Animated personalities - reading stardom in American theatrical short cartoons

The thesis reads American theatrical short film animation (produced from 1911 to 1972) through the prism of star studies. The work examines how cartoons released during this period privileged a recurring animated personality, and identifies many instances in which cartoon stars have been marketed using the same rhetoric as their live-action equivalents. Figures such as Bugs Bunny and Felix the Cat were frequently discussed in terms of a cinematic career , positioned as an employee (rather than a creation or trademark) of a specific Hollywood studio, and presented as self-governing and autonomous (even though they are, in reality, entirely constructed by a team of animators). Star studies theory would traditionally deny animated characters star status in part because they lack a private life , and yet the examples above indicate that an off-screen presence was regularly implied in studio publicity and in the films themselves. By establishing animated characters as viable stars, the thesis also deconstructs and challenges many of the existing assumptions underpinning live-action stardom. Animation exposes just how persuasive the moving visual image can be in terms of conveying personality and the illusion of life, whether it is indexically linked to a real-world referent or not. The thesis begins with a study of silent animation, and argues that the model for cartoon stardom was established before the coming of sound. Subsequent chapters focus on instances of scandal that were associated with the animated star in the 1930s, and how cartoon characters contributed to the war effort and boosted morale during the Second World War. The work also reads animated characters in relation to live-action slapstick comedy, and discusses whether stars can be read in terms of authorship. Animated stars are compared to live-action stars working within both the Hollywood studio system and in the post-studio era. The conclusion develops frameworks for attempting to understand long-running animated stars such as Mickey Mouse, whose existence is coming ever closer to exceeding traditional expectations of human longevity.