Not just sheer pleasure: Critiquing animations and their scope in children’s socialisation

As the title suggests, the dissertation focusses on critiquing animations to understand their scope in children’s socialisation, as to what extent animations could offer a type of content that possesses an ‘edutainment’ value. As a result, animations (1) attempt to reinforce some ‘intrinsic’ values related to a variety of subjects/themes, including personal growth, meaningful relationships, and social responsibility, (2) providing children with an opportunity to rehearse those values that are deemed key elements for their socialisation. To understand this more closely, we have analysed animations from five different perspectives, leading the dissertation to be designed as a ‘patchwork quilt’ (Wibben, 2011). This metaphor implies that the five chapters are autonomously distinct and deal with exclusive frameworks that are later contextually assimilated in the conclusion to provide the reader with a complete picture that vindicates animations’ scope in children’s socialisation. Chapter I looks at the framework of the ‘odyssey’ employed in animations as a metaphor for personal growth and identity-formation. Chapter II focusses on how Doraemon reconceptualises the features of the classical Greek/Aristotelian form of ‘tragedy’ to develop its own postmodern critique of the Seven Deadly Sins through the image of its transgressive protagonist. Chapter III studies the role of ‘utopianism’ in children’s superhero narratives that inspires a more critical mode of hoping and envisions social progress and welfare. Chapter IV is founded upon the concept of the ‘feminine aesthetic’ to (1) analyse the transition and development of animated women’s representation from passivity to subjectivity and individuality, and (2) briefly explore the evolving representations of new, subversive masculinities. Chapter V emphasises the significance of ‘anthropomorphism’ in children’s media, and is informed by the literary genre of animal autobiography to critique animal-centric narratives as tales of animal liberation that reposition and rehabilitate the ‘human-animal kinship, bestowing ‘the animal’ with a voice

Yuanlin = 園林

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Cinematic explorations of the Italian High Renaissance : Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti’s critofilm ‘Michelangiolo’ (1964)

Italian art critic and philosopher Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti (1910-1987) was one of the first art historians to explore the relationship between cinema and the visual arts. Not only did he publish widely on this subject, he also produced films on art, creating a new form of art criticism using the language and mechanisms of cinema. Developing his concept of the critofilm, he created twenty-one art documentaries between 1948 and 1964 that carefully analyzed the formal and stylistic characteristics of major artworks. His last and most ambitious critofilm, released in 1964, is dedicated to the Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564). Created for the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the artist’s death, this feature-length film shows an impressive range of Michelangelo’s paintings, sculptures, architecture, and drawings, . Using bold cinematic strategies of dynamic camera movements, chiaroscuro light effects, and animation techniques, Ragghianti transposes Michelangelo’s complex artistic language into the visual language of film. Comparing this 1964 film to other cinematic explorations of Michelangelo throughout the twentieth century, this paper examines how Ragghianti translates the critical discipline of art history into this critofilm. It investigates how Ragghianti creates a specific cinematic syntax to analyze the formal elements of Michelangelo’s artworks by drawing on theories of prominent scholars such as Benedetto Croce, Konrad Fiedler, and Heinrich Wölfflin. Finally, this paper demonstrates how Ragghianti’s film Michelangelo functions as an innovative art historiographic tool, influencing later films and art historical writings

‘The Wandering Adolescent of Contemporary Japanese Anime and Videogames’

PhDThis thesis examines the figure of the wandering adolescent, prominently visible in Japanese television anime and videogames produced from 1995 to the present. Japan in the 1990s and at the millennium experienced intense economic and social change, as the collapse of the 'bubble' economy of the 1980s resulted in a financial recession from which the country has yet to recover. At the close of the decade, the national experience was characterised in media descriptions of malaise and disenfranchisement, and the loss of perceived core traditional cultural values. Arguably in this period the figure of the adolescent changed qualitatively in Japanese culture, rising to prominence within youth panic discourses circulated by the Japanese news media. These concerned the perceived rise in antisocial and problematic teenage behaviour, including the otaku, the hikikomori shut-in, classroom disobedience, bullying, and prostitution, while multiple cases of brutal murder perpetrated by teenagers became the focus of extensive media coverage. Public discourse expressed alarm at the perceived breakdown of the traditional family and the growing commodification of childhood in Japanese culture. This thesis develops understanding of the shifting attitude in Japan towards adolescence within the context of these cultural anxieties, and through the analysis of anime and videogames suggests strategies that are at work within popular cultural texts that are the product of, contribute to and reorient debates about the position of the suddenly and inescapably visible teenager in Japanese society. Through analysis of discourses relating to the shifting representation of the wandering adolescent as it moves across cultural texts and media forms, the thesis forms an original contribution to knowledge and understanding of Japanese anime and videogames through illumination of a prominent motif that to date remains unexamined

Box of delights, bridge of feathers: children's drama on Telefis Eireann/RTE 1962-1987

This thesis describes the general character of the children's television drama transmitted on Telefis Eireann/RTE from 1962 to 1987, reviews the programming context of the provision, and evaluates the drama transmitted to dramatic, developmental and cultural criteria. The thesis identifies and analyses a representative selection of the home-originated and imported children’s television drama in the schedules over the period under review. Details of the identified drama transmissions are provided in the Appendices. The Appendices also Include details of home produced children's programmes and of relevant home-originated adult drama. Chapter One outlines some dramatic criteria for classification and evaluation of the schedule content, constructs a developmental perspective of children as users of television drama, and examines the cultural contexts of Irish children as viewers. The selected schedule provision, relevant formative factors, and the programming environment are examined in general terms in Chapter Two. The selected provision is analysed in generic and thematic categories in Chapters Three, Four and Five. Chapter Three examines drama in the fantasy paradigm, which is predominantly animation drama; Chapter Four analyses the live action provision, discussing films originally made for cinema, drama particularly relevant to the actuality of children's lives, adventure drama, situation comedy and family-centred drama, and drama featuring animals. Chapter Five examines two categories characterised by heavy value-loading— drama based on literature and drama based on history; this chapter also discusses sources for research on thesis topics and gives a brief summary of developments in home produced television drama for children from 1987 to date. Chapter Six sets out the conclusions and areas of further enquiry indicated by the study of the provision and the analysis

Weimar Slapstick: American Eccentrics, German Grotesques

In Weimar Slapstick: American Eccentrics, German Grotesques I examine the wide-ranging popularity of American slapstick film in Germany's Weimar Republic (1919-1933). With its gag-driven narratives, mechanically energized stars and urban, industrial mise-en-scène, slapstick spoke directly to the fears and desires of Germany's first democracy. Using this uniquely American, uniquely cinematic response to modernity as a lens, I offer a transnational account of Weimar culture, with slapstick refracting sites ranging from the film palace to the cabaret, Bauhaus design to modernist text. For those who celebrated the genre, slapstick's shocking, playfully curious humor challenged the traumas and cynicisms that would consume the Republic and which, moreover, still dominate scholarship on this era and its legacy. I approach slapstick cinema against the background of both Weimar Germany's obsession with all things American as well as grotesque traditions in European arts and letters. These films were more than simply received-they were also, to use playwright Bertolt Brecht's term, re-functioned, transformed by context and appropriation. Brecht himself adapted the lumpenproletarian gestures of Charlie Chaplin for developing his epic theater. Aside from this meeting of Tramp and Marxist dramaturge, I analyze a series of American-German constellations: Buster Keaton's androgynous deadpan through Dadaist Raoul Hausmann, white-collar employee Harold Lloyd   iii   through comic schlemihl Curt Bois and uncanny cartoon Felix the Cat through the animated, feline guide of Paul Leni and Guido Seeber's interactive crossword films. I situate these meetings within a broader historical circuit, with exiles from Hitler's Third Reich returning slapstick's favor by transforming American culture, even influencing heroes like Chaplin. Given the continued interest in the thought and culture of the Weimar era, I offer a case study for reevaluating its legacy vis-à-vis transnational cinemas, the relationship between avant-garde and mass media and modern theories of humor.   i