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Destabilizing Animation: Structures of Agency and Uncanny Animacy in Animated Media

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Destabilizing Animation: Structures of Agency and Uncanny Animacy in Animated Media

Armitage, Cole (2020) Destabilizing Animation: Structures of Agency and Uncanny Animacy in Animated Media. Masters thesis, Concordia University.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the destabilization of a hierarchical ordering of human vs. nonhuman agency found in digital media which present a surge of “animacy” – perceptible qualities of “agency, awareness, mobility and liveness” (Chen 2012). It examines one webtoon (The Bongcheon-Dong Ghost 2011) and two video games (Undertale 2015 and Doki Doki Literature Club 2017), which push at the boundaries of their respective media forms by channeling technical/computational forces (e.g. Javascript or memory storage) into character animation; “animation” in a doubled sense: both as the fusion of discontinuous instants afforded by the mechanical succession of images as well as the production of a social Other possessing qualities of life and agency (Silvio 2019). The result is a perception of agency (and thus animacy) that resists the categorization of both the character and the media object. Challenging dominant structures and theories of comic readership, video game play, or “database consumption” (Azuma 2009) respectively, these works argue against the control that the human operator is presumed both to have and to require as part of a framework which constitutes the works themselves as media objects. This thesis further argues that the structures critiqued and challenged by these works index a broader conceptualization of human action in the world, predicated on “animacy hierarchies” which are buttressed by binaries of human/nonhuman, animate/inanimate, moving/still, subject/object, and will/determination. By adopting an animist logic, in which images/media/characters might potentially act in unforeseen ways, these works challenge and destabilize such binaries.

Divisions:Concordia University > Faculty of Fine Arts > Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema
Item Type:Thesis (Masters)
Authors:Armitage, Cole
Institution:Concordia University
Degree Name:M.A.
Program:Film Studies
Date:8 June 2020
Thesis Supervisor(s):Steinberg, Marc
Keywords:animacy, animation, webtoon, video games, The Boncheon-Dong Ghost, Horang, Undertale, Doki Doki Literature Club
ID Code:987082
Deposited By: Cole Armitage
Deposited On:25 Nov 2020 16:45
Last Modified:25 Nov 2020 16:45
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