The Flesh of Animation: Bodily Sensations in Film and Digital Media

Animation can reconnect us with bodily experiences by evoking vivid embodied sensations in viewers and connecting them with the lifeworld of experience. Sandra Annett's book, The Flesh of Animation, explores how animation, through its material forms and visual styles, can evoke bodily sensations of touch, weight, and orientation in space. It discusses well-known forms of animation from the United States, France, Japan, South Korea, and China, examining how they provoke different sensations in viewers. It also explores how animation and embodiment manifest in contemporary global media, from CGI and motion capture in Disney's "live action remakes" to new media installations by artists like Lu Yang.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 30 April 2024
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

  Film and media studies scholarship has often argued that digital cinema and CGI provoke a sense of disembodiment in viewers; they are seen as merely fantastic or unreal. In her in-depth exploration of the phenomenology of animation,Sandra Annett offers a new perspective: that animated films and digital media in fact evoke vivid embodied sensations in viewers and connect them with the lifeworld of experience.    Starting with the emergence of digital technologies in filmmaking in the 1980s,Annett argues that contemporary digital media is indebted to the longer history of animation. She looks at a wide range of animation-from Disney films to anime,electro swing music videos to Vocaloids-to explore how animation,through its material forms and visual styles,can evoke bodily sensations of touch,weight,and orientation in space. Each chapter discusses well-known forms of animation from the United States,France,Japan,South Korea,and China,examining how they provoke different sensations in viewers,such as floating and falling in Howls Moving Castle and My Beautiful Girl Mari, and how the body is mediated in films that combine animation and live action,as seen in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Song of the South . These films set the stage for an exploration of how animation and embodiment manifest in contemporary global media,from CGI and motion capture in Disneys “live action remakes” to new media installations by artists like Lu Yang.   Leveraging an array of case studies through a new approach to film phenomenology, The Flesh of Animation offers an enlightening discussion of why animation provides a sensational experience for viewers not replicable through other media forms.
Film and media studies scholarship has often suggested that digital cinema and CGI can create a sense of disembodiment in viewers, making them feel like they are not truly experiencing the world. However, Sandra Annett's in-depth exploration of the phenomenology of animation challenges this notion by suggesting that animated films and digital media can actually evoke vivid embodied sensations in viewers and connect them with the world of experience. Annett's work spans a wide range of animation, from Disney films to anime, electro swing music videos to Vocaloids, and examines how animation, through its material forms and visual styles, can evoke bodily sensations of touch, weight, and orientation in space. Each chapter discusses well-known forms of animation from the United States, France, Japan, South Korea, and China, exploring how they provoke different sensations in viewers, such as floating and falling in Howls Moving Castle and My Beautiful Girl Mari, and how the body is mediated in films that combine animation and live action, as seen in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Song of the South. These films set the stage for an exploration of how animation and embodiment manifest in contemporary global media, from CGI and motion capture in Disney's "live action remakes" to new media installations by artists like Lu Yang. Annett's work offers an enlightening discussion of why animation provides a sensational experience for viewers that is not replicable through other media forms.

Weight: 370g
Dimension: 140 x 216 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781517911591