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Ways of Constructing the Negative Affect in American 1990 – 2000s Animated TV Shows

Student: Zolotavina Anna

Supervisor: Daniil Nebolsin

Faculty: Faculty of Humanities

Educational Programme: Culture Studies (Master)

Final Grade: 9

Year of Graduation: 2024

In everyday life, animation most often occupies the position of one of the simplest and most understandable art forms, the perception of which does not require special knowledge or skills. Cartoons are watched by both adults and children; this is family entertainment, the status of which implies some universal, win-win formula for interaction with the viewer. The attitude towards animation is condescending – this is even signaled by the way it is nominated as “cartoons”: that is, something cute, sentimental, frivolous. If we continue the associative series, we can discover another stable characteristic – safety. Violence (or death as its extreme) in cartoons usually does not have such a powerful impact: the viewer always remembers that it is a “make-believe” because he always sees the material “frame” of the cartoon - a clay, celluloid or CGI-based medium. However, animation can still go beyond established aesthetic boundaries. And when figurative animatedness reaches extreme values, it reveals itself in a liminal quality: zany cartoons suddenly become creepy, disgusting and annoying. This work is devoted to how this liminality is achieved in US animated television series of the 1990s – 2000s: how affective mechanisms are structured in animated series and what techniques are used to construct them.

Full text (added May 17, 2024)

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