Tim Burton’s Bodies provides a distinctive body-centric approach to the analysis of Burton’s back-catalogue of animated and live-action films (see Fig. 1 for book cover). Tim Burton is an internationally celebrated filmmaker, animator and artist who has worked in the industry since the 1980s. His work is commercially and critically acclaimed and is mostly associated with the fantasy horror sub-genre, the macabre and spectral, animated corpses and grotesque outsider protagonists.
Read MoreThe world that children occupy is full of secrets, and is a world not shared with adults. It is one concerned primarily with fantasy and imagination. Every child has a right to occupy that secret world; it’s part of childhood development and is an important locator of child identity as a ‘non-adult’. As Chris Jenks tells us, “the child is familiar to us and yet strange, he or she inhabits our world and yet seems to answer to another” (2020, 3). The child exists in its own distinct world and separation and agency are at the core of that world.
Read MoreThis blog post follows on from an earlier sequence analysis of Disney’s Moana (Ron Clements & John Musker 2016) in which I explored the redemption of Te Kā by the opening of an anthropomorphised ocean. In this second post, I will analyse the moments immediately following the opening of the ocean, which sees Moana and Te Kā to come face to face.
Read MoreSince its DVD release, Moana (Ron Clements & John Musker 2016) has carved a home in my heart. When I’m not re-watching it captivated and in love with its artistry, I’ll watch it thinking about the voyage Disney takes into Polynesian histories and the representation of culture which, although efforts were made through the formation of the Oceanic Story Trust to depict authentic Polynesian cultures, often falls short – as one indigenous rights advocate puts: “having brown advisers doesn’t make it a brown story” (Ngata, 2016).
Read MoreThese days, I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937). Call it a professional interest during its eightieth anniversary year. But here, rather than talk specifically about Snow White, instead I would like to look at my favourite non-Disney reference to it: Violet Newstead’s (Lily Tomlin) Snow White-themed revenge fantasy in the 1980 Feminist political comedy classic 9 to 5 (Colin Higgins, 1980). Though any working woman can tell you that 9 to 5 has never lost its relevance (sadly, given that it’s a 38-year-old film about sexism in the workplace), in the current socio-political climate and historical era (with #MeToo, wage stagnation and job insecurities for many in the middle and lower classes, etc.), 9 to 5 has become more relevant than ever — so much so that, in July 2018, Jane Fonda announced a sequel to the film with herself, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton reprising their original roles in what will be (presumably) a look at how things have changed – and how they’ve stayed the same – for working women since 1980.
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