Film Theory's Animated Map

• Published in: Framework 2015-10, Vol.56 (2), p.472-491
• Main Author: Beckman, Karen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aesthetics; Animated films; Animation; Anthologies; Cartoons; Education; Film criticism; Film theory; Formalist film theory; Geography; Graphics; Humanities; Movies
• ISSN: 0306-7661; 1559-7989
• DOI: 10.13110/framework.56.2.0472

[...]in the cartoon, photographic methods prevail over drawings [shishin teki na hoho ga kaiga o shihai shite iru no de aru]. "32 French Animation History rarely disrupts the history of French cinema, which has largely been recorded as a history of live-action cinema, in spite of Neupert's early suggestion that "motion picture animation fully exploits the potential of the cinematic apparatus, from camera to lab to projector. [...]it seems valuable to situate cartoons at the very heart of cinematic technology and practice, rather than treating them as some marginal side-show or second-tier subset of national cinema. [...]she continues, one might argue that the increased circulation of geospatial images has created a crucial turning point in visual culture in which we have to struggle to maintain the right to interpret itself, especially given that so many geospatial images come into circulation as always already read-that is, with dense layerings of graphics, icons, and arrows inscribed in the view, which regulate acts of interpretation and sense-making.63 As film and media scholars pay more attention to, and use as tools, the locationally based and military-derived operational images that are increasingly shaping our lives, it becomes important to seek out and examine resistant as well as hegemonic uses of geospatial images as we critically assess and engage evolving methods of visualization and sonification, as well as the status and function of "data" in twenty-first-century humanities work.64 While scholars engaged in digital humanities projects need often to turn toward engineers and computer scientists, perhaps we need more frequently to collaborate with artists, animators, and architects as we go in search of skilled image-makers who are deeply attuned to the politics of aesthetic form and space-image relations.65 A second potential critical fallacy would involve pitting operational images as tainted research tools in opposition to a language-based scholarship constructed as benign, innocent, or neutral. Caren Kaplan, Erik Loyer, and Ezra Claytan Daniels, "Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of Everyday Life," Canadian Journal of Communication 38 (2013): 405. [...]Parks points out, "Google, whose revenue hit a record $50 billion in 2012, began emerging as another key player in the geospatial sector when the company purchased the digital mapping company, Keyhole, Inc. in 2004 (Google, 2013).