Choosing a Research Question

How relevant is the concept of auteurism in a contemporary animation landscape?

For the CoP module I have chosen to address the question 'How relevant is the concept of auteurism in a contemporary animation landscape'. After careful consideration I have chosen this question as I am interested in the role of the writer/director in animation and film and the status that affords them. Encoded meaning and intertextuality are topics that interest me greatly as a creative practitioner who aspires to tell stories with some sort of purpose. In the essay I hope to touch upon a variety of topics relating to 'studios as auteurs' as well as the wider societal implications of the creative industries adopting a flatter, more hierarchical power structure as well as the place of the traditional auteur in an ever-changing media landscape.

As for research I intend to gather a range of both qualitative and quantitive data from primary and secondary sources to back up each point of my argument. For primary research, this could include creating questionnaires and surveys to send to my peers to gather quantitive data, or interviewing industry professionals to gather their opinions and testimony to gather qualitative data. After gathering this information and forming a hypothesis I intend to gather a range of secondary research from books and journals, preferably from the library. I would like to rely less on articles from the internet and more on sources I have found myself from my own wider reading. One area I do wish to improve in terms of research is in the triangulation between different theorists, as last year this was an aspect of my essay in which I was lacking.

One of the key ideas I am hoping to explore is the idea of the studio as the auteur and how the role of the auteur in recent years has been made obsolete with the emergence of studios such as Pixar and Aardman, who have gained a reputation for creating high-quality, family friendly films with a particular style and voice, and how previous generations of auteurs working at these companies have had a hand in shaping their work ethic and creative process. Another thing I hope to touch upon is the broader societal context of these changes, how companies in the creative industries have adopted a flatter, non-hierarchial structure and how such a structure enables creativity to flourish.

In terms of case studies, I am hoping to explore a range of studio's work from film, television and in particular video games. In my essay I am hoping to establish similarities between the creative industries in order to try identify a broader cultural trend in the direction of more democratic power structures.

Potential Sources:

Caughie, John. (1981) ‘Theories of Authorship’, London and New York, Routledge

Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M., 1944. The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. In

T. Adorno and M. Horkheimer. Dialectics of Enlightenment. Translated by John

Cumming. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972.

Benjamin, Walter (1935/1969) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, New York: Schocken Books

Bazin, André. (1957) La politique des auteurs, Paris, Cahiers du Cinema

Mitchell, Ben (2017) ‘Independent Animation: Developing, Producing and Distributing your Animated Films’, Boca Raton, FL, CRC Press

Triangulation: Laura Mulvey's 'Women as image, man as bearer of the look': CoP2 Seminar (10/10/2016)

For our first CoP Seminar of the year we were tasked with triangulating between three texts revolving around Feminist film theorist/Avant-Garde Filmmaker Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay 'Visual and Other Pleasures' which discusses women's roles in what she perceives and argues to be a male-dominated narrative media. In the extract which we analysed as a part of the seminar, Mulvey puts forth the argument that women are placed in a passive, exhibitionist role to be looked at and displayed, while the male characters, in most cases, often take on a much more active driving role in the narrative. She reinforces this point by referencing Molly Haskell's argument that most traditional narrative structure is centred around a main controlling figure, a person who assumes control of the narrative and is the centre of the events that unfold, which she argues is reflective of the assumed male spectator.

The crux of Mulvey's argument is that men take the active role, often relegating the female characters to a more passive role in the narrative. In her argument Mulvey quotes film director Budd Boetticher in saying;

'What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather, the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the women has not the slightest importance.'

Man is reluctant to gaze upon his 'exhibitionist like' as it were. The glamorous looks of the male movie stars who inhabit these narratives are not the erotic object of gaze, like the female characters often are, rather they are there to fulfil the 'ideal ego' and power fantasies of the presumably male spectator. John Storey echoes this sentiment to a degree in his 2008 essay 'Cultural Theory and Popular Culture' in which he echoes the arguments put forth by Mulvey, arguing that this 'Voyeuristic Fantasy' of the male gaze is encouraged by the darkness of the cinema and the bright lights of the projector screen. Storey compares the way audiences see themselves in narrative cinema  with 'The Mirror Phase' of child cognitive development, where the child's physical ambitions outstrip their motor capacity. To Storey, narrative cinema offers a means for audiences to fulfil their own fantasises and 'ideal egos' through what Mulvey describes as a 'screen surrogate', and that these fantasies whether consciously or not reinforce harmful patriarchal norms that place women in a passive role.

However, in his 1998 essay 'Stars', Film Academic Richard Dyer argues that research shows that a broader context of social relationships is equally, if not more influential in how people view media, though for the purposes of his argument, he means in terms of television.

Parody and Pastiche

For this study task we were required to write a definition of parody/pastiche based on the two texts (using at least one quote from each of the texts) we analysed during the seminar...

Frederic Jameson- Pastiche

'We are condemned ti seek history by way of our own pop images and simulacra of that history, which itself remains forever out of reach'

Jameson refers to Pastiche in regards to Postmodernism as 'Blank Parody', essentially parody without the context with 'no connection to history, which gets turned into a series of styles, superseded genres and simulacra'. Jameson mentions how postmodernist architecture 'randomly and without principle' cannibalises the architectural styles of the past, combining them into an overstimulating ensemble. We approach the past through stylistic connotation, conveying 'pastness' through the glossy qualities of image. This, Jameson argues, displaces real history in favour of the popular images of the past. By cannibalising the past through Pastiche, we strip away its context, viewing the past through a distorted lens and therefore displace real history. 'A statue with blind eyeballs'.

Hutcheon- Parody

To Hutcheon, parody is 'art marked primarily by an internalised investigation of the nature, the limits and possibilities of the language of discourse in art.'  Parody is essentially postmodernist deconstruction of a piece of work from a critical perspective, inherently political in nature . Paradoxically Hutcheon also argues that Postmodernism is inherently parodic in nature, though not necessarily 'depthless trivial, kitsch, as Eagleton and Jameson both believe, but rather it can and does lead to a vision of interconnectedness...'

The Flipped Classroom

The Flipped Classroom is a hierarchical student-centric method of teaching pioneered by french theorist Jacques Ranciere after his experiences during a period of civil unrest in France during May of 1968. The students of 'L'Ecole de Beux Arts'  in Sorbonne, tired of what they perceived to be authoritarian teaching practices and wanting a fairer and more accessible education for all, not just the snobbish elite, took direct action against the educational elites, occupying the university and declaring it 'open all day and night' to all worker. The students saw 'education as initiation' as the catalyst for all societal problems regarding gender and income inequality, seeking liberation through the challenging of visual communication as a product in service of capitalism, seeing the arts as a weapon in their so called 'revolutionary struggle', shunning the established avenues for art such as what they perceived to be bourgeois art galleries, instead using their skills and talents to further societal revolutionary ends.

Equalite! Libertie! Sexualite!

Ranciere was a student at the university in 68, and thus had a first hand account of the events. He was tutored by famed French Marxist Louis Althusser, who similarly believed society was controlled/oppressed by ideas, but ultimately believed that the educational system in its current form at the time could serve as a sort of 'ideological training', to equip students with the skills and ideals necessary to influence and implement societal change. His students on the other hand, including Ranciere, believed differently however and in '68 a rift emerged between the teachers and students at 'L'Ecole de Beux Arts'. Teachers such as Althusser believed that experts, in this case teachers, were necessary for revolutionary change in society, much to the dismay of students such as Ranciere, so much so that he based some of his future writings off his experiences, challenging Althusser's methods of teaching and suggesting his own alternatives in his essay 'The Ignorant Schoolmaster'.

In 'The Ignorant Schoolmaster' Ranciere challenges the ideas of what defines a 'student' and what defines a 'teacher'. In his essay, Ranciere references a school teacher from the french colonies in the late 1800s called Joseph Jacotot. Jacotot taught students in a different language to their native Flemish, but instead of translating the texts into Flemish, Jacotot told them to translate the material themselves in order to 'become masters of their own learning'. The result was, the students wrote and spoke better French that Jacotot's students back in France. Ranciere took this as evidence for his theory that in order to create independent learners, educational hierarchies needed to be abolished in order to help emancipate students and stop reinforcing what he perceived to be structures of oppression.

Ranciere proposed a system of learning which was the antithesis to what he called in his essay 'The Politics of Aesthetics' the 'society of contempt'. He proposed a system which swapped out individualistic learning for collective learning, a classroom where the teacher validates the students contribution to a system where students peer assess each other and where passively following instructions is replaced with an environment where students are encouraged to actively engage, challenge and raise questions. The Flipped Classroom scenario is something that since learning about it I have started to pick up in our CoP seminars. Richard's seminars for CoP very much conform to the decidedly hierarchical, non-conformist learning environment outlined by Ranciere. We are actively encouraged to raise questions and challenge the status quo and at Level 5 especially we are put in charge of deciding on our own learning, choosing our own essay questions relating to subjects which interest us specifically in our creative practice.

CoP2 Briefing: The Re-Contextualising (of Practice)

During our brief for Level 5 Context of Practice Richard outlined a few of the key differences between CoP2 and last year's context of practice. The keyword for this briefing was 'Visual Research'. Richard wants us to focus more on developing practical work in synthesis with the theory side of the module. Part of this involves keeping a visual journal as a part of one of the study tasks, which will inform the bulk of the practical work we produce for this module. In terms of practical work, we are expected to produce some form of animated artefact to coincide with our essay, meaning anything from storyboards to character sheets. Last year I produced an animated response as a companion to my essay,  but spent a disproportionate amount of time in the pre-production phase. This year, in response to the mistakes I made last year, I will take steps to manage my time better and produce a final product more suited to the content of my essay, whether it is an animation or not.

In terms of the 3000-word essay, this year at Level 5 we are given more leeway to write about a subject that interests us. The module is more independently directed and as a result we are supposed to write our own question to answer in our essay and relate it to one of around half-a-dozen possible themes. As the subject of my essay last year was related to Modernism and Postmodernism, I want to take a more socially focused approach to my essay this year, exploring ideas of representation or more politically charged topics in order to ensure I'm not retreating territory I already explored back in Level 4.

Ultimately, Level 5 is a continuation of what we did at level 4, but takes it up a notch, with more of a focus on self-directed study and independent learning. As Level 5 consists of roughly 33% of my final grade for my degree it is important this year I ensure I am fulfilling all the learning outcomes and assessment objectives to a relatively high standard. Last year, especially when it came to my essay, I struggled to properly establish a link between theory and practice. This is something I am hoping to address and improve this year in my CoP by looking at my developmental work with a more critical eye at an earlier stage, not leaving it til the last minute.