Jan Švankmajer’s conscious and unconscious worlds

Introduction

The portrayal of a character’s subjective, ‘inner’ experience onscreen is an enduring challenge for the filmmaker. Many techniques for conveying fantasies or dreams, such as blurring the frame’s edges, cross-dissolves and bleached colour, have been used – from soap operas to advertising – to such an extent that they could be considered by audiences as hackneyed or clichéd. Yet the notion that cinema cannot deal with complex psychological states such as dream, memory, the imagination and the unconscious seems to be tied up not only with clichéd imagery, but also with the derision of film as a passive visual and aural experience that leaves little to the imagination.  For instance, George Bluestone insists that the rendition of mental states cannot be as adequately represented by film as by language: “If the film has difficulty presenting streams of consciousness, it has even more difficulty presenting states of mind which are defined precisely by the absence in them of the visible world” (Bluestone 1971: 47). Frequently, when the topic of imaginative engagement with film arises, so does the claim that in visual texts much of the imagination’s work is done for us.  Malcolm Turvey (1997: 435) points out that in projecting representations of narrative content, images in film perform the work of the imagination for spectators.  In other words, because the ‘mental content’ in film – that is the material with which the imagination works – is also already an image, the viewer does not need to engage with the creative level of imagining that takes place when reading, whereby mental images are evoked by linguistic signifiers.

I do not contest the difficulty of rendering mental states in cinematic terms, but I do believe that cinema, and animation in particular, has at its disposal its own armoury of techniques for conveying interiority, and that these are able to engage the imagination thoroughly, leaving it to forge connections – to ‘do work’, as it were.  As a practising filmmaker, I find it informative to analyse particular cinematic examples – in order to dispel the notion that the medium is ill-equipped to screen psychologically complex states, and to seek inspiration for doing so in fresh ways.

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The Self-Portrait of the Artist and the Re-Start of Animation

Introduction

Originally, the self-portrait was a pictorial subgenre of portrayal, in which the artists became the model for their own paintings. However, it is also present in mediums such as cinema, when directors appear in their films, from ephemeral manifestations, like the Hitchcockian cameo performance, to the assumption of a protagonist role like Takeshi Kitano in Takeshis’ (2005). Equally, the self-representation of animators establishes a privileged association between the artist and the animated film – a fabricated world that depends on its creator and demiurge. Moreover, self-representation has accompanied key moments in animation history, such as the early endowment of comic strip characters with motion. Here, the animated self-caricature of pioneering American animators is often apparent, and, in a more conteporary context, the advent of CGI has established new relationships between authors and their ‘creatures’ in a virtual environment.

The first self-portraits of animators, notably Winsor McCay in the live action scenes of Little Nemo (1911) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), helped to position the audience towards a new form of entertainment, as well as to consolidate the emerging profession of animator. Though these films were midway between comedy and documentary genres, the appearance of the draftsmen in their own films soon evolved to become a standardized representation, a stereotype for animated comedy, where the now fictional author is embedded in the cartoon universe, as in the Fleisher Brothers’ series Out of the Inkwell (1921-1927) or Guido Manuli’s short film Solo un bacio (1983). More recently, the self-portrayal of animators has recovered autobiographical aspects, due to a renewed interest in animation as a means to express more serious concerns.

Despite excellent studies on interactivity, intertextuality and self-reflectivity in animation, such as Lindvall and Melton’s essay “Towards a post-modern animated discourse: Bakhtin, intertextuality and the cartoon carnival” (1997), the self-portrayal of animators is under-addressed in Animation Studies. This article will consider the animated autoportrait from an interdisciplinary point of view, relating it to both painting and literature. Equally, the relationships between animators and their own representations will be elucidated by considering self-portrayal in Jacques Derrida’s prominent essay Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins (Mémoirs d’aveugle: L’autoportrait et autres ruines, 1990), in which he formulates the Abocular Hypothesis; that is, the self-portrait as a ghosted image between artists and their reflection, or a falsification of the self, because artists cannot look directly at themselves while painting, but rather to a reduplicating object and remaining necessarily blind for themselves (1990, p. 44).

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User-Produced Flash Cartoons and Television Animation

Introduction

A number of prominent media scholars including Peter Lunenfeld (2000, p. 71) and Lev Manovich (2002, p. 4) have shown that advances in the technical capabilities of personal computers, combined with the increasing ubiquity of Internet access, have allowed the computer to become a single site for the production, dissemination, and reception of media texts.  Lunenfeld in particular contends that this convergence allows for the creation of new, alternative media forms and the ability for formerly passive mass media consumers to become active user/producers, blurring the formerly clear line between media audiences and producers. Amanda Lotz similarly claims that digital media give users the ability to dismantle mass media’s “bottleneck of distribution” (2007, pp. 148-149). Others assume an ideological revolution is taking place, making utopian claims that the capacity to produce and distribute media content outside of existing mass media structures allows for greater control and independence, which in turn has a profound influence upon the production of culture. For example, Lisa Parks (2004, p. 142) claims the “cross-pollenization” of television and new media might generate possibilities for social transformation, while Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin (2000, pp. 73-75), Henry Jenkins (2006, pp. 3-7), and  Nicholas Negroponte (Andrejevic, 2004, p. 38) all presuppose that digital media allow users to challenge television’s hegemonic, “top-down” control over cultural production.

Many of these same scholars also predict a radical transformation in, if not the total collapse of, centralised mass media such as television. Anna Everett even claims that the “advent of the digital revolution in late-twentieth and early-twenty-first-century media culture apparently confirms both Jean-Luc Godard’s belief in the ‘end of cinema’ and other media critics’ claims that we have entered a post-television age” (Everett, 2003, p. 3).  She further asserts that this digital revolution represents “the rise of a new cultural dominant, one marked by the digital convergence of film, television, music, sound, and print media” (Ibid, p. 8). Everett’s argument in particular demonstrates that discussions of new media are not simply about technology, but rather involve a larger discussion about how these technologies can alter a society and its culture.

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