Kornhaber,
D. (2007). “Animating the War: The First World War and Children’s
Cartoons.” The Lion and the Unicorn, 31(2), 132–146.
doi:10.1353/uni.2007.0021
In “Animating the War: The First World
War and Children’s Cartoons,” Kornhaber asks the question of why animated
renderings of war during World War I are so different from those that follow in
the 1920s and 1930s. Why do animated texts that appear after World War I seem
so much more technical? She also wonders if this shift has anything to do with
the medium of animation and its relationship to children (132).
Kornhaber takes a cultural/historical
approach to analyzing these questions, looking at the histories of major
animators during the period and the relationships between animation and
children’s animation. Because many have argued that animation was not
originally thought of as a children’s media, Kornhaber takes time to defend the
role of cartoons for children, claiming that the first animation in 1910, Little Nemo in Slumberland is about “the
fantastical dreams of a sleeping boy” (133). She also notes that the connection
between animation and non-fiction have always been present, citing Gertie the Dinosaur as a cartoon that
wanted to accurately portray the movements of a dinosaur (134).
After establishing cartoons as
children’s material and scientifically driven, Kornhaber looks at animation
done during and after World War I. She analyzes two cartoons, The Sinking of the Lusitania and A.W.O.L. Lusitania contains “fastidiously detailed depictions of the
technologies involved” (135), but in A.W.O.L
the setting of France during WWI shows no consequences of war (i.e. guns,
soldires or destroyed buildings) (136). During WWI, cartoons seemed to fall
into these categories of either realism or abstractionism.
After WWI, however, cartoons took a
different approach to depictions of war. Instead of being either realistic or
abstract, “American animation would return to interplay of abstraction and
mimesis in its treatments of the war” (137). One example is the animation Felix Turns the Tide, which features
realistic artillery, but the battle is won when Felix, a butcher clerk calls in
anthropomorphic hot dogs to save the day.
It is also a time when animation turned from being more universal to
focusing on the audience of children, with tie-in merchandise. One of the
reasons for this connection between war cartoons and very realistic depictions
of violence (realistic anatomy and guns) was that many animators were employed
by studios contracted by the military, including animators that would move on
to work for Disney and Warner Brothers (138). Most of them started out drawing
cartoons on cleaning and loading guns or basic first aid (138). So, they drew
what they knew.
From YouTube
While Kornhaber is not directly
relating her research to rhetoric, she is looking at the way that World War I
was shown to the public. At the time, newsreels were important, but film
quality meant that animation was a new and much needed technology. It also
shows a connection between war and animation from a very early on in the
media’s development, and can clue me into why Ari Folman chose to present his
argument through animation. This interplay between mimesis and abstraction is
particularly significant. In considering Waltz
With Bashir, many parts of it are scientifically accurate; a scene with
dying horses immediately comes to mind. Yet other parts, where interviewees are
describing dreams or events they are unclear on, are more abstract and even
surreal. This can better represent the feeling of those memories. Memory is key
to Waltz With Bashir and in
considering Nemo in Slumberland, the
idea of dreams and disjointed memories haunts the piece. Animation is certainly
a strong rhetorical resource for the film.