A Theory of Suspended Animation: The Aesthetics and Politics of (E)motion and Stillness

Animation has long been defined and analyzed as an art of movement. Drawing attention to the fluid movement of outlines in animated cartoon characters, Sergei Eisenstein proposes the concept of “plasmaticness,” which refers to the stretching, elongating, inflating, deflating, transforming, and deforming of bodily forms, registering “a rejection of once-and-forever allotted form, freedom from ossification, the ability to dynamically assume any form.”¹ Animation has also been regarded as a moving art, capable of moving and transforming itself across media, space, and time.² Other scholars, such as Sianne Ngai, draw attention to the affective dimensions of animation by foregrounding its power in expressing emotions and moving audiences.³

Following this train of thought, we can see how Monkey, the main character of the epic Chinese classical novel Journey to the West, has become a defining figure of Chinese animation because Monkey embodies the animation principles of movement and plasmaticness. The first animated feature film in China, and indeed Asia, was Princess Iron Fan (Tieshan gongzhu, Wan Laiming and Wan Guchan, 1941), featuring the battle between Monkey and the Bull Demon King. Uproar in Heaven (Danao tiangong, Wan Laiming and Tang Cheng, 1961–1964), revolving around Monkey’s rebellion against the Jade Emperor, represented the highest achievement of Chinese cel animation. Even the more recent Monkey King: Hero Is Back (2015) marked the renaissance of Chinese animation in the digital age.⁴ Moreover, the origin of anime’s media mix in Japan today can be traced back to Monkey. According to a report from Japan-occupied Manchukuo (1932–1945), when Princess Iron Fan was released in Japan in 1942, toys featuring Monkey and other characters were selling well at many department stores, especially among Japanese people.⁵

Monkey’s prominence in Chinese animation, and thus the prominence of conceptualizing animation as movement, provokes questions about Chinese animation’s less explored side: if Monkey is the prime figure of Chinese animation, who is not? If Monkey has been overanimated in the history of Chinese animation, who remains less animated or even unanimatable? If Monkey represents animation’s fundamental principles of constant motion and plasmatic movement, who represents inertia, stasis, inanimation, de-animation, and even resistance against animation? If “the medium is the message,” what does it mean to use animation to animate or not animate someone or something?⁶ While Monkey is not the focus here, these questions draw the contours of the aims of this essay.

Generally speaking, animation is often used to portray animals, supernatural and fantastic beings, and less privileged and socially marginalized people, such as children and racialized Others. In my study of animation during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), I observe that ethnic minorities have been over animated in terms of both quantity and quality in the history of Chinese animation. First, numerous animated films have portrayed ethnic minorities as objects of representation, leading to the rise of the “minority genre” in Chinese animation. Second, ethnic girls in animation frequently undergo metamorphosis, or the plasmatic bodily transformation from human to animal, and are often portrayed with excessive physical gestures and movements. This kind of quantitative and qualitative excess is what I call the “overanimation” of ethnic minorities.⁷

While I mainly focus on the connection between physical movements and ethnicity, Sianne Ngai draws attention to the ties between emotions and race as represented in animated American TV series. She notes a kind of “exaggerated emotional expressiveness” and “liveliness” (overemotionality), which she calls “animatedness,” in the representation of racialized Others, African Americans in particular.⁸ Drawing on Rey Chow’s ideas in “Post-modern Automatons,” Ngai suggests that such “animatedness,” rather than liberating racialized bodies from their ossified forms à la Eisenstein, reveals the very racialized otherness and social powerlessness of the animated objects who, due to their subjection to power, become “a spectacle whose aesthetic power increases with one’s increasing awkwardness and helplessness.”⁹ In animation, the racialized Others, overcharged with animatedness as aesthetic objects, are impotent social beings incapable of political agency and action.

Rather than focusing on...