While cartoons are generally regarded as harmless and fun cinematic diversions, they, like all art forms, have generated controversy. The authors discuss history of controversy over racist content in animation, and the social and political climates that foster such depictions. They also consider the impact of anti-racist political resistance on racial/ethnic stereotyping in animation, and the evolution of images over time. Though many films are discussed, the authors focus on the 1940s and 1970s, as both periods produced cartoons that were noteworthy in the political struggle over racist imagery. For example, 1943's “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarves” is a film significant not only for the extreme controversy stirred by its content, but also for the fact that its director had set out to make a film celebrating African American culture. Conversely, the 1970s saw Bill Cosby's Fat Albert television series become the first major American animated entity where content was created and controlled by an African American. The book concludes with a dialogue on whether banning purportedly racist animations was a good or bad idea, whether the portrayal of “non-whites” in animated films has improved over the years, and whether racist images persist in new forms.

Long considered "children's entertainment" by audiences and popular media, Hollywood animation has received little serious attention. Eric Smoodin's Animating Culture is the first and only book to thoroughly analyze the animated short film. Usually running about seven or eight minutes, cartoons were made by major Hollywood studios--such as MGM, Warner Bros., and Disney--and shown at movie theaters along with a newsreel and a feature-length film. Smoodin explores animated shorta and the system that mass-produced them. How were cartoons exhibited in theaters? How did they tell their stories? Who did they tell them to? What did they say about race, class, and gender? How were cartoons related to the feature films they accompanied on the evening's bill of fare? What were the social functions of cartoon stars like Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse? Smoodin argues that cartoons appealed to a wide audience--not just children--and did indeed contribute to public debate about political matters. He examines issues often ignored in discussions of animated film--issues such as social control in the U.S. army's "Private Snafu" cartoons, and sexuality and race in the "sites" of Betty Boop's body and the cartoon harem. Smoodin's analysis of the multiple discourses embedded in a variety of cartoons reveals the complex and sometimes contradictory ways that animation dealt with class relations, labor, imperialism, and censorship. His discussion of Disney and the Disney Studio's close ties with the U.S. government forces us to rethink the place of the cartoon in political and cultural life. Smoodin reveals the complex relationship between cartoons and the Hollywood studio system, and between cartoons and their audiences.

The early twenty-first century has seen an explosion of animation. Cartoon characters are everywhere—in cinema, television, and video games and as brand logos. There are new technological objects that seem to have lives of their own—from Facebook algorithms that suggest products for us to buy to robots that respond to human facial expressions. The ubiquity of animation is not a trivial side-effect of the development of digital technologies and the globalization of media markets. Rather, it points to a paradigm shift. In the last century, performance became a key term in academic and popular discourse: The idea that we construct identities through our gestures and speech proved extremely useful for thinking about many aspects of social life. The present volume proposes an anthropological concept of animation as a contrast and complement to performance: The idea that we construct social others by projecting parts of ourselves out into the world might prove useful for thinking about such topics as climate crisis, corporate branding, and social media. Like performance, animation can serve as a platform for comparisons of different cultures and historical eras. Teri Silvio presents an anthropology of animation through a detailed ethnographic account of how characters, objects, and abstract concepts are invested with lives, personalities, and powers—and how people interact with them—in contemporary Taiwan. The practices analyzed include the worship of wooden statues of Buddhist and Daoist deities and the recent craze for cute vinyl versions of these deities, as well as a wildly popular video fantasy series performed by puppets. She reveals that animation is, like performance, a concept that works differently in different contexts, and that animation practices are deeply informed by local traditions of thinking about the relationships between body and soul, spiritual power and the material world. The case of Taiwan, where Chinese traditions merge with Japanese and American popular culture, uncovers alternatives to seeing animation as either an expression of animism or as “playing God.” Looking at the contemporary world through the lens of animation will help us rethink relationships between global and local, identity and otherness, human and non-human.

Animating Difference studies the way race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender are portrayed in recent animated films from 1990 through the present. Ranging from Aladdin to Toy Story to Up, these popular films are key media through which children (and adults) learn about the world and how to behave. While racial and gender stereotypes may not be as obvious as they may have been in films of decades past, they often continue to convey troubling messages and stereotypes in subtle and surprising ways.

Discusses the distinctiveness of the cartoon form, as well as myriad other types of animation production, and examines animation's importance as a barometer of the social conditions in which it is made and which it reflects. [back cover].

This volume examines international engagement with Korean popular culture in East Asian online spaces, and how Asian identities are formed and perceived between nations within the region. In the context of global diversification and growing public participation in global issues, it builds up a new theoretical perspective in order to explain the emerging power of Asia in the global mediascape. With a focus on Korean media, touching upon K-pop and the phenomenon of Hallyu and anti-Hallyu, the author also looks at Japan, China, and Taiwan in this regional study. Combining theory with ethnographic audience studies in East Asian countries, the book elucidates East Asian media in a larger context of the changing global structure and media technology. This book will interest academics and students working on Asian popular culture and media, new media, East Asian studies, participatory media, and digital communication.