This course examines the second fifty years of animation, first by marking Disney's shifting fortunes, then broadening the scope to take in its competitors here and abroad. The global nature of postwar animation has been an odd amalgam of competition and cooperation, of private and public funding, and of film, television, and eventually webcasting, and we will explore some of the changes the form has gone through in the past fifty years or so. Since this is a study of art and of commerce, and of high and low culture, we will view our limited history through the lenses of aesthetics, cultural practices, business decisions, and sometimes political struggle.
This course examines the second fifty years of animation, first by marking Disney's shifting fortunes, then broadening the scope to take in its competitors here and abroad. The global nature of postwar animation has been an odd amalgam of competition and cooperation, of private and public funding, and of film, television, and eventually webcasting, and we will explore some of the changes the form has gone through in the past fifty years or so. Since this is a study of art and of commerce, and of high and low culture, we will view our limited history through the lenses of aesthetics, cultural practices, business decisions, and sometimes political struggle.
