Animation Film: Figures and Hybridizations

The author examines animation from the point of view of audience reception and response. She is interested in the processes by which animation processes and addresses the corporeality of the viewer and represents the corporeality of the animated object. Both are conceived as objects of animation, subject to similar manipulations. The author names an area of inquiry between cinema and animation that is currently undergoing a lively development: the interest in the body and corporeality as a key characteristic of the medium. Through its emphasis on corporeality, animation studies collides with anthropological concerns, looking back at the field in terms of ritualized behavior. If the sensorimotor experience is symptomatic of the reception of animation, a paradox arises whereby animated representations of life achieve a more tactile and bodily response than photorealistic representations.

Keywords: film theory, film reception, the body in film, anthropology and film, film science and research