The Poetics of Slumberland by Bukatman Scott

Author:Bukatman, Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2012-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

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DISOBEDIENT MACHINES

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue.

—OSCAR WILDE, THE SOUL OF MAN UNDER SOCIALISM

The preceding chapter emphasized the intimate bond between the animator’s labor and that labor’s product. This chapter will explore the trope of the disobedient machine—the animated creation that turns its back on its creator to pursue its own agendas, fulfill its own desires, or perhaps just fail in its own way. Such figures enact complex tensions among the terms animation, automatism, and autonomy, and—as the second part of the chapter will demonstrate—they don’t need to be cartoon characters at all. There are ways in which Eliza Doolittle is to Henry Higgins as Gertie the Dinosaur is to Winsor McCay—a virtuosic creation that demonstrates the creator’s abundant skill, a creation rooted in a wager or a dare, a creation that must pass a test on its creator’s behalf. Both Eliza and Gertie have their moments of compliance and their moments of resistance. The first part of the chapter will consider versions of disobedient machines encountered in animated films—cartoons, of course, but also horror and science fiction films that use animated models and/or whose narratives turn upon the animation of inanimate matter. The second part will turn to disobedient machines of the human variety, works that feature vivacious, “animated” characters who, like their cartoon forebears, are not so easily, or thoroughly, contained.

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