Ecocritical Readings of Academy Award-Winning Animated Shorts

ABSTRACT

Focusing on some specific features of animation–anthropomorphism, animated space, and plasmaticness – this article is a textual analysis from an ecocritical viewpoint on Academy Award-winning animated short films (1939–2019). It examines how these films have represented the relationship between human and nature over the past 90 years. The aim of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of changes in people’s attitudes towards nature as represented in popular culture. Linking changes in representation to the analyzed animations’ historical-cultural context, three eras of animated shorts can be distinguished. Findings indicate that changes related to social and environmental movements, as well as changes in the structure of the animation industry are shaping shifts in representation.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental animation
• animation
• academy-award
• ecocriticism
• reverberating space

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The full list of Academy Award-winning animated shorts can be found here: http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/search/results. Last retrieved: 4 August 2021.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem.