Footnote #28 - Adult Animation

The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!

Animation’s rude and crude history is the topic of Footnote #28 of the podcast as Chris and Alex take up the complex issue of adult animation. Topics include adult animation as the medium’s cultural ‘other’ and how it is a term involved in exclusionary tactics of classification; associations between the ‘adult’ of adult animation and taboo themes, strong language, and graphic sexual content; alternate definitions of adultness rooted in everything from the medium’s potential for satire, parody, and social criticism to wartime propaganda shorts; and how adult animation as a label opens up a discussion of animation’s own pedagogical function as a tool for education.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Suggested Readings

  • Cohen, Karl F. 1997. Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America. North Carolina: McFarland & Company.

  • Cook, Malcolm, and Kirsten Moana Thompson, eds. 2019. Animation and Advertising. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • S. Shull, Michael, and David E. Wilt. 2004. Doing Their Bit? Wartime American Animated Short Films 1939–1945. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantADULT ANIMATION, RACE, SEXUALITY, GENDER, EXHIBITIONComment