Reading Animation through the Eyes of Anthropology: A Case Study of sub-Saharan African Animation

Abstract

This article aims to present an argument for why anthropology could provide animation studies with a new set of critical models that move away from the dominant paradigms that currently circulate in Western academic discourse. The author discusses how these models can be drawn upon when reading animation and she utilizes supporting examples of sub-Saharan animations to promote the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to reading animation. This approach is bidirectional, flowing from anthropology to animation studies and the reverse. Where this article shows how animation theory stands to gain from anthropology, it will also illustrate how one can include animation in the visual anthropologist’s methodology.

Keywords

African animation African studies animation studies animation theory anthropology festival curatorship the ‘Other’visual anthropology

Animation critical writing and the authoring of identities

Stories, like the music and dance that in many societies accompany the telling of stories, are a kind of theatre where we collaborate in reinventing ourselves and authorizing notions, both individual and collective, of who we are. (Jackson, 2002: 16)

Animation can present stories that speak of the people that made them, and the context from which they emerge, to an audience that respond by negotiating the ‘re-invention’ of these narratives. Whether animation represents the artistic practices of a time and aesthetic that is informed by a collective and cultural understanding of a form, or whether it draws from specific metaphors and narrative structures, its versatility in the use of different artistic practices has presented a possibility to academics to open a window onto a different cultural landscape outside of their own. Echoing Jackson’s thoughts, it is the intention here to point towards recognizing the art of negotiation and collaboration that occurs between animator and audience, or artist and critical writer, and how these can play a part in authoring new identities and, in places, the possible myths that surround them.

Scholarly writing on animation is now circulating within academic contexts beyond the immediate discipline of animation studies, presenting animation as a study worthy of debate and reflection within popular culture and the arts (Buchan, 2006). However, this writing remains largely self-referential in its uses of Western ideologies and theories, alongside the countless mainstream publications on the history of Disney and other similar large Western animation studios. King et al. (2010: 6) present an extension of this argument when considering the more sophisticated analyses that engage with racial, sexual and gender-related cultural texts; here they list a myriad of texts relating to Disney, and state:

The research that has been published on the animated world focuses almost entirely on Disney (the empire and/or the man) … [and we] have come to believe that the singular focus on Disney, along with the discussion of isolated categories such as gender (to the exclusion of others, such as race), is limiting.

Whilst there is other evidence of research on animation that is not restricted ‘entirely on Disney’ (Gan, 2009; Lu, 2009, Rall, 2011; Su, 2009), King et al.’s observations do emphasize the perceived predominance of an interest in this topic versus others. Even when less attention is directed at these overarching players, then the narrative tends to be positioned within a predominantly Western historical context as in Wells’s seminal Understanding Animation (1997), Maureen Furniss’s Art in Motion; Animation Aesthetics (1998) and Animation – Art and Industry (2009), or Esther Leslie’s Hollywood Flatlands (2002), with her focus on modernism and the avant garde. This article will illustrate how anthropology can serve to alert the academic to the trappings of a belief in the centrality of Western thought (Said, 1985). It will evidence, through the use of examples, how images are circulated, negotiated and understood on different terms within a local context. It intends to show how animators who live within a post-colonial landscape, in particular, still wrestle with the tensions of making animations that are freely self-defined instead of the types of images made to accommodate a Western expectation of an exotic equivalent that fits into the hegemonic myths surrounding the African continent (Mudimbe, 1992; Oguibe, 2004; Picton, 1992). Some cultural anthropologists and critical writers (Askew and Wilk, 2002; Hall, 1992) discuss the ideas surrounding the complicity of the West in creating and supporting a relationship of power and necessary difference in order to assert its own standing as one of an authority on the subject. Judgments of taste and quality are made against a yardstick which the West holds up to the rest.

As a consequence, it is easy to forget that aesthetic dimensions of taste are culturally distinct for different people, that the metaphors that circulate within narrative are also distinct, and that what one deems to be of merit and value is not a truism for all contexts of reception (Kulick and Willson, 1994). A European and American emphasis can belie the understanding of sub-Saharan African animations, for example, as they would circulate and be engaged with on local terms. Similar concerns have also been raised about the circulation of the Japanese term ‘anime’ within a local context and its meaning in an international context (Gan, 2009; Imamura, 1953). The negotiation of the multiple meanings of this term has meant, as Gan discusses, that local audiences draw upon different terms, such as manga eiga (TV manga), as an intentional avoidance ‘in order to highlight the difference between anime and animation’ and therefore present a meaningful distinction between different categories as they are engaged with locally.

Recent scholarship on animation has developed an arguably stronger academic emphasis with the appearance of subject-specific journals such as animation: an interdisciplinary journal supporting this endeavour. This writing is attracting a host of critical thinkers from across the arts and humanities who are beginning to assess and discuss the impact and relevance of animation in the study of the moving image (Buchan, 2006; Cholodenko, 2009; Ward, 2006; Wells, 1997). In certain cases, it tends to draw from theories that have circulated in Western academic discourse and are applied to other moving images, such as its indexical cousin film, or those discussed in the fields of media and cultural studies. There are instances in literature where animation is not only simply historicized, but instead extended to drawing parallels between relationships of the form to the visual arts of a time and place, as in the case of Wells’s Animation and America (2002). However, in the majority of cases, these theories are informed by artistic practices within a Western socio-political context and reside within a tradition of the European and American historical narrative, and this can become problematic if one is trying to locate a practice that sits outside of this context.

Redressing the balance: using an anthropological perspective

The interaction between the authors of dominant narratives in animation studies and independent and/or marginal animators can make for an apprehensive relationship fraught with expectations from both parties about the purpose and meaning of the animated film. As Jackson (2002: 13) illustrates:

Every person is at once a who and a what – a subject who actively participates in the making or unmaking of his or her own world, and a subject who suffers and is subjected to actions by others, as well as by forces that lie outside of his or her control. This oscillation between being an actor and being acted upon is felt in every human encounter.

This state of oscillation is one that is typically experienced by marginal animators who are active and participatory in the ‘making and unmaking’ of their animated worlds, but they are also being acted upon by their encounters with different audiences and critical writers from the domain of animation. The discourses that circulate within the fields of anthropology can be drawn upon by writers on animation to equip an analysis with a critical perspective that enables different kinds of interpretation. One of the key underpinnings of the discipline of anthropology is the knowledge that ‘comparative terms can never be presumed in advance to fit exactly the ideas and practices they purport to describe, far less provide a definitive and unchallengeable account’ (Finnegan, 1992: 4). This knowledge equips the anthropologist with an important ‘sensitivity to the dangers of squeezing the rich variety of cultures into categories set by our own cultural assumptions’ (p. 5). Western critical analysis of animation could benefit from an approach that is mindful of these varieties and perceptive to different artistic practices. This in turn would create the space for an appreciation of the animated form that is not confined to Western aesthetic assumptions and that is aware of the states of oscillation that Jackson purports.

Exploring the uses and benefits of applying anthropological methods to the analysis of animation films, I will demonstrate the advantage of shedding an authoritative voice in favour of considering alternative positions. These methods become especially relevant when dealing with films that may be perceived as ‘marginal’, as is the case of sub-Saharan animation at large. The perception of marginality in relation to the existence of a central body is frequently problematized within Africanist studies and visual anthropology (Enwezor, 1999) and must be considered within the field of any critical endeavour which seeks to understand the ‘Other’. As Enwezor states: ‘Under the demanding imperialistic gaze of twentieth-century Western art history, modernism’s self-arrogated centrality and exclusionism become the great totems that bear the imprimaturs of this legacy of erasure, which marginalizes as it appropriates’ (p. 246).

If current critical debate in the field of animation studies is predominantly self-referential and embedded in European and American ideologies, it can, as Enwezor illustrates, unwittingly be creating an exclusive space for the discussion of certain types of animation, and consequentially assigning a hierarchy of attributed value. It could be argued that the European and American animation film festival circuit can be regarded as a space which contributes inadvertently to silencing ‘marginal’ animations. It does so by applying its own measure of quality and value based on Western aesthetic judgments of taste, and short-listing or screening only the types of animation that it perceives, in its own terms, as a valuable addition to the body of world animation. Apart from the short publication at Annecy by Bruno Edera (1993) on African animation, little exposure or importance has been given to the developments emerging from the African continent, especially the sub-Saharan region. Few animation festivals in Europe showcase examples of sub-Saharan animation; a notable exception is the 2006 Animadrid that ran a special program, Carnet Noir, with a focus on sub-Saharan animation (Briscoe, 2006: 5). Generally, however, an interest in African animation is more noticeable at African film festivals.¹ This limited interest in the West is not a consequence of a lack of animations from Africa. In fact, as Monica Blanc Gomez’s program for the Festival des Toiles Animées (2009) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso demonstrates, there is ample evidence of animation being made throughout the African continent.²

There are consequentially two political problems that should be addressed here. Firstly, that a Western festival programmer can be applying a limited view of the success or failure of an animation that is relative to his or her own (central) position, rather than attempting to understand the significance of that animation within its own local context. The implication of this central position occupied by the Western programmer is that the West is seen, and sees itself, as the authority on judgments of taste and value. A similar stance when discussing African cinema is noted by Keyan Tomaselli (1999: 45), who discusses the use of European interpretative frameworks in determining the reading of African texts. Secondly, such resultant gate-keeping contributes to the belief that because an artifact (whether it is a painting, sculpture, film, animation, etc.) is not seen or made visible, then effectively it ceases to exist. As some studies show, this erasure proliferates in mainstream television animation. In 2007–2008, the International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television, Munich, commissioned a study on children’s television worldwide. The study found that children’s content had a predominance of about 72 per cent Caucasian characters and that 84 per cent of children’s fictional content on television consisted of animation. The authors note that: ‘Children’s TV, especially quality oriented broadcasting, needs to optimize its programming in order to counteract these biased and distorted representations of reality’ (Gotz et al., 2008: 8). Furthermore, this erasure and/or distortion is supported by the industries that hold the largest stake in global distribution, with North America controlling 60 per cent of the export region, followed by Europe with 27.9 per cent (p. 6). In addition to the control of distribution, McMillin (2010: 22) notes that:

Critics argue that formats which have minimal ‘cultural discount’ or minimal native elements such as accents, language, cultural themes and local settings; and that are ‘culturally odorless’, in that the very local, or the very ethnic is absent (Iwabuchi, 2004), are the ones that dominate the market.

The ‘culturally odorless’ and ambiguous racial categories in animation have also been discussed in the context of the ease of exportation of Japanese anime to Western audiences (Lu, 2009). Lu suggests this racial ambiguity may be a combination of the result of an early appropriation of a Disneyesque style and that the phenomenon of ORP (Own Race Projection) may be ‘an unintended by-product of the globalization process or a powerful hidden commercial tactic to maintain non-Caucasian audiences while expanding in the Western media market’ (p. 184). Whilst Lu demonstrates that the intent that motivates this occurrence remains a subject for debate, this study provides concrete evidence of cultural and racial erasure at work.

Case studies from sub-Saharan Africa

The ASIFA (Association Internationale du Film d’Animation) 2009 Prize Laureate was awarded to animator and filmmaker Moustapha Alassane from Niger, for his pioneering work in the field and his contribution to world animation. This is a poignant example of the particular invisibility of African animators. As a young artist, Alassane was trained by the pioneering animator Norman McLaren and ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch. Throughout his career, he made 30 films and the current available literature cites at least seven of these as animated films (Ondengo, 2005). His film Le Mort du Gandji (1965) was the first post-colonial sub-Saharan animation made, followed by the animated film Bon Voyage Sim (1966). For this reason, Alassane carries the accolade of the father of African animation (Bazzoli, 2003). Notwithstanding, ASIFA took 30 years to recognize the importance of his work, despite the fact that Alassane was the first African animator to be accredited by the organization since its founding at Annecy, France in 1960. Unfortunately, this award came late in the day; at the age of 78, Moustapha Alassane was in poor health and could not travel to personally receive it. The Egyptian animator Mohammed Ghazala, who was elected to present this award at the festival Animafrik in Ghana, spoke of this long awaited recognition: ‘It was a really great moment for the animators in Africa, who finally felt some confidence, that they could be recognized on the international level by an appreciated organization like ASIFA, and that Africa is not ignored‘ (Ghazala, 2009).

Alassane, whilst being considered peripheral in global animation, is comparatively in good stead and positioned advantageously with respect to many other marginal African animators who have not even managed to disseminate their work at the EurAm festivals. This emphasis on the festival circuit, as a primary outlet for the work, is a direct consequence of the difficulties still faced by the African film industry in the area of distribution, as Mhando (2010: 19) discusses: ‘African film producers often appeal to the international commercial market but receive meager or non-existent earnings. In the process, they become totally dependent on the festival circuit for the distribution of their work.’

In situations where international commercial funding is unavailable, and where their own independent funds are limited, African filmmakers and animators find themselves forced to rely on foreign cultural offices and NGOs as a source of revenue. Here again, a political engagement occurs between the two parties, whereby the content is adapted for purpose (Godfrey Mwampwembwa, 2005, personal correspondence). Alassane’s earlier work, for example, received funding from the French Cultural Office, having the added benefit of distribution beyond its context of production, in this case Niger, and of screenings to a wider audience. The impact of dealing with the French Cultural Office, or the Ministry of Cooperation as it was known at the time (1964), must have also presented tensions of its own kind, as its identity was bound to that of the oppressor from colonial times. Olivier Barlet (2008: 34) explores this political relationship in the context of early African cinema and the first post-colonial filmmakers, and states:

The early filmmakers were an oddity who lacked means. They relied on co-productions or rode the success related to popular theatre forms (as in Nigeria), or foreign help as was the case in Francophone Africa. Indeed, anxious to get back in touch with an Empire that was slipping away from it, France supported filmmakers in its former empire through the Ministry of Cooperation as early as 1963.

The politics of curatorial practices and the tensions between artist/animator and funding body, distributor or producer are not part of a new discourse, neither are they restricted to post-colonial conditions. However, they bear reiterating in the present context of the analysis of animation films that emerge from difficult political or socio-economic environments. These tensions are evident for example in Quigley’s (2005) discussion of female animators in Australia as a marginal group. Marginality can take many forms and these can in turn share a similarity in experience. In his discussions on Orientalism, Said (1985: 91) draws relationships between the experience of feminism, women’s studies, black or ethnic studies, socialist and anti-imperialist studies,

all of which take for their point of departure the right of formerly un- or mis-represented human groups to speak for and represent themselves in domains defined, politically and intellectually, as normally excluding them, usurping their signifying and representing functions, overriding their historical reality.

My own research in the field of sub-Saharan African animation illustrates this invisibility on many levels. The available literature in this field is limited to a handful of writers (Bazzoli, 2003; Bendazzi, 2004/2005) with near negligible evidence of any historical documentation, let alone a critical analysis that is informed by the local culture and practices. Western animation circles – whether academic or from the private industrial sector – are not always aware of the existence, proliferation and variety of locally produced African animation films, let alone of their specific historical narratives. Instead, evidence suggests a greater awareness of contemporary animation produced by diaspora and migrant artists such as Ezra Wube (Ethiopia) and Cilia Sawadogo (Burkina Faso), whose work is inspired by their country of origin or their cultural heritage and aided by access to the materials, technologies and resources available in Europe and the US. The Society of Animation Studies’ online archive (Linde, 2006) of papers from conferences dating back to 1989 lists only one paper on the topic of African animation: ‘Where is Ananse? Issues in African [Cinema] Animation’ by Charles Da Costa in Atlanta (2009). Consequently, the ‘marginal’ animators who have passed unnoticed by the West’s historical radar and unaccounted for are disappearing in time as the history of these works remains unwritten. This concept of erasure is highlighted in Said’s (1985: 101) exploration of Orientalism:

So far as Orientalism in particular and the European knowledge of other societies in general have been concerned, historicism meant that the one human history uniting humanity either culminated in or was observed from the vantage point of Europe, or the West. What was neither observed by Europe nor documented by it was therefore ‘lost’ until, at some later date, it too could be incorporated by the new sciences of anthropology, political economics, and linguistics.

Furthermore, as Said argues, when the knowledge of the ‘Other’ and its value are discussed, this is done based on dominant EurAm terms. Said articulates the tensions created by a self-referential attitude of Western thought in relation to the ‘Other’:

Now it is often the case that you can be known by others in different ways than you know yourself, and that valuable insights might be generated accordingly. But that is quite a different thing than pronouncing it as immutable law that outsiders ipso facto have a better sense of you as an insider than you do of yourself … There is a flat assertion of quality, which the Western policy-maker, or his faithful servant, possesses by virtue of his being Western, white, non- Muslim. (p. 97)

At times this position of authority is also compounded by an expectation that is created by the West of the ‘Other’; if it is not applying its own aesthetic ideals, then it is applying a mythical notion of ‘authenticity’. A result of this is that sub-Saharan animation is frequently met with a fancy of what constitutes ‘African-ness’ stemming from a whole history of images that have circulated in Europe and America depicting the African as ‘tribal’, technologically ‘primitive’ and creating arts of a formally reductive type (Enwezor, 1999). Whilst it may be that the African animator can draw from specific symbolic imagery and aesthetic styles, this does not mean that the artist is in any way limited to engaging solely with these devices and not others. This creative process does not need to be seen as exclusive of a technique or influence from the West. Current information and communication technologies have improved and facilitated the cross fertilization of ideas and influences so that in a sense it would be naïve to believe that the African animator is somehow untainted by his or her Western counterpart.

This tension and movement between the concerns positioned within the local and their relationship to a wider, more global, context have been discussed in the context of academic theories on post-colonial film, and specifically the thematic concerns that emerge in African film (Haynes, 1999). Academic literature on African film has discussed its presence or marginality in the global film context much more than its animated counterpart; this mirrors the content of academic literature on the moving image in the West that tends to elide animation. The concerns discussed by Boughedir (2000) illustrate the problematic tensions that exist for an African filmmaker and emerge from being positioned outside of the dominant modes of production and distribution. African filmmakers must navigate the difficult terrain of negotiating ‘authenticity’:

The filmmakers of the 1990s cast a lucid glance at their past and try to do so as the hero of Le Medecin de Gafire [Diop, 1983] does – establish a synthesis between the living elements of African tradition and contributions from the West … they give priority to their quest for the cultural specificity of Africa in comparison to the priority of political concerns sought by the filmmakers of the previous decade. (Boughedir, 2000: 116)

The synthesis of cultural specificity and Western contribution is not an easy balance. This is evident in the case of the Kenyan artists Just A Band, who make their own music, videos, animation films, video exhibitions and installations. They regularly use web-based technologies, including social networking sites, to distribute their work and market their music to an audience that stems beyond the local. They are inspired by manga and anime, and their music is defined as Kenyan House and Electronic music (African Digital Art, 2009). It could be argued that their animated music video Iwinyo Piny (2009) is reminiscent of the Jamie Hewlett’s Gorillaz virtual cartoon-band, but set in Nairobi (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Still from Iwinyo Piny. © Just A Band, 2009. Reproduced with permission.

Their viral video campaign ‘Makmende’ is stylistically reminiscent of 1970s US Blaxploitation movies; however, it presents a uniquely Kenyan action-hero character, Kenya’s answer to Chuck Norris. Makmende is the popular term used by children to refer to someone who thinks of himself or herself as a hero … ‘Who do you think you are, Makmende?’ (Vinograd, 2010). Here the critic needs to recognize that these artists are young, urban and technologically savvy Kenyan artists, whose cultural identity permeates their artistic endeavours, rather than regarding their work as an artifact that has been sullied by the West’s far-reaching arm.

An African artist, or in this case animator, can be caught between these two diametrically opposed points. If animators resort to utilizing methods and techniques that derive from the West, they are accused of mimicking or of being un-authentic; if they succumb to creating images that pander to this mythical notion of authenticity, then they risk being accused of being naïve or crude in their execution (as we will see with Bendazzi, in Bazzoli, 2003, below). Whilst an African animator may be acutely aware of this paralysing contradiction or double-bind, the same cannot be said for some critical thinkers in animation studies. There is an unspoken expectation which informs some critics’ interpretation and reading of these animations.

An example of this can be seen in Bendazzi’s (2004/2005: 14) description of Moustapha Alassane’s animated films, referred to here as having a naïve and charming quality:

In spite of these facts, he can be considered as a naïf auteur. In the short 2001 film Kokoa 2… he makes the same mistakes as to timing, script, and filming he had made in Bon Voyage, Sim, in 1966 – the first film of his I saw.

He then goes on to say:

The fact is, Alassane has never studied animation. He has invented it. He has not adopted the conventions of timing, filming, script-writing and editing established by Californian or Parisian professionals. He sticks to his own rules, which makes him an original animation director.

Here Bendazzi inadvertently makes the inference of a less developed use of technique in these films, and implies requirement of knowledge of these animation techniques that is aligned to his own measure. The reality of course is quite different as any search for a biography of Alassane would illustrate.³ However, this article contends that Alassane could have executed his animation films with the same precision and fluidity in motion as any Western counterpart (having been trained by Norman McLaren and Jean Rouch), but this perhaps was not a priority. Whilst it is true that there are rudimentary movements and an economy of frames in sections of both of Alassane’s films, there are also sequences of metamorphosis of the frogs in Bon Voyage Sim that would illustrate otherwise. Bendazzi excludes the possibility that this economical execution was purposeful.

In the same article, Bendazzi (2004/2005: 15) describes JM Kibushi’s film Muana Mboka in a similar, simplistic fashion which by no means does justice to the complexity of purpose and imagery in this film:

Muana Mboka, by the already mentioned Jean-Michel Kibushi Ndjate Wooto, presents a similar case. The plot is almost negligible: a street-boy, like many others in African cities, who lives by misdemeanors and theft, saves a minister’s life (ironically, the Minister of Public Works), and is rewarded by him and envied by other people. A realistic (or, better, neorealistic) film, a tough one, it denounces the African urban reality.

Bendazzi’s description omits many crucial details that appear in the film. It does not address the importance of the choice of cut-out animation as a technique that is able to retain the aesthetic of Congolese popular painting, whilst allowing for a realistic quality of movement. (see Figure 2). He fails to mention that the narrative is also interspersed with surreal sequences that re-present Congolese popular painting as a stylistic theme in its own right. Kibushi places the image of a Congolese popular painting that circulates on the streets of Kinshasa within an animation that resembles the painting in form and function – a correlation between the function of the painting within Congolese society as a critique of systems of power, and the function of his own animation (Callus, 2010a) (see Figure 3). In the same sequence he also uses recurring images of the tortoise, a metaphor for the resilience of the main character Muana Mboka, and the elephant, that represents systems of power, authority, consumption and corruption. Bendazzi devotes hardly any attention to these details and consequentially lacks the ability to consider the content of this animation under a different light. He neglects to reflect upon the importance of how this animation functions when it circulates locally in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Figure 2.

Two frames from Kibushi’s Muana Mboka referencing the metaphor of systems of power. © Studio Malembe Maa, J-M. Kibushi N.W. 1999. Reproduced with permission.

Figure 3.

Two frames from Kibushi’s Muana Mboka referencing the metaphor of systems of power. © Studio Malembe Maa, J-M. Kibushi N.W. 1999. Reproduced with permission.

It is the position of this author that, if the animation scholar can move away from less culturally informed approaches to analysis, then he or she can begin to start addressing culturally specific questions that will inform the process of analysis, resulting in a richer experience of the form. It is then possible to ask: ‘How do these images circulate with a local context? What meaning do they carry locally? Which metaphors are drawn upon?’

Understanding the culturally specific on its own terms

The documentary animation Kinshasa: Septembre Noir (1987) utilizes a narrative structure whilst carrying the connotative weight of a documentary format. Its content deals with the events surrounding a military coup as seen through the eyes of children from Kinshasa who collaborated with Kibushi in the making of the film. The film consists of drawings made by the children that describe the unfolding events of this horrific moment. Jacquemin’s (2003) analysis of this film presents a discussion of it in light of documentary and artifact; the nature of the animated film serving as a document in its own right, as a testimony of the experiences of these children (see Figures 4 and 5). Beyond formal analysis, it has also been discussed for its performative affect (see Jean Rouch in Stoller, 1992) on those involved, acting upon the makers, as a cathartic exercise in reaction to the trauma of this event. Jackson (2002: 15) discusses the existential qualities of storytelling, or seeing it

as a vital human strategy for sustaining a sense of agency in the face of disempowering circumstances. To reconstitute events in a story is no longer to live those events in passivity but to actively rework them, both in dialogue with others and within one’s own imagination.

Figure 4.

Two frames from Kibushi’s Kinshasa: Septembre Noir referencing the white man and his pipe leaving the DRC. © Studio Malembe Maa, J-M. Kibushi N.W. 1987. Reproduced with permission.

Figure 5.

Two frames from Kibushi’s Kinshasa: Septembre Noir referencing the white man and his pipe leaving the DRC. © Studio Malembe Maa, J-M. Kibushi N.W. 1987. Reproduced with permission.

Whilst it is possible to engage with this animation as an artifact in its own right, anthropology can encourage a critic to position this film within a social and political context, and to understand, in this case, how this form negotiates systems of power within the Congolese context. Whilst the filmmaker could have narrated the events in descriptive fashion, he instead uses poetic structures to evoke a sense of the events as they unfold, and resorts to the uses of an expressive mode rather than a realistic one. This poetic choice allows Kibushi to present an interweaving of specific cultural innuendos of analogies, comparisons and veiled political critiques. He draws relationships across different key moments in Congolese history, comparing the assassination of local hero Patrice Lumumba to the disappearance of the musician (and filmmaker’s personal friend) Papa Nkoyi Edimba Djamba, and the image of Belgian colonizer, to that of the European migrant evacuees (Callus, 2010b).

There are moments in the film where the political inferences and undertones are ‘lost in translation’ due to the rudimentary nature of the drawings. Unless one is made aware of the specific colonial history and the circulation of certain motifs within Congolese popular painting, the intentional use of these images in Kibushi’s animation becomes redundant. The work of anthropologist and ethnographer Johannes Fabian (1996) in this field proved pivotal in informing a reading of this animation film. This occurs for example at the point when Kibushi narrates the events and describes the first people to flee the Congo during the coup.

In this scene, the children’s drawings depict men with hats and pipes accompanied by pets on a boat (see Figure 5). Throughout the film, these drawings lack the detailed texture and form that a trained artist would be able to depict. Therefore deciphering whether the individuals in these images portrayed the military, local traders, children, women, etc. relies on comprehension of basic visual cues. For example, the particular image of ‘man and pipe with dog or cat’ has a long history within post-colonial depictions of the colonizer in the DRC, and has become archetypal (or a stereotype – depending on your position) of the white man or mundele⁴ in Congolese popular paintings (see Figure 4). An outsider, unaware of the cultural currency of these visual cues, could be forgiven for mistaking the drawing as a depiction of any man (white or otherwise) who was leaving the country at the time. However, as one can appreciate, there is a strong political implication intended within the narrative that accompanies a reading of that image as a white man and not of an indigenous local.

This analysis illustrates how, when attempting to understand a type of animation film that is created and produced in a political, cultural and social context very different to the West (as in the case of sub-Saharan Africa, for example), drawing from anthropological writing, in the form of ethnographies, theories and/or its methods, is a valuable undertaking. Anthropology can serve to caution the academic of the trappings of a belief in the centrality of Western thought, and consequentially question the position of the West as a benchmark against which others are measured (Ginsburg, 1994). These ideas will be further explored below; at this point, suffice it to say that this is evidenced simply in our use of the terms ‘First World’ and ‘Third World’ to describe geographical demarcations that carry an inference of development in a linear sense.

Kulick and Willson’s (1994) article on the anthropological studies of audiences’ engagement with film, illustrate how an ineptitude or lack of volition to understand the ‘Other’ on their own terms reinforced this myth of ‘primitivism’. In fact, it could be argued that these studies also best illustrate an inability of the observer to understand something that resides outside of one’s own frame of reference. Discussing a study of Ghanaian audiences, Kulick and Willson (1994: 283–284) state:

Explanations of ‘primitive Africans’ who are ‘confused’ and not ‘sophisticated’ enough to watch the whole screen (they supposedly only scan the picture and see unimportant details, not what Wilson (1983: 32) feels they are supposed to see) sound to us more like colonial paternalism than satisfactory accounts.

In fact, Kulick and Willson illustrate that these inadequate explanations only serve to mask the shortcomings in an ability to extend one’s understanding beyond the confines of one’s own experience. As they go on to observe: ‘what we neglect to notice when we accept the assumptions [colonialist and racial stereotypes] that lie behind these kinds of analysis is that the gaze we attribute to others is in fact our own’ (p. 284). This restricted view contributes significantly to moving certain artists further into a frustrating position of marginality. Here the artist/animator must navigate minefields of discourses on authenticity, exoticization, myth and identity. Enwezor makes some salient observations about the positions that marginal artists find themselves in, that resonate with the sentiments of some of the African animators I have worked with. This similarity can be seen in the experiences of artists who reside in an ambiguous space and consequentially find themselves between accusations by Eurocentrics of not being ‘native’ enough, or of Africanists for not being ‘authentic’ enough (Enwezor, 1999: 252).

Enwezor argues that, although Western post-modernist theory presents itself as creating a space to recuperate and recognize the ‘decentred re-narration of non hegemonic discourse’ (p. 248), this is perhaps an ambitious and optimistic view. He sums this up by stating that, whilst there is an appeal to the postmodernist project, ‘The fact remains, however, and is always implicitly stated, that recognition of difference does not in itself connote inclusion nor acceptance’ (p. 248). Therefore, in addition to recognizing the differences between mainstream, or dominant animation types, and their marginal counterpart, it is worth considering that as we continue to refer to these animated films as ‘other’ or marginal, they remain excluded.

Animation for the anthropologist

Whilst animation studies can benefit from applying anthropological discourses in its approaches, there is also a strong case to be made for anthropology to cast its discerning eye on popular animation currently circulating in local and global contexts; such examples range from distribution of pirated CDs at the local market in Nigeria, travelling mobile cinemas in the Congo, to virtual online communities sharing and distributing their work on YouTube and other digital video upload sites. As Mahon (2000: 467) discusses:

In spite of the considerable political, economic, and cultural influence media and popular culture have on local, national, and global communities, in anthropology focused attention on the individuals and groups who produce these forms is still unconventional.

With the exception of a few artists such as South African William Kentridge and, in a similar vein, of discussions on African popular art (Vogel, 1991), animation from Africa and beyond is still battling to be considered an art with a capital A. This might explain the neglect of its critical inquiry in other disciplines, such as anthropology. Notwithstanding, it is its circulation as a popular medium, and the associated connotations I have outlined, that make it a subject worthy of more attention. It is in this space that animators, as contemporary ‘cultural producers’, are having an impact and in turn making a statement about their own context of production. A necessary focus on ‘the aesthetic choices of producers can illuminate the sociological and anthropological questions we ask and also direct us to new questions about, and more nuanced analyses of, these productions’ (Mahon, 2000: 479).

In order to understand how contemporary anthropology could utilize animation within its own methodology and analysis, it is important to introduce an ongoing and historical discussion of the photographic still and moving image’s particular relationship with this discipline. The use of the photographic image has had a difficult history within the field of anthropology. As early as 1939, pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead was already promoting the use of film and photography within the discipline as ethnographic media. At the time, their function as an artifact for visual documentation supported anthropology’s scientific method, but it also served to support the dissemination of the image of an ‘exotic Other’ (Banks and Murphy, 1999; Jacknis, 1988:160). Alongside its uses, Faris (2002: 80) points out the less desirable consequences of this indexical form, echoing Said’s concerns discussed previously:

The emergence of anthropology as a distinct field of inquiry with an abstract methodology coincided very closely with photography’s rise. The earliest anthropological methodology primers mention the importance of photography, and by the late nineteenth century photography of non-Westerners, of the exotic, was very popularly consumed.

Contemporary discourses within anthropology on the uses of photographic images tend to be positioned and framed in postmodern reflexivity. Here it becomes imperative to always be aware of the impossibility of the truth in an image, and to question the pro-filmic event and the constructed nature of the view that is presented, as the ethnographic filmmaker Trinh T Minh-ha’s film Reassemblage (1982) explores. However, for all intents and purposes, film of a photochemical indexical nature must rely on the pro-filmic environment – the time, place, space and people that make up the image that is screened. Animation, on the other hand, does not need a pro-filmic object or artifact to define its final makeup, and for this reason perhaps presents itself as even more problematic to position as indexical film. In Sarah Pink’s (2001: 24) words, whilst certain films may not necessarily be of anthropological intent, ‘they are also of value in exposing anthropologists and ethnographic filmmakers to ways of using image and sound to create expressive, rather than realist, representations of aspects of human experience and discourse.’ One example of the expressive depiction of human experience in the moving image that is not confined to realistic imagery (as understood in an indexical sense) is animation.

The technique of animation can present an opportunity to the artist to explore this expressive ability outside of the confines of realist representation. This discussion has been explored in particular detail within the debates surrounding the animated documentary (DelGaudio, 1997; Rozenkrantz, 2011; Special Issue: Documentary Animation, animation: an interdisciplinary journal 6(3), November 2011; Wells, 1997). Honess Roe (2011: 228) identifies ‘mimetic substitution’ as one possible function of animation within the documentary format utilized primarily in the case of an absence of filmed footage. The other more fascinating functions include the possibility of ‘non-mimetic substitution’ and ‘evocation’. The latter two functions offered by animation more importantly propel the moving image in documentary, and by extension ethnographic film, to new interpretative spaces. The documentary film need not be restricted to its own photo-chemical and indexical limitations – instead it can use animation (as Honess Roe observes) to

offer us an enhanced perspective on reality by presenting the world in a breadth and depth that live action alone cannot. Life is rich and complicated in ways that are not always available to observation, something that is reflected in the diversity of style and subject matter of contemporary animated documentaries. (p. 229)

Animation is a particularly fascinating medium to study because it has the ability to draw from a variety of different artistic practices that are invariably informed by the artist’s context of production, whether this occurs in the form of auteur-ist work or industrial practice. The following examples from sub-Saharan Africa illustrate the versatility of form, aesthetic and content that can reside within this medium. Animation can be painterly or illustrative, as in the case of Kibushi’s 2D cutout animations Muana Mboka (1999), Le Crapaud Chez Ses Beaux Parents (1991) (Callus, 2010a), or the South African animation The Tale of How (2006), by the artists of The Black Heart Gang. It can be sculptural as in Alassane’s Kokoa (1985) and the Zimbabwean The Legend of the Sky Kingdom (Hawkins, 2004) with its ‘junk-mation’ aesthetic, typical of the popular tourist art made from recycled objects. It can be theatrical as in the South African production And There in the Dust (2004), and filmic as in Jacquie Trowell’s animated documentary Beyond Freedom (2006). This myriad of artistic practice appears in countless permutations within animation, bearing witness to contemporary popular art with the potential for socio-political and cultural content that can inform the visual anthropologists study.

Critical writing on animation in the UK and US has only just begun to cast its attention to the diverse art produced by the ‘Other’ as presented here, and is in some instances still framed by a set of European or American myths. This, however, remains only a small part of the bigger picture. Currently, moving images travel in multiple directions and across large distances. Disney and other dominant Western studios permeate into the remotest places, reaching audiences whose life, culture and environment bear no resemblance to the images portrayed – and a concern with the Disney-fication of animation reemerges in the discourses of post-colonial studies (Tomlinson, 1991). There is a strong case to be made for the advantages of adopting an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of animation, which has been explored to an extent in this article. The intention here was to consider how Western critical theory can augment and inform its analysis of marginal animations using anthropological approaches. This is concurrent with an encouragement for visual anthropology to benefit from identifying ‘expressive’ media such as animation as an object of study. Furthermore, this article aims to offer scope within animation discourse for further interdisciplinary interactions to be discussed, suggesting that animation studies can profit from being open to these possibilities.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biography

Paula Callus is a Senior Lecturer at the National Centre of Computer Animation at Bournemouth University. She is currently undertaking a PhD in ‘Sub-Saharan African Animation’ at The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and in the process of creating an archive of African animation. Previous experience in this field includes educational consultancy and training for UNESCO’s ‘Africa Animated’ projects and compiling animation programmes for various festivals such as Africa in Motion (Edinburgh), Cambridge African Film Festival, Meknes Animation Festival (Morocco) and Africa at the Pictures (London).

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