Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs was one of the earliest animated American films to place a Black woman as the main character. Directed by Bob Clampett at Warner Brothers in 1942, the character of So White set a precedent for three further Black female lead characters in future Warner Brothers animated projects. However, introduced as a “happy washerwoman made for a jazzier version of the mammy stereotype” (Lehman 2007, 78), So White contributes to a larger structure of racism within American animation, hindering the progression of positive representation for future Black women as animated characters. The question that this blog investigates is whether the representation of Black women in Warner Brothers animation has truly improved since the introduction of So White, or do So White’s successors continue to perpetrate harmful stereotypes about African American women?

Trial of Osiris is a competitive player versus player (PVP) mode for the 2017 online video game Destiny 2. It is one of the most interesting and vibrant modes for battles, where you can demonstrate teamwork in a series of matches. To be more specific, squads of three players compete against each other in a series of rounds to determine the winner of the match. If you manage to achieve flawless status by winning 7 matches in a row, you can earn the best seasonal gear and weapons that will significantly strengthen your guardian.

In the earliest forms of animation, the so-called ‘Hand of the Artist’ was a visual tool to represent the moment before a drawing came to life on its own. Émile Cohl's Fantasmagorie (1908) is a famous example of this, where the hand and the pencil of the animator disappear once the drawings begin to seemingly move autonomously. Over the century since Fantasmagorie, animation has returned to this visual device as a form of satire or as a metatextual exploration of the medium, to disrupt our perception of the constructed reality of animation in a manner unique to a medium free from the constraints of live-action. Paul Wells argues that “animation’s inherently rhetorical condition means that its construction is always a critical intervention and interrogation of the representation of the material world” (Wells 2019, 15) which is what allows animation to be utilised as a reflexive storytelling device through the deconstruction of its own medium.

As a media form, animation has the unique ability to render immaterial realities and unfamiliar experiences visually in a manner inaccessible to live-action cinema. In this way, animation can represent the unrepresentable, creating a rare opportunity for either the disruption of hegemonic discourses, such as through the visualisation of silenced perspectives, or a repackaged reiteration of them. Animation can provide a vehicle for graphic political criticism, augmenting the way things are represented through artistic means: such as by exaggerating certain characteristic features of a political class or actor through cartoon aesthetics. A prime example of this can be found within the Who is a Refugee? animation featured on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) YouTube channel, which represents the journey of an unnamed family from an unspecified nation as they transition into refugee status.

With animation’s unique ability to penetrate the internal world of a range of living organisms, it can make the invisible visible (Wells 1998, 122). It is undeniable that animation stands out as a powerful medium for exploring human complex emotions and psychological states, and as an animator myself, the most commonly employed and explored framework that I experience throughout my studies and creative practice is the use of metaphor to abstractly depicted the mind. However, unlike metaphors that have been extensively researched and discussed throughout the history of animation studies (see Wells 1998; Uhrig 2018), the concept of metonymy within animated representation, a similar literary device to metaphor, has yet to be extensively talked about.

Hazbin Hotel, a series created and directed by Vivienne Medrano, premiered in 2024.  It follows the story of Charlie Morningstar, daughter of Lucifer Morningstar and Lilith, and her efforts to prevent sinners from facing the annual extermination which results in her establishing a hotel that rehabilitates them for entry into heaven. Although the series episodes explore a multitude of themes and topics, the episode that particularly resonated with me was “Episode 4: Masquerade,” which follows the character of Angel Dust as he tries to balance his job’s responsibilities while residing at the hotel.

When arthouse streaming service, MUBI, acquired one of the year’s surprisingly successful films, 6x Oscar-nominated The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024), it was originally being distributed by Universal for barely $18M. However, French writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s refusal to cut certain scenes eventually allowed her to shop the film elsewhere. With Fargeat now satisfied and Universal likely banging their heads against the wall, The Substance has become an absolute hit, going on to make $70M+ at the global box office (D’Alessandro, 2024).

My Neighbor Totoro is one of the most well-known among Studio Ghibli’s works. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki in 1988, the film tells the story of two girls, Mei and Satsuki, and their dad, Mr. Kusakabe, as they move to the countryside as they wait for Mrs. Kusakabe to recover from a hospital nearby. Now living in an old country home, Mei and Satsuki look in wonder at the countryside and eventually encounter magical creatures that live in the nearby forest (and even within their home), soon meeting the guardian of the forest, Totoro.