What does a Refugee look like? (UNHCR Teaching About Refugees, 2017)

UNHCR Teaching About Refugees (2017)

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. As a result of this ambiguity, the animation can be understood as a generalised representation of the journey of refugees which, as will be explored further, contributes to a problematic universalised story of a displaced person(s) resulting in the abstraction of individual suffering and homogenised perception of refugeehood. The animation follows a journey narrative across virtual geographies, partitioned into three chronological sections: what makes a refugee, the journey to safety, and life as a refugee. This video is part of a series of animations pitched as age-appropriate teaching materials around refugees, asylum, and migration for child audiences, thus making its conveyed message crucial to interrogate as the videos are aimed towards an impressionable audience. I propose that this segment perpetuates the perception of refugees as an anonymous corporeality; furthermore, I argue that the entire animation is an example of a discursive function of media marshalling stereotypes against oppressed groups through other devices such as political caricature and metaphor, thus revealing the significant political power of animation. 

Whether created by an independent artist, a Hollywood studio, a state body, or a global agency such as the UNHCR, animation emerges from a complex intersection of identities, perceptions, and motivations. Paul Wells argues that animation is always rhetorical as it is a medium that inherently conveys meaning and messages, thus, its construction is ‘always a critical intervention and interrogation of the representation of the material world.’ (Wells, 2020: 15). In other words, animation is never just about creating moving images; it involves a highly selective procedure of rendering realities visible (and invisible), thus yielding significant political power due to its capacity to frame reality through a specific lens. Elsewhere, William A. Gamson et al, call attention to the ways in which media-generated images are used to construct the perception of political and social issues. The authors also highlight that the lenses through which we receive these images are not neutral but, to build upon Wells' argument, evince the power of the elites who produce and operate it (Gamson et al., 1992: 374). Elsewhere, Suzanne Buchan argues that animation is a pervasive media form which has the power to ‘astonish, influence and coerce’ (Buchan, 2013: 1). Moreover, we must identify the representational possibilities of animation as a medium of political instruction.

Fig. 1 - The container-like structure.

Fig. 2 - The image transforms into a faceless blue mass.

The UNCHR animation relies on the medium-specific technique of condensation ­– the minimum detail to communicate the maximum of narrative and thematic information (Wells, 2007: 25) – creating the perfect stimuli for the provocation and thus perpetuation of stereotypes. In the chosen segment, the roughly sketched figures are first depicted within a shipping-container-like structure created by lines of varying lengths and direction (Fig. 1). This transitions into a blue wash, disrupted by wave-like curls and crests (Fig. 2), carrying a densely packed huddle of faceless, blue-toned figures that blend with the dingy-like structure they are ‘carried’ by. By rendering the bodies in nearly the same shade of blue as the dingy, the refugee figures are visually equated to the vehicle that carries them. This artistic choice echoes the synecdochical slogan of the 2023 Conservative Party campaign ‘STOP THE BOATS’ which uses ‘boats’ to talk aversively about refugees. Furthermore, the symbolic use of colour lends itself to a broader discussion around the use of watery ‘inundation metaphors’ – such as surges, waves, and floods – in relation to refugees.[1] Michael Pugh has previously argued that the metaphoric construction of migrants using ‘a vocabulary of fluidity’ serves to equate them ‘with ineluctable forces of nature’, thus de-humanising them and obscuring ‘considerations of human responsibility and ethical concerns about hospitality’ (Pugh, 2004: 54-55). Elsewhere, M Dolores Porto argues that even if the ‘source domains’ of these metaphors are not blatantly negative, their repetitive deployment, even by those outside of anti-migration circles, constructs a cognitive model of immigration in terms of a threat that needs to be addressed. Furthermore, Andreas Musolff calls attention to the proximity of water to the imagining of receiving nation-states through the space-container scenario: ‘as the countries of destinations are conceived as containers, with boundaries and limited capacities that immigrants may overflow’ (Musolff, 2015: 45). In the selected animation, the continuous symbolic use of the colour blue, which is closely associated with water, coupled with the free-formed figures renders the insidious metaphoric construction of migration ‘as water in motion’ visually in a child-friendly manner.

Animation affords its creators the opportunity to ‘correct’ common misrepresentations by emphasising often-overlooked details thus subverting a prevailing narrative. However, it can also reproduce and contribute to hegemonic discourse. For example, initially identifiable through roughly sketched faces, as this segment proceeds and the transformation into refugeehood advances, the figures become entirely stripped of individuality through a ‘plasmatic’ erasure of their facial features.[2] Transformed into an indistinct blue mass, this image evokes Albert Memmi’s concept of the ‘mark of the plural’ (Memmi, 1957/1991: 129). Originally conceptualised to describe the depersonalisation of colonised people through generalisations made by colonisers, the ‘mark of the plural’ can also be applied to the depersonalisation of refugees in popular media, such as this UNCHR animation. Just as Memmi observed that colonised people were denied individuality, instead ‘drown(ed) in an anonymous collectivity’ (Memmi, 1957/1991: 129), a contemporary iteration of this ‘mark of the plural’ appears in the nameless, faceless animated figures which are collectively ‘drowned’ in near-identical shades of blue. Postcolonial theorists have widely discussed who is allowed/denied the power to self-represent and represent others. Bill Ashcroft et al., for instance, argue that colonisers occupied a ‘privileged centre’ (Ashcroft et al, 1989: 104), affording them the power to represent both themselves and the subjugated, who were condemned to ‘immobility and silence’ (Young, 1990: 159). This animation suggests a similar hierarchy, where the animators yield representational power whilst the refugee figures are ventriloquised and ultimately silenced through the symbolic erasure of their mouths.

Fig. 3 - Images of migration.

Fig. 4 - .

In an article for Creative Bloom, Dom Carter interviews Sam Drew – who collaborated with the Covenant House Toronto to create an animation for Canada’s National Human Trafficking Awareness Day – who argues that animation is the appropriate medium for portraying sensitive topics. Drew contends that, due to the ‘freedom of imagery and metaphor’, animation can make complex subjects accessible in a way that is inaccessible to live action cinema (Carter & Drew, 2024). However, in the case of this UNCHR animation, there is no example of metaphor being used to provide a nuanced perspective. Instead, when comparing its frames with prevailing images of refugees – see Figure 1 in comparison with Figure 5 and Figure 2 in comparison with Figures 3 and 4 – the animators appear to have traced over and parodied the most insidious representations of refugees, tailoring them in a way that is most ‘appropriate’ for the intended child audience. Eric Herhuth argues that the use of parody ­– an imitation of an existing work or image – is part of the legacy of caricature in animation. Lawrence H. Streicher defines caricature as a symbol or portrait of reality which is employed to ‘indicate exaggerated representation of the most characteristic features of persons or things’ (Streicher, 1967: 431). Furthermore, the reduction to the ‘most characteristic features’ of refugees in this animation – an anonymous and voiceless corporeality – can be seen to evidence ‘cultural anaesthesia’, a term coined by Alan Feldman which refers to the ‘banishment, of disconcerting, discordant, and anarchic sensory presences and agents that undermine the normalizing and often silent premises of everyday life’ (Feldman, 1994: 405). Put simply, cultural anaesthesia characterises the removal of disturbing, and disrupting, details such as the exclusion of confronting individual stories of refugeehood. Furthermore, by comparing the UNCHR animation with dominant depictions, the animated reproduction of refugees as a homogenous mass administers the first dose of cultural anaesthesia, dissuading its child audience of empathy and considerations of human responsibility.

Fig. 5 - Images of migration.

Furthermore, this segment epitomises animation’s significant political power due to its capacity to frame reality through a specific lens and control what themes and voices are made visible. Subsequently, animations can become political forces themselves as they influence and shape our perceptions of the world and experiences, especially those that we have not experienced first-hand such as that of the refugee’s journey. Thus, animation has the power to inform how we interact, who we support, and who we condemn. Indeed, while animation has the power to astonish, influence and coerce, it also has the power to repackage, reproduce, and reiterate. Thus, through the use of medium-specific devices – such as condensation and caricature – this animation serves as a ‘child-friendly’ introduction to the ‘othering’ of refugees.  

**Article published: March 28, 2025**

Notes

[1] For further explanation of the ‘inundation metaphor’ see Gregory B Lee, “Chinese Migrants and the “Inundation” Metaphor” (City University of Hong Kong, 2007). SSRN.

[2] I use the adjective ‘plasmatic’ in reference to the term coined by Sergei Eisenstein to describe the free-formed Disney animated characters in early to mid-twentieth century. Plasmaticness is defined as term “a rejection of once-and-forever allotted form, freedom from ossification, the ability to dynamically any form.” (Eisenstein, 1986: 21) Thus, I interpret the removal of the characters face as being characteristically ‘plasmatic’.

References

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Biography

Berry Pillot de Chenecey is an aspiring interdisciplinary historian that has recently completed her undergraduate studies, graduating from King’s College London with a First Class Honours from BA Liberal Arts with a Major in History. She has commenced postgraduate study at UCL, pursuing an MA in Public History. Berry maintains a keen interest in the history of childhood and youth, pursuing children as a category of analysis and subject of scholarly reflection.