Footnote #6 - Anthropomorphism
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!
The business of talking animals is the focus of Footnote #6, as Chris (with a bit of Alex) takes listeners through the shared histories of anthropomorphism and animation, and the acquisition of humanlike qualities (sentience, subjectivity, and selfhood) by non-human animated characters. Topics include the visual curiosity of the anthropomorph as a hybrid figuration caught between humanity (ánthrōpos) and the non-human (morphē); the role of persuasive personality and affinity within identifiable cel-animated, object, or virtual characters; collisions between nature and culture embedded in the anthropomorph’s fractured identity; affiliated terms such as ‘therianthropy’ that speak to gradations of humanity in animated animals; and why anthropomorphism as a representational strategy perhaps lies at the very heart of animated filmmaking.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
Suggested Readings
Holliday, Christopher. 2016. “I’m not a real boy, I’m a puppet”: Computer-Animated Films and Anthropomorphic Subjectivity.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 11, 3 (November): 246-262.
Wells, Paul. 2009. The Animated Bestiary: Animals, Cartoons, and Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.