The Persistence of Animation

From Toy to Foil : Tex Avery’s Female Characters

Abstract: Tex Avery’s distinctive style in storytelling and humor, with its relation to freak shows and burlesque cinema, played with the notions of Disney aesthetics and Hollywood conformism. This is seen in his representation of female characters (and femininity itself). The Saloon Girl in the fairy-tale wartime cartoons, is the only anthropomorphic character in these freak shows, and as such stands as a cornerstone in Avery’s comic language and discourse. However, she can be already traced back in his early cartoons; and she can be “unveiled” under the disguise of tamer female characters in his post-war films.

Avery matches the evolution of American society, and adapts to the changing parameters of censorship. As it is, such representation of femininity may be perceived as one view of America’s coping with gender and taboos in the years 1935-1955.

Biographical Statement: Pierre Floquet teaches English and is associate professor at ENSEIRB, Bordeaux University. He wrote his PhD thesis in 1996 on linguistics applied to cinema, focusing on Tex Avery’s comic language. Since then, he has organized several Avery retrospectives and conferences at the Annecy Festival, France (1998), in Italy (1998, 1999), Norway (2001), Morocco, Trinidad, and the Netherlands (2008). He has been a juror at festivals in France and abroad. He has also widened his interests to live-action cinema, participating in books and journals in Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain and the United States. He edited a book called CinémAnimationS (March 2007).

Autobiographical elements in animated films of Czech female directors

Abstract: In my paper I analyse and discuss autobiographical elements in short animated films of several contemporary Czech female directors. The paper employs data that I obtained from in-depth interviews with individual directors. As the main methodological tool for conducting these I used oral history. These data are further combined with the gender-specific textual analysis and interpretation of their films. I focus on identifying possibilities, advantages and disadvantages of theory-practice inter-relating research. In doing so, I point out useful methodological overlaps of only seemingly distant disciplines such as gender studies, oral history and animation studies.

Biographical Statement: Eliška Děcká (born 1982) is a Film Studies MA program student at the Film Studies Department, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. She is currently working on her MA thesis, which is entitled “Autobiographical Elements in Animated Films of Czech Female Directors.” The thesis is part of her 3-year research project, “Female Heroines in Animated Film,” which is funded by the Charles University Grant Agency. She writes on animation for various Czech film and cultural journals and works with the Czech animated festival Anifest, where she is a member of the film selection committee. In 2008, she also collaborated as a dramaturge for the animated films section ofthe Femina Film Festival.

A Film of One’s Own: The Animated Self-Portraits of Young Contemporary Female Animators

Abstract: This paper will analyse the animated self-portraits created by contemporary young and emerging women in animation, and by that means, elucidate significant differences between this new generation and previous ones of female animators. Through their animated self-portraits, the earlier animatrices explored their own identity as women and artists, developing new discourses and models for a subgenre that existed from the early days of cinema animation. But the animated female self-portrayal of the new generation comes closer to documentary and has more universal concerns, appealing to a wider audience and reaching theatrical distribution, as Marjane Satrapi’s long feature Persepolis (2007) exemplifies and which will be a focus of the paper.

Biographical Statement: Maria Lorenzo teaches animation subjects at the Department of Design, Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain). In 2006 she obtained her PhD in Fine Arts. She presented papers at the 19th SAS Conference in Portland (2007) and the National PCA/ACA Conference in San Francisco (2008). The current paper extends the line of research begun with her work “Through the Looking-Glass: The Self-Portrait of the Artist and the Re-Start of Animation,” presented as a poster at the 20th SAS Conference in Bournemouth. She is also an animation filmmaker.