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Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Sound Era
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Editorial Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews
A crisply written academic investigation of the politics of the Hollywood cartoon from roughly 1930 to 1960. Smoodin (English/American University) uses ``politics'' in the fashionably extended sense to cover such diverse topics as the construction of female sexuality in Betty Boop; the place of cartoon shorts in the design of entertainment programs that also included newsreels, live short subjects, and feature films; the use, for a military audience, of cartoon heroes like Private Snafu ``to make any one person's discontent seem aberrant, and to create consensus about U.S. goals during wartime''; the mass media's noncoverage of the 1941 strike at the Disney studio; and the FBI's championing of Walt Disney as an emissary for America even as it was investigating him for possible un-American activities. At times, the range of topics gives the book an air of a miscellany of essays, but its central premise is clear: Cartoons do not simply reflect popular social taste or impose an ideological consensus on their audience but operate within a constantly changing series of social, economic, and political frames. Despite a few comically abrupt descents into academic jargon (``The shift in production...from Betty Boop to Gabby demonstrates the epistemological shift throughout the 30s and early 40s in discourses about the body''), Smoodin generally deploys the insights of recent textual and political film theory without sinking into incoherence. Only his chapter on the politics of programming--in which there turns out to be a political agenda behind every possible relation, including no relation, between cartoon shorts and the features they introduce-- is disappointing. Persuasive support for Smoodin's claim that cartoons--precisely because they are so anonymous and interchangeable compared to the potential masterworks of the Hollywood studios--offer an unrivaled field to study the shifting fields of force in the entertainment industry. (Thirty b&w illustrations) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Product Description
Long considered "children's entertainment" by audiences and popular media, Hollywood's animation has received little serious attention. Eric Smoodin's Animating Culture is the first book to thoroughly analyze the animated short film. 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. His 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.
See all Editorial Reviews
A crisply written academic investigation of the politics of the Hollywood cartoon from roughly 1930 to 1960. Smoodin (English/American University) uses ``politics'' in the fashionably extended sense to cover such diverse topics as the construction of female sexuality in Betty Boop; the place of cartoon shorts in the design of entertainment programs that also included newsreels, live short subjects, and feature films; the use, for a military audience, of cartoon heroes like Private Snafu ``to make any one person's discontent seem aberrant, and to create consensus about U.S. goals during wartime''; the mass media's noncoverage of the 1941 strike at the Disney studio; and the FBI's championing of Walt Disney as an emissary for America even as it was investigating him for possible un-American activities. At times, the range of topics gives the book an air of a miscellany of essays, but its central premise is clear: Cartoons do not simply reflect popular social taste or impose an ideological consensus on their audience but operate within a constantly changing series of social, economic, and political frames. Despite a few comically abrupt descents into academic jargon (``The shift in production...from Betty Boop to Gabby demonstrates the epistemological shift throughout the 30s and early 40s in discourses about the body''), Smoodin generally deploys the insights of recent textual and political film theory without sinking into incoherence. Only his chapter on the politics of programming--in which there turns out to be a political agenda behind every possible relation, including no relation, between cartoon shorts and the features they introduce-- is disappointing. Persuasive support for Smoodin's claim that cartoons--precisely because they are so anonymous and interchangeable compared to the potential masterworks of the Hollywood studios--offer an unrivaled field to study the shifting fields of force in the entertainment industry. (Thirty b&w illustrations) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Product Description
Long considered "children's entertainment" by audiences and popular media, Hollywood's animation has received little serious attention. Eric Smoodin's Animating Culture is the first book to thoroughly analyze the animated short film. 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. His 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.
See all Editorial Reviews
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Inside This Book
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
(learn more)
cartoon producers, theatrical bill, film bill, copyright description, propaganda production, copyright documents, cartoon studios, cartoon stars, military propaganda Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Walt Disney, Betty Boop, South America, Warner Bros, Mickey Mouse, State Department, The New Spirit, The Saturday Review, Donald Duck, Production Code, World War, Business Week, Popular Science, Private Snafu, Latin American, Army-Navy Screen Magazine, The Three Caballeros, Saludos Amigos, Snow White, The Nifty Nineties, New York, Library of Congress, Make Mine Music, Treasury Department New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
cartoon producers, theatrical bill, film bill, copyright description, propaganda production, copyright documents, cartoon studios, cartoon stars, military propaganda Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Walt Disney, Betty Boop, South America, Warner Bros, Mickey Mouse, State Department, The New Spirit, The Saturday Review, Donald Duck, Production Code, World War, Business Week, Popular Science, Private Snafu, Latin American, Army-Navy Screen Magazine, The Three Caballeros, Saludos Amigos, Snow White, The Nifty Nineties, New York, Library of Congress, Make Mine Music, Treasury Department New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 89
books:
See all 89 books this book cites
19
books
cite this book:
See all 19 books citing this book
- Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons by Leonard Maltin on 5 pages
- Betty Boop by Max Fleischer on 5 pages
- Film - The Democratic Art: Social History of American Film by Garth Jowett on 4 pages
- Popular Culture: Past and Present by Tony; Bennett in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960 by David Bordwell in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
See all 89 books this book cites
- Saturday Morning Censors: Television Regulation before the V-Chip (Console-ing Passions) by Heather Hendershot in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children's Literature in America by Professor Beverly Lyon Clark in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom (Afi Film Readers) by Eric Smoodin in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry by Jack Zipes in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry by Jack Zipes in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 19 books citing this book
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