Alan Cholodenko – ‘Like Tears in Rain’: The Crypt, the Haunted House, of Animation and Memory in the Era of Hyperreality

The real…erases itself in favour of the more real than the real: the hyperreal—Jean Baudrillard[1] He who has no shadow is merely the shadow of himself—Jean Baudrillard[2] Part I. Introduction This essay is theoretical, speculative, highly so. Theory, from Greek theoria, is speculating. And for many, if not all, of you, this essay may seem very […]

Qing Sheng Ang – The Introspective Merlion: Transculturalism in Singaporean Animation

Introduction Singapore achieved independence in 1965. In 2015, the government of Singapore launched the SG50 initiative (2015, SG50 Celebration Ideas), calling upon Singaporeans from all walks of life to propose ideas for celebrating 50 years of independence. The top-down initiative focused on “things that make us uniquely Singaporean,” in hopes that residents would engage in […]

Jane Batkin – Rethinking the Rabbit

Revolution, Identity and Connection in Looney Tunes Voice actress June Foray once recalled how Chuck Jones was able to quote Mark Twain and, in the same breath, discuss Aeschylus (King, 2013). Yet culture and animation have often shared an uneasy relationship. As critic Steve Schneider claims, “in all the vivisections of popular culture, non-Disney animation […]

Pierre Floquet – What is (not) so French in Les Triplettes de Belleville

In an article on text theory, Roland Barthes wrote: “Every text is intertext; it holds other texts within, at various levels, in irregularly recognizable shapes: those of the preceding culture as well as those of the surrounding culture; every text is new with interwoven past quotations”1. A text, a film, or an animated film is […]