistic
robust movement, but also more subtle digit movements. By contrast in Advent Children when
Tifa goes to pick up a strip of Clouds bandage in Aeriths Lodge, she grasps the material with a
clumsy, childlike closed palm hand, rather than with dexterous fingers.
Lastly the problem of lip sync occurs on numerous occasions in both these films where the
complex subtleties of the interaction between the movements of the lips, tongue, teeth, mouth
muscles and cheeks are overly simplified. Though such choices may be justified for technological
reasons, or in the case of specifically Advent Children for stylistic reasons following an anime lipsync style, ultimately this detracts from realism.
In the years since these films were made, both software and the subtleties of performance in
animation have grappled with some of these problems and later films show that lessons have been
learned. What is important for this paper is not the problem per se but isolating the movement
related devices (i.e. the frames) that can be used to disconnect the movement for the purpose of
analysis, and so the concepts of robust and fine movement and saccadic and digit movement
become potential framing tools for analysis. Whilst these elements disconnect movement, their
interrelationship, e.g. what movements combine to create a particular performance, leads to the
possible framing device that could also connect them. Movement is seldom isolated to either its
robust or fine elements, or a single movement of either of these, but is usually a complex
combination of multiple elements simultaneously. It is this combination that also adds to a sense
of realism, but more importantly the co-ordination of these movements that creates such. This
orchestration of movement is best described as a form of choreography.
50

Using Kress and van Leeuwens concepts as a starting point, this analysis considered the
movement elements in the CG animation characters from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
and Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, (2005). The analysis has shown that Kress and van
Leeuwens concept of Salience is useful in highlighting how both technology and film aesthetics
play a part in the method used to animate movement and ultimately what the aesthetic impact is
of these choices. Likewise their notion of Framing has highlighted devices to both disconnect and
connect various movements in an image to describe the kinesic performances. And though it is
true that the illusion of life in animation [is] profoundly more challenging than the seemingly
unmediated and recognisable representation of reality in live-action films (Wells, 1998:15), when
animation specifically sets out to challenge reality as a simulation, it is the illusion of reality that is,
to animation, the greatest challenge of all.
^
Adam de Beer is presently working on his doctorate in film studies in the Centre for Film and
Media Studies (CFMS) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in Cape Town, South Africa. He
teaches Video Production and Storytelling for the centre and lectures on animation and gay and
lesbian films. Most of his research focuses on topics related to his thesis, namely animation,
movement in animation and the history of animation in South Africa. This paper was delivered on
12 July 2009, at the 21st Annual Society for Animation Studies Conference: The Persistence of
Animation (10 - 12 July 2009), Savannah College for Art and Design (SCAD), Atlanta Campus,
Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
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Filmography
Sakaguchi, Hironobu (2001) Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Nomura, Tetsuya and Nozue, Takeshi (2005) Final Fantasy VII Advent Children
Adam de Beer
52

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Animation Studies

Animation Studies is published by the Society for Animation Studies,

Animation Studies Vol.4, 2009

Letter from the Editor

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Animation (Theory) as the Poematic

This essay has two projects.

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Using chronophotography to replace Persistence of Vision as a theory for

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Fig. 3 Needle spinning

Fig. 2 Successive positions of

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Fig. 6a Graph of a low frequency (1 Hz)

Fig. 6b Graph of a high frequency (16 Hz)

Fig. 6c Part of Figure 6b enlarged (x 16)

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Balla, G. (1913), Volo di Rondini (Flight of the Swallows) [Painting]

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Agramonte, A. 1996. Cronologa del Cine Cubano. Havana: Ediciones ICAIC.

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See references for other writings by Miyazaki.

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Personal correspondence with Paul Wells 2009

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