The Illusion of life: Essays on animation

By Alan Cholodenko

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0909952183
• ISBN13: 9780909952181
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Power Publications in association with the Australian Film Commission
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 5.9" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

for all those (theoretically minded) kids at heart.

With this wildly eclectic yet controlled collection of essays, Alan Cholodenko accelerates and expands his project of reanimating film studies in and through animation studies and the rigorous theorizing of animation. In the 1991 precursor to THE ILLUSION OF LIFE 2, Cholodenko upset the classic logic of animation as a subspecies of film and instead posited film, all film, as a form of animation. Polemical and challenging (yet, paradoxically, in some sense obvious), this assertion was and continues to be well-defended by both Cholodenko's perspicacity and his enviable expertise in `poststructuralist' and `postmodernist' thought. This new publication even further diversifies the implications of its contributors' efforts, as they analyse the concept of animation in relation to the history (and future) of war, the military, the cityscape, cultural exchange, old and new media, marketing, self-identity, the soul, life, death, intellectual property, and the very physical nature of the universe that surrounds us. The essay's subjects range and connect in a wide array: from manga to Blade Runner; from anime cuteness to military flight simulation; from The Lion King's controversial authorship to its metaphysical subversiveness. Meanwhile, an estuary of theoretical wellsprings feed the book from sources Aristotle to Zizek. Do not count on every essay following a theoretical bend, but do count on each one being meticulously researched and placed informatively in a wider nexus of animation history and scholarship. As these essayists contour the late 20th century's variegated wave of animation, they move in-between disciplines and distinctions, upsetting those disciplines and distinctions, all the while richly theorizing and animating the subject of animation itself. If you're ready to let it take you, THE ILLUSION OF LIFE 2 makes for an exciting ride- as challenging as it is fun.