Editorial

Abstract

In a previous Special Issue on New Perspectives on Animation Historiography (Volume 17, No 1), Co-Guest Editors Rada Bieberstein and Erwin Feyersinger wrote what they called an ‘open paper’ inviting scholars to consider joining the discussion around ways to approach histories and historiographies of animation. While none of the articles in the present issue explicitly respond to this, this issue of animation: an interdisciplinary journal has a thread of history running through it that loosely links the articles, yet in very different ways, from documentary history or a history of myth to national history, historiography or the development history of a single film. We hope you pick up some of the threads and that you enjoy this issue as much as we did working with the authors. One way that animation is employed is in the visualization of what is unseen or unwitnessed, yet known. It has featured in many films and broadcast programmes that work with historical subjects, using imaginative interpretations of texts, drawings, sound recordings or oral histories; these animation segments or sequences are often graphic or artistic designs and materials. One of the interesting developments after the digital shift has been the explosion of films that do not look like animation, and aspire to realism, but are made with animation techniques using animation we are not supposed to see. While this kind of animation tends to be used in feature films and fantasy fiction, it is also put to use in documentary and historical projects, and this is the subject of Jason Woodworth-Hou’s ‘Reanimating the Master Narrative: How They Shall Not Grow Old Curates the Perception of Common Truth through CGI Animation’. He unfolds the origin of director Peter Jackson’s personally motivated project, discusses the aesthetics of CGI and realism, the work with archives and war footage, and the digital frame-by-frame processes used to rework the footage. He then concentrates on a key question for our field: why does Jackson avoid using the term ‘animation’ in discussions of this film? Peppered with interviews and underpinned by references to Gilles Deleuze, Andrew Darley and Stephen Prince, in particular, as well as media reviews of the film, Woodworth-Hou constructs a convincing argument around animation techniques and aesthetics in Jackson’s ‘re-animating’ of his subjects, with an interesting observation about the sound created post-hoc for the film (the footage was silent). He emphasizes the importance of animation in the ‘reimagining’ of factual histories and raises wellformulated concerns as to why reanimated historical documentary film needs closer academic and audience scrutiny. Also a form of historical retelling, but this time of a myth that is embedded in historical political and social systems, is Chengcheng You’s ‘The Demon Child and His Modern Fate: Reconstructing the Nezha Myth in Animated Fabulation’. You concentrates on the three animated features that depict this myth, undertaking an investigation that works with intertextual aesthetics and Gilles Deleuze’s notion of fabulation to enfold various media forms into a transmedia 1134726 ANM0010.1177/17468477221134726AnimationEditorial editorial2022