paragraph 1.
Cinematic Apparatus: The cinematic apparatus purports to set before the eye and ear realistic images and sounds
Hybrid art form: An art from that uses a mixture of different art techniques.
Fin de siecle Newspapers: End of century.
Political Caricature: Political cartoons featuring exaggerated characters and political humour.
Low Art: Simplistic art for the masses.
High Art: Specialised, high quality art for people with cultivated tastes.
Hollywood Bill of fare: Hollywood 'menu'. Under the umbrella of "Hollywood".
Mass Culture Industry: Use of factory producing standardised goods in order to brainwash/distract a mass of people.
1. Benshoff thinks that because Animation is a hybrid art form, it occupies a unique niche in 20th century popular art.
2. Donald Crafton was the first professor of film studies at the university of Notre Dame. His assertion is relevant to Benshoff's article because Benshoff is arguing whether animation is a high or low art form and seeing as Crafton says that animations origins stem from comic strips and Political Caricature (which are mass produced and sold in papers) one could conclude that animation originated as a low art form.
3. Animation stems from comic strips and political caricature because they both use the same stylistic techniques such as exaggerated characters and also, a comic strip is similar to storyboarding which is the foundation of any animation.
4. Leopold Survage was a french painter who painted "Abstract Cityscape". Hans Richter was a german painter who painter "Portrait du lou Marsen". Walter Ruttmann was a film director who directed "Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis". Viking Eggeling was a Filmmaker who made "Symphonie Diagonale". They were all artists that made work that was far more detailed and specialised to be for 'the masses' so therefore, because of the quality of their work they would be considered high art practitioners.
5. Animation had the potential to develop as either high or low because although its origins came from newspaper comics and other 'low' art forms, the fact that high art practitioners held an interest in animation means that they could have potentially influenced and developed animation into a 'high' art form.
6. Animated film in America falls under the Hollywood bill of fare and Benshoff says that because of this the animated films produced in America are different to elsewhere because they are profit-driven and they are produced for mass consumption.
Paragraph 2.
Cottage Industry: Small scale industry.
Monopoly Capitalism: A capitalist system that is under the control of just a few people.
Corporate conglomerate: Two or more different corporations joining under one corporate company.
Auteurist: Director who has so much control that they put their own personal, unique 'stamp' on their work.
Postmodern Aesthetic Practises: Cynicism towards beauty.
Industrial art products: Mass production of art.
High-Low continuum: Scale between high and low.
Idealogical: Having an ideology.
1. Disney is the most recognisable name in animation because they have built up a reputation by clever production and marketing strategies throughout the last 70 years in order to maximise consumer appeal.
2. In the 1930's, Disney produced cottage industry animation films that had a classical nature and were interested in unity, closure and realist representation.
Then along came monopoly capitalism which quickly pushed out the cottage industry and brought with it a modernist impulse that self-consciously critiqued classical representation with the art that was produced.
In the last few decades, global corporate capitalism has led to post-modern aesthetic practises and they began to combine fragments of high art with the mass-production industry.
3. The article will discuss Disney's positioning on the high-low continuum and examine the ideological implications of stylistic change by comparing "Silly Symphonies" and "The brave little toaster".
4. The "Silly Symphonies" date from around 1929-1939 whereas "The brave little toaster" is from 1987. Benshoff picked these examples so he can see the progression of the styles and ideaolgies of the company in the space of 60 or so years.
5. Topic was introduced in the opening 3 sentences
Definition of key terms happens by the end of the opening paragraph.
Main argument is stated in the beginning of the second paragraph.
Organisation happens at the last sentence of the second paragraph.
Paragraph 3.
Aesthetic: Beauty/attractive to look at.
Realist Impulse: Priority of work rendered in a realistic style.
Modernist: Contemporary approach.
Live-action: When the filmed action is filmed live.
Popular Culture: What is popular during certain time periods.
Abstract: An idea without having a physical counterpart.
Pictorial Realism: means the mechanisms that are normally involved in object recognition can be deployed at a second order level in picture perception.
1. They make sure their animations are aesthetically pleasing and accessible enough for a mass audience to understand and enjoy and they have their own traditional quality and style that developed from the 1930s.
2. The disney style has become the popular measure of the quality of commercial animation because the Disney style depends on the quality of natural movement and live models and animals were and are studied to ensure there is realistic movement.
3. On the recreation of natural movement.
4. Advertising and popular culture made its way into animation and this would mean that animation became a much lower art form that, instead of being cultivated and sophisticated, it was tarnished by the profit-orientated side of the industry by the use of advertisements.
5. Benshoff references "Gerald McBoing Boing" and "Mr Magoo series.8" to support his argument. Although disney continued to use pictorial realism, many of the shorts were more abstract and modernised.
6. Fantasia has a classical music score that was aided by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The man to introduce each segment was Deems Taylor, a musicologist. It was also much more high-brow and classier than previous cartoons making it seem much more like high art than it had been previously.
Paragraph 4.
High-low dichotomy: The division between the contrast of low or high art.
Musical score: The music in the film.
Folksy ease: Common, friendliness.
High Brow: Cultivated. Classy.
1. The high-low dichotomy is evident because they have high brow classical composers doing the musical score while also having a popular radio presenter presenting which would be a more 'low' art form.
2. Deems Taylor added a folksy ease to the high brow proceedings.
3. Fischinger said that the film was not really his work but rather the inartistic product of a factory. He said that no true work of art can be made with the procedure that is used by the Disney studio.
4. He says that the procedure that Disney uses to make their movies means that it can't be considered high art, possibly because he things that it was too 'factory processed' to be considered high art.
5. He means that because of the way that Disney processes and controls the animation work of each project in order to make it as accessible as possible for the masses, it is hard to make something that is truly high art.
Paragraph five.
Burlesqued: Parody or comically exaggerated imitation of something.
Musical idioms: Music that is associated with a particular period.
Good neighbour policy: Roosevelt had a policy to be "good neighbours" with Latin american countries.
Appropriated: To set apart for a specific purpose/to take possession of.
1. I think Fantasia was a failure because it was quite long and the story wouldn't necessarily be able to hold the attention of children, while also it was made in a time when adults would have been more inclined to assume cartoons were for children so they wouldn't have been as likely to see and appreciate it either.
2. Disney produced a number of compilation films that were very visually abstract.
3. They have abstract, absurd designs such as a snake piano and they mix animation with real people such as in the case where donald duck is dancing around on top a piano as a woman plays it.
4. To make it more interesting for a larger audience.
5. In order to make it more accessible for the masses.
6. In order to make American movies more accessible to elsewhere in the world, particularly latin american countries, south american musical idioms were used. This ties in with the Good Neighbour policy that the American government had during that time with the South American countries in order to make better feeling towards one another and to create a stronger link between each other.
Paragraph six.
Theoretical: Based on theory rather than practical application.
Reified: To make something abstract more concrete or real.
Conformist: To conform to/accept establish practises. To be conventional.
1. The mainstream trend was capitalism, earning money and to be in awe of the people who had money. Disney were mainly interested in the profit because of the ideas of monopoly capitalism. In many ways Disney became a brand name that pandered to the masses and offered products that were known to be of good quality because they had created that name for themselves.
2. Are they reified and conformist because of mass production? Or is it possible that changes in film and/or society have created new ways of understanding the animated cartoon?
3. He was a philosopher of the 20th century who was particularly interested in the effects of modern society upon the human condition. He disliked capitalism. His name was used in the argument because his opinion was that mass production of something means it can't be high art and because he was a philosopher that was mainly interested in pop culture and modern society and how that is perceived by and affects the human race, his opinion is a very valid one in the case of the argument.
4. In many ways if something is produced in order to appeal to the masses then it is produced to be conformist. This is because in order to be liked by everyone things have to be the least offensive they can be, to achieve this you need to make sure that it is as conventional as possible. So, therefore, if something is mass produced with the intention of being accessible to as many people as possible, it must be very conventional and conform.
5. He begins talking about his idea of Disney being orientated towards a mass audience and then continues to talk about the development of this idea. He writes chronologically which helps us understand the development of the Disney company. He talks about examples of work that Disney created during those years and discusses whether they would be considered high or low art and he also discusses the fallout of Fantasia which shows us reasons that Disney may have shied away from high art productions or techniques that they had flirted with during Fantasia. He quotes both an animator and a philosopher in order to back up his arguments by bringing in respected people's opinions - people who'd had first hand experience or who had witnessed the times firsthand. by the sixth paragraph Benshoff rounds up his argument and concludes that although Disney flirted with high art, their main intent was mass production. He then asks does that mean that what is mass produced can't be high art or has society and film changed enough that it could still be considered high art?
Paragraph seven.
Incessantly: Without ceasing.
Character-based genres: Plot driven/affected by character traits. Vague.
Classification: What something is classified as.
Construed: Interpret/analyse.
Conventionalized: Make conventional
1. Theodor Adorno was a philosopher interested in society and how it affects the human condition. He is referenced because he would have been an eyewitness and a reputable source from the time plus also being a professional who studied pop culture and the affects it had on the society of the time so he would have had a valuable opinion.
2. He says that although they might appear to be making newer and more revolutionary ideas, it is all driven with a profit in mind which means that it will never actually evolve or change while they continue to make getting a profit a priority.
3.They do not feature a main character.
Paragraph eight.
Precursors: A forerunner.
Irreverent: lack of respect.
Idiom: A group of words that have a non-deducible meaning.
Bowdlerizing: To remove offensive material and therefore making text less effective/weaker.
Postmodern musical bricoleur: Postmodern music made with a DIY approach.
Penchant: Strong habitual liking for something/tendency to do something.
Fellini parodies: Parodies of Italian film director 'Fellini's work.
Gregorian chants: Church music sung as a single vocal line.
1. It tells a story based on the musical score which is what 'Fantastisa' does.
2. He mixed different pieces of music together by himself that wouldn't necessarily fit together.
3. A symphony suggests high art where as by putting 'Silly' in front of symphony it makes it almost a contrast between high and low.
4. They mean it is supposed to cater people who like both high and low art forms to find something that they are interested in.
5. Nowadays we see these mixtures and parodies everywhere like in dance music that has chants in it.
Paragraph nine.
Dominant ideology: The main ideology.
Ostracism: Cutting someone out on purpose.
Manifestations: fact of showing something,
Vacuous: Mindless/lack of thought.
Banal: Lacking in originality. Boring.
Shamelessly conformist: Not ashamed to be obviously conformist.
1. They rely on tried and tested stories that have blatant ideologies in them.
2. He says that the meaning found in 'The Little Mouse' tells us that it is better to conform rather than to be different and quotes Adorno to back this up.
Paragraph ten.
Allegories: Something with a hidden meaning.
Utopian Human Communities: Human society with perfect qualities.
Harmoniously: Musical sounding agreeable because it has good harmony.
Naturalize: To become a citizen/to grow in a new area.
Heterosexual bourgeois romance: Heterosexual, middle class romance.
Psychical adjustment: An adjustment to the psychic.
Subaltern communities: Community that is a relevant universal proposition.
Heterogeneity: Made up of things that are different.
1. The Silly Symphonies because everyone interacts harmoniously despite their differences.
2. They make sure that the main characters are all middle class and heterosexual because they consider that to be the "social cement".
3. It makes it more accepted by celebrating what most people would think was good, funny and relatable.
4. Yes, but he says they are all similar in ideals.
Paragraph eleven.
Pseudo-individualisation: Insincere individualization.
Endowing: Giving.
Standardisation: Making everything to one standard.
1. Adorno says that the films are all fundamentally identical in action and ideology and they are, as Benshoff states, 'Pre digested'. This backs up Benshoff's statement that they are pandering to the masses and made purely for the mass audience.
2. It means they have the ability to sell films with under the pretense of the movie being made with what they tell us is a unique approach, within a market that the masses are told is 'open'. Disney has the main monopoly on the market and what they are marketing and they take advantage of that by making movies that appear to be abstract and modern but continue to take into the account that they have to please the biggest audience that they can manage to, for profits.
3. The masses are kept where Disney want them by being given 'pre digested' work. Disney makes sure that their work is tame enough for everyone to accept it. I agree with this statement because all the Disney movies that I've seen are very accessible for everyone to enjoy and nobody to have issues with, content-wise.
Paragraph twelve and thirteen.
Individualised trappings:
Protagonists: The main character of the movie.
Narrative trajectory: The chosen/taken course of the narrative.
Idyllic: Peaceful, Pleasant.
Wanton Behaviour: Being a bit of a slut.
Interloper: A person in a position or place where they don't belong.
Bourgeois white male propriety: The 'proper' behaviour of the white male middle class.
1. They seem different because they focus on different characters in different situations.
2. The protagonists are all the same because they are always the character who is given the moral high ground and they are shown to be the best of all the characters. For example, in the moth and the flame, the male moth who saves the day puts aside the fact that the female moth is being stupid and flirting with the flame but he saves her anyway, despite it all. The protagonists in the sillies are all portrayed as being the chivalrous, good one that always wins.
3. Benshoff says that the main story arc consists of a couple being happy and in an idyllic place when, typically the female is abducted by another male who she was flirting with. Then the 'Good' male goes and rescues the female after fighting a battle with the 'bad' male. The story ends with the peace being restored. This can be seen in "The Moth and the Flame".
4. Despite the different characters or creatures that are portrayed in the films, the ideology that continues in every film, without fail, is the bourgeois white male propriety. I think this is true of many of the films of "The sillies" and even some more modern ones.
Paragraph fourteen.
Subversion: To overthrow.
Catharsis: A cleanse/release of emotional tension.
Reconcile: To forgive and make friends again.
Wolfish displacement: Fierce putting out of place.
Fantasized Blinders: Imaginary blinders.
1. They are aligned with what is seen as the dominant ideology and are created and utilised through mass channels so it is difficult to oppose or subvert the sillies.
2. The generic nature of the factory-made films mean that they can't be socially significant because they are only showing the viewpoint and ideologies of the majority and so they can't be accurately significant to society. In essence, it is impossible to create something truly socially significant through channels of production that are tied to big industry because they will only create what works for the majority in order to gain profits.
3. Adorno thinks that by giving people music that allows them to feel a release only makes them more dependant on the music. By making the music 'sanitised', a song that offers a release but no proper solution, society becomes dependant on that release, but also, because the issue will never truly be solved by that release that they feel, they continue to crave the music that gives them the release.
4. He says that cartoons make the problems seem 'there' but they appear smaller which removes the viewer from the social, political and economic parameters of the real problem. It entertains people, and offers them a release, but fixes nothing and therefore becomes something that is consumed for the release that it gives and it results in Disney having the ability to control and condition what you see and what you think by their films and the masses won't even notice.
Paragraph fifteen and sixteen.
Totalizing theories: Different theories that combine to one total theory.
Top-down theories: Theories that come about by recognition of contextual information.
Tin pan alley: Popular band.
European fascism: When Europe was really fascist during the 1920s.
1. He looks at everything as a bigger picture to make up the theories.
2. He means that sentimental films or songs make us feel like there is something bigger out there that we have no part in. Unattainable happiness.
3, In the 20's and 30's Europe saw the rise of fascism, and the propaganda that came with it. Adorno would have seen the society from that point of view where everyone is buying into the idea that they were not allowed to resist the culture industry. Today, it is less relevant because most european countries are now democracies where the trend is to be different and to mould pop culture to be their own.
Paragraph Seventeen.
Resistant textual practices: Books that resist the current political status.
Pastiche: Something that imitates style of something else. Relationship to postmodernism, collection of things brought together.
Nostalgia: Longing for the past.
Intertextuality: Relationships between texts.
Tropes: Re-occurring motif.
Reconceptualised: To form a concept or idea again.
Eschew: Deliberately avoid using.
Pejorative: Expressing contempt or disapproval.
Hierarchical biases: Biases according to rank. Want to stick to an organisational system.
1. He is a literary critic and a marxist political theorist who analysed cultural trends. He is relevant because he is showing the response of society to animation. He says that art nowadays is different than it was in the olden days because everything we use today is stylistically derived from artistic experimentation.
2. The text produced are more resistant today than they were before.
3. Proposed seven different categories of film.
4. He is a film critic. He says the tropes that are present in cartoons today are a crudely made modernism of tropes found in the 50s and 60s.
5. He says that there is a collapse of high and low art forms because many resistant ideas are used in the art but although these ideas are then re-configured for the commercial market, they are bridging the gap between high and low art. We don't identify these things in everyday life because of all the exposure. We are used to high and low being mixed.
Paragraph eighteen and nineteen.
Hyperreal: unable to distinguish between reality and a simulation of reality.
Langue: Slang or the common colloquial, specialized language of a community.
Pessimistic: Always seeing the worst in everything.
Oppositional Impetus: Pushing against the status quo.
Carnivalesque: Style that liberates the dominant atmosphere of a text by use of humour.
Utopian Postmodernism: Reaching for an ideal possibility.
Latent totalized (narrative): To come to a conclusion that is hidden in the narrative.
Untethered signifiers: A sign that is distinct and unrelated from its meaning.
1. He is a french sociologist and philosopher with postmodern work. We are trapped in a virtual reality unable to distinguish between what is real and what is simulated reality that we are feed through films and other technology.
2. He agrees with baudrillard but also wonders if there is also a part of postmodernism that resists the logic of consumer capitalism meaning although we may be in it we can still resist it.
3. Hal Foster is an art critic. He defines two types of postmodernism and one, the one that resists, "seeks to deconstruct modernism". Seeks to question rather than exploit, to explore than to conceal. This is relevant because if this is the case then it is going against the capitalist ideals and therefore against consumerism and therefore can be classed closer to high art.
4. Although it fits into the same theme as many of the sillies, it is full of so much absurdity that we forget about the romance more than the others. Also the queen chooses the king. The girl rescues the guy at the end.
5. I think they sit quite low because they are reinforcing a consumerist ideal.
6. I think they sit quite high because they are challenging the majority and this means they are original and not just part of a tried and tested formula that ends up being overdone and polished but without any authenticity.
Paragraph twenty and twenty one
Foci: The centre of interest.
Active Spectatorship: When you are thinking about what you are watching.
Problematized: When something is regarded as a problem that requires a solution.
Disseminate: To spread widely.
Oppositional: To be against/anti something.
Encoding: To convert into a particular form.
Subsequent: (Relating to time) Following something else.
Dominant: To have power/influence over others.
Decodings: Things converted into intelligible language.
Multiplicity: Large number/variety.
Theatrical Release: The Release of a film into theatres.
Subsumed: To be absorbed into something else.
Multinational: Including several countries/ethnicities. A company operating in different countries.
Suppressed: Something forcefully put to an end.
1. Recent focus on reception communities and people who actually think about and analyse what they watch have problematized Adorno's theories.
2. Yes, I think that nowadays it is 'cool' to be different so oppositional ideologies can be made marketable.
3. To find texts that endorse a formerly subaltern ideology once they are analysed.
4. The film has a large variety of origins.
5.It means that it wasn't made and created purely for profit, fitting it into more of a high art form than low art.
Paragraph Twenty Two.
Novella: A short novel.
Superficially: Shallow.
Anthropomorphized: When a thing or animal is made to appear human.
Confreres: A fellow member of a profession.
Foregrounded: To make something the most prominent feature.
Expose: To make something visible/uncover something.
Consumer Capitalist Culture: Being able to deliberately manipulate consumer demand using mass marketing techniques in order to benefit the seller.
Critique: To analyse and evaluate something.
High-tech Inflated exchange value: Cutting edge technology that as overpriced in value.
Global Corporate Capitalism: When the world-marketplace is dominated by corporations.
1. Thomas M. Disch was an author and poet who wrote the novella that "The Brave Little Toaster" is based on. He would be considered to create works that are more of a high art level than low art so thats why Benshoff references him in his article.
2. It tells the story of household appliances that form their own idyllic community much like in the sillies.
3.There isn't any attempt made to force a romance between the characters.
4. The narrative has pointed intertextual references to the consumer capitalist culture plus the song score critiques the notion of high-tech inflated exchange value in the postmodern age.
Paragraph Twenty Three.
Predominant:Strongest/main element.
Ruptures: To break or burst.
Diegesis: Film plot.
Reassuringly: Removing doubts or fears of someone else.
Quips: Witty Remark.
Inflections: Change of pitch in voice.
Milieu: Persons social environment.
Geometric: Made from regular lines and shapes.
Spectacularized: To make something eyecatching.
Allusion:Indirect or passing reference.
Homage: Honour or show respect publicly.
Benign: Gentle and calm/not harmful.
Menacing: Threatening.
1. There are jokes in it that make references to pop culture so people who watch it are rewarded by being able to understand the joke if they were up to date on their pop culture references.
2. Homage is paying a respect to something where as critique is analysing and pointing out issues in it.
3. Because during the woodland animal scene, they appear to be referencing the sillies in the animals and how they all exist and play together however, in the end they begin to turn hostile such as dragging blanket down the hole and this might be seen a critique of the sillies.
Paragraph Twenty four and five.
Salvaging: Rescuing.
Sutured: Stitched up.
Mutilated: Damaged to the point of being disfigured.
Dismember: To take apart/cut up/partition.
Implications: Conclusions drawn from something without it being explicitly stated.
Enterprise: A project or undertaking.
Referent: Thing that a word or phrase stands for.
Animated family firm genre: An animated film genre that is made to appeal to both children and adults.
Reflexive: Holding between a term and itself.
Hybrid: A mixture.
1. Spectator identification is frmly with the appliances by this time, even if they are not human.
2. He is obese and grotesque. This supports the idea that "The Brave Little Toaster" is a critique because he embodies capitalism and he is portrayed as a villain.
3. It equates the shop owners business with the hollywood horror film by using lyrics that drop allusions to Vincent Price, House of wax and Frankenstein. Therefore it critiquing capitalism making it more high art.
4. The fact that it is in the animated family film genre prevents the real horrors of capitalism being discussed. I agree that making a film for children means that it can't be too gritty or it wouldn't be for kids anymore.
5. They are a bricolage of high and low art forms produced under a capitalist system that produces them for mass consumption.
6. They are scary to the appliances because they are created as characters with characteristics that are pulled from a mixture of other horror genres and they are created to appear likened to horror tropes.
Paragraph Twenty six.
Citified: characteristic of an urban environment.
Deceptively: Misleadingly.
1. They are portrayed as thugs, smoothies and gossips. I think this makes they appear to be unlikeable which is important when you think about them as a metaphor for consumerist culture because it makes an anti-capitalist statement which, in turn, makes "The Brave Little Toaster" high art.
2.In a capitalist society, if someone wants something, they produce it purely for the market so, in a capitalist society use-value is replaced with exchange value because people have been conditioned to think in a consumerist society.
Paragraph Twenty Seven.
Neurotic Fear: Being afraid of something that you shouldn't necessarily be afraid of. Irrational fear from someone who worries a lot.
Counterparts: Someone who has the same function of someone else in the same place. Peer.
Exemplifies: To be a typical example of.
Theses: A statement or theory.
Concomitantly: Naturally accompanying or associated.
Literally: To take something at face value.
Doctrine: Set of beliefs held by an organisation such as a church.
Simulacrum: A representation of something or someone.
1. They always feel the need to say that they are on the 'cutting edge', meaning they are the newest and most advanced technology to date. However, they are afraid of being replaced by something else because of that knowledge that they could be.
2. Instead of it being about what is needed, the newer appliances embody the idea that products are more about status and identity than just being basic enough to do the task that they are ment for. It feeds us the notion that capitalism is just about telling something that they need something bigger and better every time so they companies get more money and Baudrillard would have realised that that is the main aim of capitalism-to get richer.
3.The song lyrics are included so the audience can be given an opportunity to see the story from the point of view of those that aren't necessarily the main characters. The lyrics themselves are quite anti-capitalism and tongue and cheek, the song makes these more controversial ideas easier to swallow for the masses. This enables them to put these anti-capitalist ideas into the film while keeping it entertaining and in the family animation film genre.
Paragraph twenty eight and twenty nine.
Satiric: Political parody.
Schizophrenic: Mental disorder where people interpret reality abnormally.
A-temporal: Relating to time.
Referent: the thing in the world that a word or phrase denotes or stands for. Signified: Meaning or idea expressed by a sign.
Hysteria: Exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion.
La belle epoque: Period of western European history. French for "The Beautiful Era".
Outmoded: Old fashioned.
Anthropomorphized: Talking about something as if it were an animal or human.
Penultimate: Second last.
1. He points out that during the song sequence, phrases such as "As seen on TV" flash across the screen. This is a direct reference to advertising that fills everyday life. By putting this advertisement into a scene that is full of schizophrenic visuals, the advertisement slogans become trippy and satirized as they fit into the hysteria of the rest of the scene. It is the icons of consumerism floating against an unreal backdrop that embodies the hysteria of capitalism.
2. They are pushed into the dumpster because the high-tech appliances don't want them there.
3. Use value is something that is used because we need it, exchange value is a product that is produced for and sold on the market.
4. The cars in the junkyard are all made to represent a group of people that have now been deemed worthless by culture at large, and discarded. Examples of these cars would be a motown sports car and a native american pick-up truck.
5. I agree that this scene critiques American culture because it is blatantly obvious that the cars all represent a group or culture from the past. The fact they are then destroyed is a metaphor for the modern American culture that is discarding and forgetting their history in favor of something newer that they are told is better by the media.
6. It says how the native american car used to work on a reservation but was left in favor for another place where it wasn't neccisary for them to have a car like that because they had been urbanised and had forgotten their roots.
Paragraph Thirty and Thirty one.
Ethnic stereotypes: Stereotypes based on the ethnicity of a person.
Tar-baby licorice candies: A type of sweet that had racist beginnings.
Industrial art text: Woodwork texts.
Streamlined: To make an organisation run smoother by employing faster or simpler working methods.
Nostalgic yearning: A longing to go back to a time in the past that one misses.
Rigors: Feeling of cold while also a rise in temperature that leads to sweating.
1. The sillies were racist with their stereotypes whereas "The Brave Little Toaster" is much less racist.
2. The toaster and his friends all look as if they have been made in America in contrast to the japanese made products that are just made in mass in Japan so they can be made as cheaply as posible in order to gain the most profit possible.
3. It is a nostalgic yearning for back to when products were American made.
4. It joins both high and low art forms successfully, celebrating the collapse between the two.
5. The western-made products are good the japanese ones are bad so it is a bias saying that it is better to make and buy american products. This extends to animation because japanese animation was getting popular in America so it may have extended the western, America-does-it-best bias to mean the animation created in America is better than the Japanese one too.
Paragraph Thirty two & thirty three conclusion.
Inception: The starting point.
Dichotomy: A division or contrast between two things.
Per se: By or in itself. Intrinsically.
Encode: Convert into a coded form.
1. In the first paragraph of the conclusion.
2. In the first paragraph of the conclusion.
3. That animation typically draws and mixes both high and low art forms.
4. Fantasia.
5. Because they are still first and foremost a profit driven organisation.
6. The Brave Little Toaster shows that this is a possibility.
7. It questions systems under global corporate capitalism which means it is a direct development of what came before it.
Cinematic Apparatus: The cinematic apparatus purports to set before the eye and ear realistic images and sounds
Hybrid art form: An art from that uses a mixture of different art techniques.
Fin de siecle Newspapers: End of century.
Political Caricature: Political cartoons featuring exaggerated characters and political humour.
Low Art: Simplistic art for the masses.
High Art: Specialised, high quality art for people with cultivated tastes.
Hollywood Bill of fare: Hollywood 'menu'. Under the umbrella of "Hollywood".
Mass Culture Industry: Use of factory producing standardised goods in order to brainwash/distract a mass of people.
1. Benshoff thinks that because Animation is a hybrid art form, it occupies a unique niche in 20th century popular art.
2. Donald Crafton was the first professor of film studies at the university of Notre Dame. His assertion is relevant to Benshoff's article because Benshoff is arguing whether animation is a high or low art form and seeing as Crafton says that animations origins stem from comic strips and Political Caricature (which are mass produced and sold in papers) one could conclude that animation originated as a low art form.
3. Animation stems from comic strips and political caricature because they both use the same stylistic techniques such as exaggerated characters and also, a comic strip is similar to storyboarding which is the foundation of any animation.
4. Leopold Survage was a french painter who painted "Abstract Cityscape". Hans Richter was a german painter who painter "Portrait du lou Marsen". Walter Ruttmann was a film director who directed "Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis". Viking Eggeling was a Filmmaker who made "Symphonie Diagonale". They were all artists that made work that was far more detailed and specialised to be for 'the masses' so therefore, because of the quality of their work they would be considered high art practitioners.
5. Animation had the potential to develop as either high or low because although its origins came from newspaper comics and other 'low' art forms, the fact that high art practitioners held an interest in animation means that they could have potentially influenced and developed animation into a 'high' art form.
6. Animated film in America falls under the Hollywood bill of fare and Benshoff says that because of this the animated films produced in America are different to elsewhere because they are profit-driven and they are produced for mass consumption.
Paragraph 2.
Cottage Industry: Small scale industry.
Monopoly Capitalism: A capitalist system that is under the control of just a few people.
Corporate conglomerate: Two or more different corporations joining under one corporate company.
Auteurist: Director who has so much control that they put their own personal, unique 'stamp' on their work.
Postmodern Aesthetic Practises: Cynicism towards beauty.
Industrial art products: Mass production of art.
High-Low continuum: Scale between high and low.
Idealogical: Having an ideology.
1. Disney is the most recognisable name in animation because they have built up a reputation by clever production and marketing strategies throughout the last 70 years in order to maximise consumer appeal.
2. In the 1930's, Disney produced cottage industry animation films that had a classical nature and were interested in unity, closure and realist representation.
Then along came monopoly capitalism which quickly pushed out the cottage industry and brought with it a modernist impulse that self-consciously critiqued classical representation with the art that was produced.
In the last few decades, global corporate capitalism has led to post-modern aesthetic practises and they began to combine fragments of high art with the mass-production industry.
3. The article will discuss Disney's positioning on the high-low continuum and examine the ideological implications of stylistic change by comparing "Silly Symphonies" and "The brave little toaster".
4. The "Silly Symphonies" date from around 1929-1939 whereas "The brave little toaster" is from 1987. Benshoff picked these examples so he can see the progression of the styles and ideaolgies of the company in the space of 60 or so years.
5. Topic was introduced in the opening 3 sentences
Definition of key terms happens by the end of the opening paragraph.
Main argument is stated in the beginning of the second paragraph.
Organisation happens at the last sentence of the second paragraph.
Paragraph 3.
Aesthetic: Beauty/attractive to look at.
Realist Impulse: Priority of work rendered in a realistic style.
Modernist: Contemporary approach.
Live-action: When the filmed action is filmed live.
Popular Culture: What is popular during certain time periods.
Abstract: An idea without having a physical counterpart.
Pictorial Realism: means the mechanisms that are normally involved in object recognition can be deployed at a second order level in picture perception.
1. They make sure their animations are aesthetically pleasing and accessible enough for a mass audience to understand and enjoy and they have their own traditional quality and style that developed from the 1930s.
2. The disney style has become the popular measure of the quality of commercial animation because the Disney style depends on the quality of natural movement and live models and animals were and are studied to ensure there is realistic movement.
3. On the recreation of natural movement.
4. Advertising and popular culture made its way into animation and this would mean that animation became a much lower art form that, instead of being cultivated and sophisticated, it was tarnished by the profit-orientated side of the industry by the use of advertisements.
5. Benshoff references "Gerald McBoing Boing" and "Mr Magoo series.8" to support his argument. Although disney continued to use pictorial realism, many of the shorts were more abstract and modernised.
6. Fantasia has a classical music score that was aided by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The man to introduce each segment was Deems Taylor, a musicologist. It was also much more high-brow and classier than previous cartoons making it seem much more like high art than it had been previously.
Paragraph 4.
High-low dichotomy: The division between the contrast of low or high art.
Musical score: The music in the film.
Folksy ease: Common, friendliness.
High Brow: Cultivated. Classy.
1. The high-low dichotomy is evident because they have high brow classical composers doing the musical score while also having a popular radio presenter presenting which would be a more 'low' art form.
2. Deems Taylor added a folksy ease to the high brow proceedings.
3. Fischinger said that the film was not really his work but rather the inartistic product of a factory. He said that no true work of art can be made with the procedure that is used by the Disney studio.
4. He says that the procedure that Disney uses to make their movies means that it can't be considered high art, possibly because he things that it was too 'factory processed' to be considered high art.
5. He means that because of the way that Disney processes and controls the animation work of each project in order to make it as accessible as possible for the masses, it is hard to make something that is truly high art.
Paragraph five.
Burlesqued: Parody or comically exaggerated imitation of something.
Musical idioms: Music that is associated with a particular period.
Good neighbour policy: Roosevelt had a policy to be "good neighbours" with Latin american countries.
Appropriated: To set apart for a specific purpose/to take possession of.
1. I think Fantasia was a failure because it was quite long and the story wouldn't necessarily be able to hold the attention of children, while also it was made in a time when adults would have been more inclined to assume cartoons were for children so they wouldn't have been as likely to see and appreciate it either.
2. Disney produced a number of compilation films that were very visually abstract.
3. They have abstract, absurd designs such as a snake piano and they mix animation with real people such as in the case where donald duck is dancing around on top a piano as a woman plays it.
4. To make it more interesting for a larger audience.
5. In order to make it more accessible for the masses.
6. In order to make American movies more accessible to elsewhere in the world, particularly latin american countries, south american musical idioms were used. This ties in with the Good Neighbour policy that the American government had during that time with the South American countries in order to make better feeling towards one another and to create a stronger link between each other.
Paragraph six.
Theoretical: Based on theory rather than practical application.
Reified: To make something abstract more concrete or real.
Conformist: To conform to/accept establish practises. To be conventional.
1. The mainstream trend was capitalism, earning money and to be in awe of the people who had money. Disney were mainly interested in the profit because of the ideas of monopoly capitalism. In many ways Disney became a brand name that pandered to the masses and offered products that were known to be of good quality because they had created that name for themselves.
2. Are they reified and conformist because of mass production? Or is it possible that changes in film and/or society have created new ways of understanding the animated cartoon?
3. He was a philosopher of the 20th century who was particularly interested in the effects of modern society upon the human condition. He disliked capitalism. His name was used in the argument because his opinion was that mass production of something means it can't be high art and because he was a philosopher that was mainly interested in pop culture and modern society and how that is perceived by and affects the human race, his opinion is a very valid one in the case of the argument.
4. In many ways if something is produced in order to appeal to the masses then it is produced to be conformist. This is because in order to be liked by everyone things have to be the least offensive they can be, to achieve this you need to make sure that it is as conventional as possible. So, therefore, if something is mass produced with the intention of being accessible to as many people as possible, it must be very conventional and conform.
5. He begins talking about his idea of Disney being orientated towards a mass audience and then continues to talk about the development of this idea. He writes chronologically which helps us understand the development of the Disney company. He talks about examples of work that Disney created during those years and discusses whether they would be considered high or low art and he also discusses the fallout of Fantasia which shows us reasons that Disney may have shied away from high art productions or techniques that they had flirted with during Fantasia. He quotes both an animator and a philosopher in order to back up his arguments by bringing in respected people's opinions - people who'd had first hand experience or who had witnessed the times firsthand. by the sixth paragraph Benshoff rounds up his argument and concludes that although Disney flirted with high art, their main intent was mass production. He then asks does that mean that what is mass produced can't be high art or has society and film changed enough that it could still be considered high art?
Paragraph seven.
Incessantly: Without ceasing.
Character-based genres: Plot driven/affected by character traits. Vague.
Classification: What something is classified as.
Construed: Interpret/analyse.
Conventionalized: Make conventional
1. Theodor Adorno was a philosopher interested in society and how it affects the human condition. He is referenced because he would have been an eyewitness and a reputable source from the time plus also being a professional who studied pop culture and the affects it had on the society of the time so he would have had a valuable opinion.
2. He says that although they might appear to be making newer and more revolutionary ideas, it is all driven with a profit in mind which means that it will never actually evolve or change while they continue to make getting a profit a priority.
3.They do not feature a main character.
Paragraph eight.
Precursors: A forerunner.
Irreverent: lack of respect.
Idiom: A group of words that have a non-deducible meaning.
Bowdlerizing: To remove offensive material and therefore making text less effective/weaker.
Postmodern musical bricoleur: Postmodern music made with a DIY approach.
Penchant: Strong habitual liking for something/tendency to do something.
Fellini parodies: Parodies of Italian film director 'Fellini's work.
Gregorian chants: Church music sung as a single vocal line.
1. It tells a story based on the musical score which is what 'Fantastisa' does.
2. He mixed different pieces of music together by himself that wouldn't necessarily fit together.
3. A symphony suggests high art where as by putting 'Silly' in front of symphony it makes it almost a contrast between high and low.
4. They mean it is supposed to cater people who like both high and low art forms to find something that they are interested in.
5. Nowadays we see these mixtures and parodies everywhere like in dance music that has chants in it.
Paragraph nine.
Dominant ideology: The main ideology.
Ostracism: Cutting someone out on purpose.
Manifestations: fact of showing something,
Vacuous: Mindless/lack of thought.
Banal: Lacking in originality. Boring.
Shamelessly conformist: Not ashamed to be obviously conformist.
1. They rely on tried and tested stories that have blatant ideologies in them.
2. He says that the meaning found in 'The Little Mouse' tells us that it is better to conform rather than to be different and quotes Adorno to back this up.
Paragraph ten.
Allegories: Something with a hidden meaning.
Utopian Human Communities: Human society with perfect qualities.
Harmoniously: Musical sounding agreeable because it has good harmony.
Naturalize: To become a citizen/to grow in a new area.
Heterosexual bourgeois romance: Heterosexual, middle class romance.
Psychical adjustment: An adjustment to the psychic.
Subaltern communities: Community that is a relevant universal proposition.
Heterogeneity: Made up of things that are different.
1. The Silly Symphonies because everyone interacts harmoniously despite their differences.
2. They make sure that the main characters are all middle class and heterosexual because they consider that to be the "social cement".
3. It makes it more accepted by celebrating what most people would think was good, funny and relatable.
4. Yes, but he says they are all similar in ideals.
Paragraph eleven.
Pseudo-individualisation: Insincere individualization.
Endowing: Giving.
Standardisation: Making everything to one standard.
1. Adorno says that the films are all fundamentally identical in action and ideology and they are, as Benshoff states, 'Pre digested'. This backs up Benshoff's statement that they are pandering to the masses and made purely for the mass audience.
2. It means they have the ability to sell films with under the pretense of the movie being made with what they tell us is a unique approach, within a market that the masses are told is 'open'. Disney has the main monopoly on the market and what they are marketing and they take advantage of that by making movies that appear to be abstract and modern but continue to take into the account that they have to please the biggest audience that they can manage to, for profits.
3. The masses are kept where Disney want them by being given 'pre digested' work. Disney makes sure that their work is tame enough for everyone to accept it. I agree with this statement because all the Disney movies that I've seen are very accessible for everyone to enjoy and nobody to have issues with, content-wise.
Paragraph twelve and thirteen.
Individualised trappings:
Protagonists: The main character of the movie.
Narrative trajectory: The chosen/taken course of the narrative.
Idyllic: Peaceful, Pleasant.
Wanton Behaviour: Being a bit of a slut.
Interloper: A person in a position or place where they don't belong.
Bourgeois white male propriety: The 'proper' behaviour of the white male middle class.
1. They seem different because they focus on different characters in different situations.
2. The protagonists are all the same because they are always the character who is given the moral high ground and they are shown to be the best of all the characters. For example, in the moth and the flame, the male moth who saves the day puts aside the fact that the female moth is being stupid and flirting with the flame but he saves her anyway, despite it all. The protagonists in the sillies are all portrayed as being the chivalrous, good one that always wins.
3. Benshoff says that the main story arc consists of a couple being happy and in an idyllic place when, typically the female is abducted by another male who she was flirting with. Then the 'Good' male goes and rescues the female after fighting a battle with the 'bad' male. The story ends with the peace being restored. This can be seen in "The Moth and the Flame".
4. Despite the different characters or creatures that are portrayed in the films, the ideology that continues in every film, without fail, is the bourgeois white male propriety. I think this is true of many of the films of "The sillies" and even some more modern ones.
Paragraph fourteen.
Subversion: To overthrow.
Catharsis: A cleanse/release of emotional tension.
Reconcile: To forgive and make friends again.
Wolfish displacement: Fierce putting out of place.
Fantasized Blinders: Imaginary blinders.
1. They are aligned with what is seen as the dominant ideology and are created and utilised through mass channels so it is difficult to oppose or subvert the sillies.
2. The generic nature of the factory-made films mean that they can't be socially significant because they are only showing the viewpoint and ideologies of the majority and so they can't be accurately significant to society. In essence, it is impossible to create something truly socially significant through channels of production that are tied to big industry because they will only create what works for the majority in order to gain profits.
3. Adorno thinks that by giving people music that allows them to feel a release only makes them more dependant on the music. By making the music 'sanitised', a song that offers a release but no proper solution, society becomes dependant on that release, but also, because the issue will never truly be solved by that release that they feel, they continue to crave the music that gives them the release.
4. He says that cartoons make the problems seem 'there' but they appear smaller which removes the viewer from the social, political and economic parameters of the real problem. It entertains people, and offers them a release, but fixes nothing and therefore becomes something that is consumed for the release that it gives and it results in Disney having the ability to control and condition what you see and what you think by their films and the masses won't even notice.
Paragraph fifteen and sixteen.
Totalizing theories: Different theories that combine to one total theory.
Top-down theories: Theories that come about by recognition of contextual information.
Tin pan alley: Popular band.
European fascism: When Europe was really fascist during the 1920s.
1. He looks at everything as a bigger picture to make up the theories.
2. He means that sentimental films or songs make us feel like there is something bigger out there that we have no part in. Unattainable happiness.
3, In the 20's and 30's Europe saw the rise of fascism, and the propaganda that came with it. Adorno would have seen the society from that point of view where everyone is buying into the idea that they were not allowed to resist the culture industry. Today, it is less relevant because most european countries are now democracies where the trend is to be different and to mould pop culture to be their own.
Paragraph Seventeen.
Resistant textual practices: Books that resist the current political status.
Pastiche: Something that imitates style of something else. Relationship to postmodernism, collection of things brought together.
Nostalgia: Longing for the past.
Intertextuality: Relationships between texts.
Tropes: Re-occurring motif.
Reconceptualised: To form a concept or idea again.
Eschew: Deliberately avoid using.
Pejorative: Expressing contempt or disapproval.
Hierarchical biases: Biases according to rank. Want to stick to an organisational system.
1. He is a literary critic and a marxist political theorist who analysed cultural trends. He is relevant because he is showing the response of society to animation. He says that art nowadays is different than it was in the olden days because everything we use today is stylistically derived from artistic experimentation.
2. The text produced are more resistant today than they were before.
3. Proposed seven different categories of film.
4. He is a film critic. He says the tropes that are present in cartoons today are a crudely made modernism of tropes found in the 50s and 60s.
5. He says that there is a collapse of high and low art forms because many resistant ideas are used in the art but although these ideas are then re-configured for the commercial market, they are bridging the gap between high and low art. We don't identify these things in everyday life because of all the exposure. We are used to high and low being mixed.
Paragraph eighteen and nineteen.
Hyperreal: unable to distinguish between reality and a simulation of reality.
Langue: Slang or the common colloquial, specialized language of a community.
Pessimistic: Always seeing the worst in everything.
Oppositional Impetus: Pushing against the status quo.
Carnivalesque: Style that liberates the dominant atmosphere of a text by use of humour.
Utopian Postmodernism: Reaching for an ideal possibility.
Latent totalized (narrative): To come to a conclusion that is hidden in the narrative.
Untethered signifiers: A sign that is distinct and unrelated from its meaning.
1. He is a french sociologist and philosopher with postmodern work. We are trapped in a virtual reality unable to distinguish between what is real and what is simulated reality that we are feed through films and other technology.
2. He agrees with baudrillard but also wonders if there is also a part of postmodernism that resists the logic of consumer capitalism meaning although we may be in it we can still resist it.
3. Hal Foster is an art critic. He defines two types of postmodernism and one, the one that resists, "seeks to deconstruct modernism". Seeks to question rather than exploit, to explore than to conceal. This is relevant because if this is the case then it is going against the capitalist ideals and therefore against consumerism and therefore can be classed closer to high art.
4. Although it fits into the same theme as many of the sillies, it is full of so much absurdity that we forget about the romance more than the others. Also the queen chooses the king. The girl rescues the guy at the end.
5. I think they sit quite low because they are reinforcing a consumerist ideal.
6. I think they sit quite high because they are challenging the majority and this means they are original and not just part of a tried and tested formula that ends up being overdone and polished but without any authenticity.
Paragraph twenty and twenty one
Foci: The centre of interest.
Active Spectatorship: When you are thinking about what you are watching.
Problematized: When something is regarded as a problem that requires a solution.
Disseminate: To spread widely.
Oppositional: To be against/anti something.
Encoding: To convert into a particular form.
Subsequent: (Relating to time) Following something else.
Dominant: To have power/influence over others.
Decodings: Things converted into intelligible language.
Multiplicity: Large number/variety.
Theatrical Release: The Release of a film into theatres.
Subsumed: To be absorbed into something else.
Multinational: Including several countries/ethnicities. A company operating in different countries.
Suppressed: Something forcefully put to an end.
1. Recent focus on reception communities and people who actually think about and analyse what they watch have problematized Adorno's theories.
2. Yes, I think that nowadays it is 'cool' to be different so oppositional ideologies can be made marketable.
3. To find texts that endorse a formerly subaltern ideology once they are analysed.
4. The film has a large variety of origins.
5.It means that it wasn't made and created purely for profit, fitting it into more of a high art form than low art.
Paragraph Twenty Two.
Novella: A short novel.
Superficially: Shallow.
Anthropomorphized: When a thing or animal is made to appear human.
Confreres: A fellow member of a profession.
Foregrounded: To make something the most prominent feature.
Expose: To make something visible/uncover something.
Consumer Capitalist Culture: Being able to deliberately manipulate consumer demand using mass marketing techniques in order to benefit the seller.
Critique: To analyse and evaluate something.
High-tech Inflated exchange value: Cutting edge technology that as overpriced in value.
Global Corporate Capitalism: When the world-marketplace is dominated by corporations.
1. Thomas M. Disch was an author and poet who wrote the novella that "The Brave Little Toaster" is based on. He would be considered to create works that are more of a high art level than low art so thats why Benshoff references him in his article.
2. It tells the story of household appliances that form their own idyllic community much like in the sillies.
3.There isn't any attempt made to force a romance between the characters.
4. The narrative has pointed intertextual references to the consumer capitalist culture plus the song score critiques the notion of high-tech inflated exchange value in the postmodern age.
Paragraph Twenty Three.
Predominant:Strongest/main element.
Ruptures: To break or burst.
Diegesis: Film plot.
Reassuringly: Removing doubts or fears of someone else.
Quips: Witty Remark.
Inflections: Change of pitch in voice.
Milieu: Persons social environment.
Geometric: Made from regular lines and shapes.
Spectacularized: To make something eyecatching.
Allusion:Indirect or passing reference.
Homage: Honour or show respect publicly.
Benign: Gentle and calm/not harmful.
Menacing: Threatening.
1. There are jokes in it that make references to pop culture so people who watch it are rewarded by being able to understand the joke if they were up to date on their pop culture references.
2. Homage is paying a respect to something where as critique is analysing and pointing out issues in it.
3. Because during the woodland animal scene, they appear to be referencing the sillies in the animals and how they all exist and play together however, in the end they begin to turn hostile such as dragging blanket down the hole and this might be seen a critique of the sillies.
Paragraph Twenty four and five.
Salvaging: Rescuing.
Sutured: Stitched up.
Mutilated: Damaged to the point of being disfigured.
Dismember: To take apart/cut up/partition.
Implications: Conclusions drawn from something without it being explicitly stated.
Enterprise: A project or undertaking.
Referent: Thing that a word or phrase stands for.
Animated family firm genre: An animated film genre that is made to appeal to both children and adults.
Reflexive: Holding between a term and itself.
Hybrid: A mixture.
1. Spectator identification is frmly with the appliances by this time, even if they are not human.
2. He is obese and grotesque. This supports the idea that "The Brave Little Toaster" is a critique because he embodies capitalism and he is portrayed as a villain.
3. It equates the shop owners business with the hollywood horror film by using lyrics that drop allusions to Vincent Price, House of wax and Frankenstein. Therefore it critiquing capitalism making it more high art.
4. The fact that it is in the animated family film genre prevents the real horrors of capitalism being discussed. I agree that making a film for children means that it can't be too gritty or it wouldn't be for kids anymore.
5. They are a bricolage of high and low art forms produced under a capitalist system that produces them for mass consumption.
6. They are scary to the appliances because they are created as characters with characteristics that are pulled from a mixture of other horror genres and they are created to appear likened to horror tropes.
Paragraph Twenty six.
Citified: characteristic of an urban environment.
Deceptively: Misleadingly.
1. They are portrayed as thugs, smoothies and gossips. I think this makes they appear to be unlikeable which is important when you think about them as a metaphor for consumerist culture because it makes an anti-capitalist statement which, in turn, makes "The Brave Little Toaster" high art.
2.In a capitalist society, if someone wants something, they produce it purely for the market so, in a capitalist society use-value is replaced with exchange value because people have been conditioned to think in a consumerist society.
Paragraph Twenty Seven.
Neurotic Fear: Being afraid of something that you shouldn't necessarily be afraid of. Irrational fear from someone who worries a lot.
Counterparts: Someone who has the same function of someone else in the same place. Peer.
Exemplifies: To be a typical example of.
Theses: A statement or theory.
Concomitantly: Naturally accompanying or associated.
Literally: To take something at face value.
Doctrine: Set of beliefs held by an organisation such as a church.
Simulacrum: A representation of something or someone.
1. They always feel the need to say that they are on the 'cutting edge', meaning they are the newest and most advanced technology to date. However, they are afraid of being replaced by something else because of that knowledge that they could be.
2. Instead of it being about what is needed, the newer appliances embody the idea that products are more about status and identity than just being basic enough to do the task that they are ment for. It feeds us the notion that capitalism is just about telling something that they need something bigger and better every time so they companies get more money and Baudrillard would have realised that that is the main aim of capitalism-to get richer.
3.The song lyrics are included so the audience can be given an opportunity to see the story from the point of view of those that aren't necessarily the main characters. The lyrics themselves are quite anti-capitalism and tongue and cheek, the song makes these more controversial ideas easier to swallow for the masses. This enables them to put these anti-capitalist ideas into the film while keeping it entertaining and in the family animation film genre.
Paragraph twenty eight and twenty nine.
Satiric: Political parody.
Schizophrenic: Mental disorder where people interpret reality abnormally.
A-temporal: Relating to time.
Referent: the thing in the world that a word or phrase denotes or stands for. Signified: Meaning or idea expressed by a sign.
Hysteria: Exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion.
La belle epoque: Period of western European history. French for "The Beautiful Era".
Outmoded: Old fashioned.
Anthropomorphized: Talking about something as if it were an animal or human.
Penultimate: Second last.
1. He points out that during the song sequence, phrases such as "As seen on TV" flash across the screen. This is a direct reference to advertising that fills everyday life. By putting this advertisement into a scene that is full of schizophrenic visuals, the advertisement slogans become trippy and satirized as they fit into the hysteria of the rest of the scene. It is the icons of consumerism floating against an unreal backdrop that embodies the hysteria of capitalism.
2. They are pushed into the dumpster because the high-tech appliances don't want them there.
3. Use value is something that is used because we need it, exchange value is a product that is produced for and sold on the market.
4. The cars in the junkyard are all made to represent a group of people that have now been deemed worthless by culture at large, and discarded. Examples of these cars would be a motown sports car and a native american pick-up truck.
5. I agree that this scene critiques American culture because it is blatantly obvious that the cars all represent a group or culture from the past. The fact they are then destroyed is a metaphor for the modern American culture that is discarding and forgetting their history in favor of something newer that they are told is better by the media.
6. It says how the native american car used to work on a reservation but was left in favor for another place where it wasn't neccisary for them to have a car like that because they had been urbanised and had forgotten their roots.
Paragraph Thirty and Thirty one.
Ethnic stereotypes: Stereotypes based on the ethnicity of a person.
Tar-baby licorice candies: A type of sweet that had racist beginnings.
Industrial art text: Woodwork texts.
Streamlined: To make an organisation run smoother by employing faster or simpler working methods.
Nostalgic yearning: A longing to go back to a time in the past that one misses.
Rigors: Feeling of cold while also a rise in temperature that leads to sweating.
1. The sillies were racist with their stereotypes whereas "The Brave Little Toaster" is much less racist.
2. The toaster and his friends all look as if they have been made in America in contrast to the japanese made products that are just made in mass in Japan so they can be made as cheaply as posible in order to gain the most profit possible.
3. It is a nostalgic yearning for back to when products were American made.
4. It joins both high and low art forms successfully, celebrating the collapse between the two.
5. The western-made products are good the japanese ones are bad so it is a bias saying that it is better to make and buy american products. This extends to animation because japanese animation was getting popular in America so it may have extended the western, America-does-it-best bias to mean the animation created in America is better than the Japanese one too.
Paragraph Thirty two & thirty three conclusion.
Inception: The starting point.
Dichotomy: A division or contrast between two things.
Per se: By or in itself. Intrinsically.
Encode: Convert into a coded form.
1. In the first paragraph of the conclusion.
2. In the first paragraph of the conclusion.
3. That animation typically draws and mixes both high and low art forms.
4. Fantasia.
5. Because they are still first and foremost a profit driven organisation.
6. The Brave Little Toaster shows that this is a possibility.
7. It questions systems under global corporate capitalism which means it is a direct development of what came before it.
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