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  • That’s All Folks? Ecocritical Readings of American Animated Features by Robin L. Murray, Joseph K. Heumann
  • Özge Samanci
That’s All Folks? Ecocritical Readings of American Animated Features
Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann . Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press , 2011 , 296 pp.

In That’s All Folks? Ecocritical Readings of American Animated Features, Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann explore the themes of ecology in selected American animated movies from the 1930s through today. Four key movements constitute Murray and Heumann’s ecocritical lens: human ecology, organismic ecology, economic ecology, and chaotic ecology. Murray and Heumann’s thesis for their book is as follows.

American enviro-toons from the 1930s forward reveal three narrative and aesthetic patterns in relation to the historical and cultural context and approach to ecology underpinning them: the power of nature over the human world, the need for controlling human intervention and nurturing the natural world in order to strengthen their interdependence, and criticism of human exploitation of the natural world.

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Murray and Heumann’s research fills a gap in animation studies and in ecocriticism, as the authors emphasize in the introduction. The field of animation studies lacks an ecocritical lens to analyze animated movies. In parallel, the ecocriticism mainly focuses “on literature—defined as nature writing, poetry, fiction, and drama” (23). Murray and Heumann introduce animation as a valuable text for the field of eco-criticism. In their analysis, they give the most attention to Walt Disney Studios, but they also include chapters on UPA, live-action/animation combination films, Rankin/Bass Studios, DreamWorks, and Pixar.

That’s All Folks? offers a rich survey of American animated movies that have themes appropriate to ecocritical reading. The book brings to readers’ attention not only the animated features but also lesser-known short animations such as Lumber Jerks (1955) and Porky Chops (1949). That’s All Folks? presents the views of numerous film critics about American animation movies with an emphasis on ecology. In that sense, the book is a valuable resource for both scholarly and general readership. Murray and Heumann identify patterns in the representations of the nature/culture binary in American animation movies and the relationships between human and nonhuman nature according to studios and the directors. Murray and Heumann note the lack of diversity in gender and race representations throughout the book. They adequately acknowledge the orthodox Disney philosophy.

Murray and Heumann give a summary of each movie, written from their ecocritical lens. Their readings of the films are mainly plot-oriented and do not reflect an examination of film as a medium. In their readings, the authors do not acknowledge the conventions and meaning-making devices of film—for example, editing, camera movements and angles, framing, lighting, color, sound, costume decor, mise-enscène, self-consciousness, and self-reflexivity. Reading the movies under the light of these meaning-making devices would contribute more to film and animation studies.

The authors incorporate into their text the opinions of various film critics and scholars. Sometimes the emphasis on external opinions shadows the authors’ own voices. For example, the conclusion of chapter 7, “Dinosaurs Return,” relies heavily on quotes from Meeker and Thiele. This conclusion includes only one sentence from the authors. The majority of the [End Page 57] interesting observations are in Joseph Meeker’s reading of WALL-E (2008).

There are few scholarly writings on live-action/animation combinations. As a result, chapter 4, “Animation and Live Action,” carries a particular significance. In this chapter, Murray and Heumann present important milestones of live-action/animation combination movies. The authors could have included the fact that the first animation movies emerged from a vaudeville tradition—a saloon entertainment known as lightning sketches. The very first animation movie, Humorous Faces of Funny Faces (1906), was a live-action/animation combination movie as a result of the lightning sketch tradition.

Throughout the book a key question remains unanswered: why is the animation medium a potent medium for telling stories about ecology? Murray and Heumann quote from David Carr to explain the lure of animation: “Because animation is less rule-bound than live action, writers can use the kind of shtick that...

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