The Persistence of Animation

“Telling it like it is?” Considering British Television Animation and Contemporary Satire

Abstract: One of the primary modes of comic address within mainstream UK TV animation is an adherence to the tradition of satire. However much of this is processed through the trangressive space afforded to post-South Park TV animation and when considering the ambiguous and open-ended approach that typifies this contemporary register it is readily apparent that, whilst directly confronting ongoing cultural dialogues of apathy, expediency and nihilism, many post-2000 UK TV animated texts reveal as much about the failings, as well as the successes, of this contemporary satirical narrative.

Biographical Statement: Van Norris is Senior Lecturer in Film and Media, School of Creative Arts, Film and Media at the University of Portsmouth. His research areas and post and undergraduate teaching includes British and American film and television animation forms and issues of representation, American graphic novels and narratives, British and American television and film comedy modes, forms and performance. He is currently completing his PhD thesis: Drawing on the British Tradition – The Mapping of Cultural Attitudes and Identity and their intersection with Comedy Modes employed within British Television Animation.

Among his published works in the field of animation studies include articles in Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal (November 2008) and Animation Studies,; he also contributed to The Unsilvered Screen: Surrealism and Cinema, edited by Graeme Harper and Rob Stone (Wallflower, 2006).

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 8th, 2009 at 4:19 pm and is filed under British animation, Satire, Television animation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.