“First Principles” of Animation

Abstract

All my publications on animation of the last twenty-three years are dedicated to animating film theory-not only addressing what animation adds to the theorizing of film but doing that adding, while trying to redress the marginalization of animation by film studies, film history, and film theory.For animation has been their blind spot.My animating (of ) film theory as film animation theory applies especially to the theorization of live action film through animation and responds to late 1960s French Marxist film theory and the Anglo-American film theory derived from it.1Given that there is no way I can offer here a comprehensive rehearsal of my interventions over those twenty-three years, I ask the reader to consult my publications, especially my introductions to the anthologies I edited-The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation (1991), the world's first book of scholarly essays theorizing animation, and The Illusion of Life 2: More Essays on Animation (2007)-which directly address film studies and film theory, as well as animation studies and animation theory.2In this chapter I offer my key results to date, my "first principles" of animation.To ask the question, "By not writing about animated films, have theorists simply been prioritizing the live action film while still producing theory that is applicable to animation?,"misses the key first point of my 1991 introduction in The Illusion of Life, which I reiterated in my essay in that anthology.3It is a claim I still find to be radical, and it was made ten years before Lev Manovich's similar assertion.4Let us call it our first "first principle" of animation: not only is animation a form of film but all film, film "as such," is a form of animation.Given all film by definition includes live action, live action is a form of animation.Consequently, film theorists have never not been writing 6 : : "First Principles" of Animation

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