Animating Space: From Mickey to WALL-E

Introduction: Animating Space

1 INTRODUCTION Animating Space The focus of this book is on animation and space—not the sort of wondrous space that we have historically looked up at and all too glibly talked about conquering, but rather another kind of space that in its own way has proven to be just as challenging and that similarly holds great attraction for us, what I term animating space. Within that phrase I want to bind up two things that I believe are essential to describing the work of animation properly. On the one hand, I am referring to the space within which animators work, the space of paper, cel, film frame, or computer screen that stands blankly before them, and within which they then must craft their art. And on the other, I want to describe the result of that confrontation, how that space comes alive, becomes what Henri Lefebvre terms “representational space” (43), as the work of the animator infuses it and all that seems to be within it (indeed, the space and all within it are really of the same stuff) with life or spirit (the anima of animation). I begin with this dual focus—or dual designation—in part because it seems that we often confuse these two elements, especially as we tend to focus attention on the typically amusing and often intriguing characters who are the product of that animating, but also because I believe their relationship is essential to thinking about animation. It allows us to account for what we see in the animated film as well as for its manifest appeal, which lies, from the time of Winsor McCay and his dinosaur brought to life, Gertie, to today in that seemingly magical ability of the form to generate life or vitality, to take a step in the direction of what André Bazin reminds us is one of humanity’s oldest and most compelling Animating Space 2 myths, that of the artistic reproduction of life, or what he terms “the myth of total cinema” (22). This concern with space and the manifestly lively figures inhabiting it, however, comes not so much from a desire to further trace out Bazin’s trajectory, to comment on another cinematic element and its relation to the real world—or simply to gaze from a different angle at what Alan Cholodenko ironically refers to as “the step-child of cinema” (“Introduction ” 9). Rather, I want to join in an investigation of what Cholodenko and others have termed “animatics” from the vantage— primarily—of the historically dominant American animation industry. After noting that our histories and theories of film have predominantly focused on the cinematic apparatus, on the recording and presentation of “the life within objects,” Philip Brophy has chronicled how, for want of more specific models, that practice has most often guided how we think about animation, leading many to view it as simply one more category —or subcategory—within this field (70). The result, he suggests, is that much of animation’s key thrust, its construction of motion and life, has been overlooked or downplayed. Thus, in an effort to theorize animation further, Brophy insists that we might start thinking in terms of what he calls the “animatic apparatus,” that which emphasizes the “dynamism” inherent in animation, or all that is involved in “engineering , producing and orchestrating rhythms in order to make action happen ” (71). This approach shifts attention to the “engineering,” to the construction of the full image in motion, to a concern that encompasses not only the animated characters, who often seem quite alive (or, by analogy, to their animator-creators), but also that challenging space I earlier described—or put more simply, to the force that through the pencil, pen, or electronic stylus works in and on this space. With this slightly shifted focus, Brophy suggests, we might gain not only a different sense of the relationship of animation to live-action film, but also some insight into the changing ways in which animators have tried to meet this different sort of challenge, this bringing to life of both figures and a world that those figures must inhabit. What follows, then, is not quite a history of animation, although I have arranged the elements of this discussion historically and sketched out part of animation’s historical trajectory, while examining many of the “usual suspects” involved in most studies of the form. Nor is this Introduction 3 study...