Olympianimation — Global Forms and Perspectives

Abstract

As Dombrowski notes, ‘The fact that the ancient Greeks marked the passage of time in terms of the Olympic Games, rather than the other way around, is further evidence of the pervasive influence of athletics’ (Dombrowski 2009:17). The Olympic Games is still the major touchstone for the highest quality sporting competition and, arguably, discourses about nation and nationalism within an international context. This chapter, then, begins with an engagement with animation and the Olympics, and develops thereafter with some general analyses of sporting animation from a variety of different national cultures. If the first part of this discussion has been about the emergence of sporting animation and its general characteristics, I now wish to look at its presence as a mediator of national cultures, in particular historical moments. This is also intended as a prefiguring of the specific areas of enquiry outlined over the next three chapters in regard to aesthetics, morality, ethics and politics, and finally technology, and continues the cross-disciplinary modes of analysis I have deployed so far. At the outset, then, it is worth noting that Goofy appeared in The Olympic Champ (Dir: Jack Kinney, USA, 1942) — see Chapter 4 — and later became ‘Sport Goofy’, Disney’s emblematic figure associated with cross-platform sporting representation across films, publications, theme parks and so on. Goofy had, indeed, become a sporting everyman.