Abstract
Japanese animation has been more broadly recognised and given fulsome academic commentary over the last two decades. However, there is arguably a need for a more philosophically consistent and theoretically integrated engagement with animation in terms of aesthetic philosophy.1 Of course, there are some notable exceptions which, as is acknowledged in more detail in the ensuing chapters, are certainly important to return to. Thomas Lamarre’s work, for example, has set an important agenda for discussing significant issues pertaining to animation as a medium in general as well as anime in particular. He has developed a distinctive theory of the composition of visual space and movement in Japanese cinematic animation works through his analysis of the “multiplanar image”, itself also rooted to a significant extent in an acknowledgement of the craft’s debt to 2D graphic imaging and cel animation (Lamarre, 2009: 3–44). In addition to Lamarre, Paul Wells has made an invaluable contribution to the analysis of animation in a more general sense and is accordingly referred to at a number of junctures. And of course there are key thinkers of contemporary aesthetic theory often invoked in relation to contemporary media, — Deleuze, Ranciere, Massumi, Shaviro and Žižek, to name the most obvious figures — who will also be discussed as appropriate.2
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Key texts relevant to these thinkers are as follows: Gilles Deleuze, Cinema I and Cinema II (London: Athlone Press, 1989);
Jacques Ranciere, The Future of the Image (London and New York: Verso, 2007);
Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement Affect, Sensation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002);
Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London and New York: Verso, 1989);
Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
Cognitivism is clearly a broad school of thought and is difficult to define. Obviously David Bordwell and Noel Carroll’s Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996) is the seminal work. For a more recent outline of “the state of play” for cognitivism see the excellent collection edited by Ted Nannicelli and Paul Taberham, Cognitive Media Theory (AFI Film Readers) , New York and London: Routledge, 2014.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Alistair D. Swale
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Swale, A.D. (2015). Introduction. In: Anime Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137463357_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137463357_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-55357-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-46335-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)