Kathryn Sears – Animacies by Mel Y. Chen
Mel
Y. Chen’s Animacies investigates the
complex and powerful relationship between the animate and the inanimate. The introduction takes time to define—at least
as best as is possible—the term animacy and its variations. Chen notes the asset to her argument that the
term animacy bears no single definition. Loosely, the definition of animacy is: “the
set of notions characterized by family resemblances” with “ a quality of
agency, awareness, mobility, or liveliness’.”[1] Chen’s methodology relies heavily on
disability studies and queer of color studies.
The
key argument and concept of chapter three, “Queer Animality,” considers
animality “as a condensation of racialized animacy.”[2] I was most drawn to Chen’s argument about
visual media from the turn of the twentieth-century in which citizenship was a
topic of much contention. In these
images, many from Harper’s Weekly and
reminiscent of Edward Degas’ representations of dancers as low-brow beings, the
“dumb” animal is used to show racialized and sexualized inferiority of the
immigrant to the [WASP] American citizen.
Here, the African-American is shown with a tiny, pea-sized head and
resembling an ape of some sort while the Asian-American—all generalized to
Chinese—resembles a rat. My
undergraduate studies in graphic arts immediately drew me to these images. Their ability to be mass produced and widely
disseminated consequently creates a more streamlined brand of racism and
xenophobia and homophobia. These images
were used as advertisements in newspapers and circulars, as well as on
advertising boards on the streets. This
was a practice, affichomanie, made
popular with the advent of lithography, political satire, and the color poster
in the fin-de-siècle boulevards of Paris was altered from rather sexist and
satirical advertising seen in Paris to overtly racial and self-proclaimed patriotic
in the United States. Hence, my
discussion question for today stems from the history of public advertising,
public representations of figures, and political satire. As politically charged as this moment in history
is, there is, now more than ever, a flood and an immersion of our daily lives
in politically motivated imagery in a medium rather different from such
posters, yet with similar consequences.
What are some forms of visual queer-ification, specifically through
animation of objects, concepts, and people, that are prominent today? How does this relate to political satire and
what sort of violence do political satire and these images (purely derogatory) create?
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