Frame by Frame A Materialist Aesthetic of Animated Cartoons
by Hannah Frank (early 2000’s?)
A scholarly work about cartoons might seem a bit contradictory, but Hannah approaches the period between 1920 and 1960, when cartoons were hand-drawn, and the period that followed, when Xerography speeded up production, with enormous erudition, originality, and, most of all, patience, The first of these early periods before computer animation took over is referred to as the Golden Age of Animation, when Mickey Mouse, Woody Woodpecker, Felix the Cat, and a host of other characters sprang to life. Her case study for the cartoons of the sixties, when Xerography came into use, is 101 Dalmatians.
As the title states, Hannah looks at the individual pictures (known as cels) frame by frame. Instead of the illusion of motion, Hannah is concerned with a search for artifacts of what was going on when the cels were produced. Behind the magic was an assembly line of low-paid low-skilled workers, mostly women, who reproduced over and over the original drawing, with minuscule changes, so that the end product would come alive. Hannah is interested in a stray hair, fingerprint or mistake which would fly by unnoticed when the cartoon is played but which is a relic of the astonishing amount of labor that went into the hapless cat once again unsuccessfully chasing the wily mouse.
This work came out of Hannah’s doctoral dissertation. In addition to all her research on the luminaries of early film, Hannah alludes to theoretical writings which try to sort out where art lies in works so steeped in collaboration. Having written my own dissertation many years ago on the line between live and puppet theater, I found the passages where she contrasts human-actor films with cartoons particularly absorbing.
That Frame by Frame made its way into print is a tribute to her scholarship. She died of meningitis just as her career was taking off. I am grateful to her colleagues from the University of Chicago, where she got her degree, and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where she taught, and to her family, for ensuring the publication of this work.
