Review: BAFTSS Animation SIG Animated Horror Mini-Event

Fig. 1 – Animated Horror: An Online Mini-Event.

The first event of the new BAFTSS Animated SIG was a very spooky one. Threading the often-unexplored relationship between animation and horror and organized by Dr. Sam Summers (Middlesex University), “Animated Horror: An Online Mini-Event” (Fig. 1) took place online on October 19, 2022. Even though it was a short one, the seminar offered a great deal of varied richness on issues of liminality, transformations, and the overlapping of horrific and seemingly innocent content, within animated horror.

Professor Stacey Abbott (University of Roehampton) presented her work in progress “Monsters, Metamorphosis, and Materiality: Form and Aesthetics of Horror Animation” (Fig. 2), part of her upcoming monograph on animation aesthetics. She suitably started off with a well-known fragment from Frankenstein (1816) by Mary Shelley, in which Victor Frankenstein “infuses a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay” (Shelley 2014, 49) at his feet. This sentence was adapted in the 1931 James Whale film as the iconic “It’s alive!,” and then reconfigured as “You’re alive” in the animated Frankenweenie (Tim Burton, 2012). With this quote, Abbott aimed to demonstrate the synergy between animation and horror, which exists as a parallel between Frankenstein’s creature’s reanimation and the animator’s task of infusing the ‘illusion of life’ into something inanimate.

Fig. 2 – Professor Stacey Abbott (University of Roehampton).

Abbott then proceeded to explore said synergy in terms of metamorphosis and materiality. She suggested that horror is an overlapping set of categories in flux, which can range between an aim to unsettle and gross out, but also to excite or exhilarate. The unique qualities of animation, in particular its constant state of becoming or metamorphosis, generate a dynamic interplay between animation and horror. Abbott explored this connection in depth by examining the metamorphic features of Beetlejuice (Patsi Cameron & Tedd Anasti, 1989-1991) the animated programme. Unrestrained by the physicality of its live-action counterpart, the programme can employ the plasmatic and formless possibilities of animation to generate horrific content, or as Noël Carroll puts it, the categorically interstitial impurities (1999, 57)  – bodily fluids, or flesh, for instance – of horror. In terms of materiality, Abbott examined Ray Harryhausen’s epic monsters, as well as some of Jan Švankmajer’s works, and Mad God (Phil Tipoer, 2021), as prime examples of the connection between animation and horror. Abbott argued that animated horror, in particular stop-motion, operates within concepts like “horrality” (Brophy 1983) a combination of the words horror, textuality, morality, and hilarity. Expressed through the mutability and malleability of clay, for example, the grotesque nature of the body can be easily emphasized and potentially generate affections of shock in works that emulate child-like animation, such as Lee Hardcastle’s Claycat retellings of classic horror films.

Fig. 3 – Victoria Mullins (University of Cambridge).

The second presentation explored the potential of animation as a horror generator through the analysis of Disney’s Pinocchio (Ben Sharpsteen & Hamilton Luske, 1940). Victoria Mullins’ (University of Cambridge) (Fig. 3) paper “Debunking Disneyfication: A Reappraisal and Reclamation of the Relationship between Disney Animation and Cinematic Horror” probed the idea of Disneyfication and its disruption within the Disney canon, using qualities of horror within its classic films, as well as comparing it with Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005).

Mullins defines Disneyfication as the sanitizing and sentimental qualities that are attributed to Disney’s brand identity. Some tools and hallmarks of Disneyfication can be adaptive changes to elements of a story, infantilization, the presentation of dominant American values, a strong sense of good and evil, a sense of hyperreality, and animated spectacle. However, the features of the Disney brand often overlap with components of horror, disrupting the very process of Disneyfication. Positioning Hostel as a retroactively confirmed remake of Pinocchio (Fig. 4), Mullins argued that some tools of Disneyfication become roots of the horrific in the 2005 film, such as adaptive changes that turn into the objectification and exploitation of the body, or animated spectacle that is translated into body horror. For instance, Mullins examined the parallels between the imprisonment of Pinocchio by the Stromboli – the puppet master – and the imprisonment and torture of the characters in Hostel.  The Walt Disney company initially used adaptations to transform Carlo Collodi’s literary Pinocchio (1883) into a moral tale in which there was a special focus on the puppet’s naïveté and his body’s commodification and exploitation. Where the written Pinocchio actively chooses to go to the puppet show, the animated boy is tricked and sold to Stromboli, used for a show and profit, imprisoned, and threatened to be turned into firewood. These changes overlap with the character´s imprisonment and torture in Hostel’s slaughterhouse.

Fig. 4 – Hostel is a remake of Pinocchio.

According to Mullins, these unintentionally horrific qualities of the Disney films work to disrupt the process of Disneyfication. Even though the innocence and values that define Disneyfication are always presented in opposition to horror, it is possible to find in the process the origins of horror. Through this analysis, it is then possible to think through films’ similarities that would be otherwise overlooked, but also consider Disney outside of its branded framework. This includes challenging the presentation of Disney and horror as opposites; and broader cultural notions related to Disney, such as the popular idea that animated films are for children.

It is exciting to see events like this happening. Despite it being small, it offered opportunities to learn about projects that are delving deeper into issues surrounding animated horror. From these two fantastic presentations by Abbott and Mullins, it is clear that there is an abundance of questions that overlap and connect horror and animation — from issues of production and materiality to ideas of representation and the broader cultural perception of animated films — which are well worth exploring. Finally, it is worth giving a shout-out to the BAFTSS Animation SIG, which made this mini-conference possible and, as Dr. Summers put it in a tweet, a spooky success.

**Article published: November 11, 2022**

References

Brophy, Philip. 1986. “Horrality— The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films,” Screen 27, no. 1 (January/February): 2–13.

Carroll, Noël. 1999. “Horror and Humor.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57, no. 2: 145–160.

Shelley, Mary. 2014. Frankenstein. Thunder Bay Press.

Biography

Juliana Varela completed her MA in Film Studies at King’s College London. Juliana is interested in the relationship between new viewing practices and animation, as well as the cultural and political potential of adult animation.