CFP Children's Animation and After-Life Narratives (5/15/14; PAMLA 10/31-11/2/14)

112th Annual Conference - Riverside Convention Center, California
Friday, October 31 - Sunday, November 2, 2014

Reanimating the Child: Children's Animation and After-Life Narratives

Presiding Officer:
David Boyd, Metropolitan State University of Denver

The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a tremendous influx of children's animation from both the United States and Japan that dwell on death. This brand of animation examines, firstly, how children contemplate and process death, and secondly, reveals how the image of the child can be associated or conflated with the figure of the undead other. While Japanese illustrators and animators have produced many more examples of this type of children's media (specifically through the genre they call yokai shonen or "adventurous ghost stories"), American alternatives may also include The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (2003-2008), ParaNorman (2012), and Frankenweenie (2012). In these stories, a child either dies and becomes a supernatural hero, or experiences loss and acquires supernatural powers that allow him/her to interact with the undead. The popularity of this mode seems to address not just a child's perception of loss, death and grieving, but also more expansive post-human anxieties concerning finitude, agency, and otherness.

Status:
Open (accepting submissions)
Associated Sessions
Reanimating the Child: Children's Animation and After-Life Narratives
Topic Type:
Special Session

- See more at: http://www.pamla.org/2014/topics/reanimating-child-childrens-animation-and-after-life-narratives#sthash.vhU68ITI.dpuf