Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Sound Era

By Eric Smoodin

Book Overview

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. ?

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813519489
• ISBN13: 9780813519487
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Insightful and complex

In the last ten years the amount of investigation dedicated to theatrical animation has increased vastly. Since the publication of the seminal works of Leonard Maltin and Michael Barrier, the field of animation research has also now been focused to a wide number of topics: from racism and cultural impact of animation, to the relation of ideology and political control with american cartoons. In that aspect, this book writen by Eric Smoodin covers a lot of this controversial themes, that most of the time are neglected while reconstructing the history of animation in the States. Smoodin covers popular cartoon shorts of the Sound Era, from Disney, to Warner Brothers and Fleischer, widening its implications and cultural impact trough legal and ideological analysis. So, as you may think, the reading can be difficult and demanding. Smooding does his analysis on a typical academic style, so although it may not be a "fun read", the amount of research and material covered is still pretty interesting. From legal documents, to posters and other publicity documents, Smoodin tries as hard as it can to prove that his views are objective. The book includes about thirty black and white images, which albeit useless most of the time, helps to make the reading a little more enoyable. I wouldn't recommend this book to newcomers of animation research, since its complexity can be frustrating at times. It is however, a great investigation that avoids most of the traps of ideological analysis, which in turn, most of the times, can end up becoming paranoic and highly subjetive. Smoodin, at the very least, avoids this trap and it shows, through his perspective and passionate writing, that is still someone with a great respect and love for the work of those great animators of the past.