Revising Animation Genres: Jan Svankmajer, Tim Burton and James Cameron and the Study of Myth

Scientific Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Film Science, grade: N/A: Professional Lecture, University of Technology, Sydney (School of Design), course: MA Animation, language: English, abstract: This lecture 'Revising Animation Genres: Jan Svankmajer, Tim Burton and James Cameron and the Study of Myth' addresses the idea or concept of today's classification of genres for animation feature films and interrogates why this concept needs to be revised today. The lecture is also about what makes it possible to tell a story successfully within films that use animation visual effects today. To do this, it discusses why the concept of the animation genre needs to be revised and suggests how today we need to look at the idea of genres in animation differently than we did in the past. By contrast with the modernism of the past (when fixed styles in art and culture had existed, making it possible to create certain strong recognisable frameworks for art which had helped us categorise different styles and genres and types of film and types of stories), today, a lot more art and art making is made up from a lot of pastiche, which now sees the appropriating of a mixture of ideas from other contexts, genres and themes. This appropriation of ideas previously not normally grouped together within an artwork or film or piece of animation is now being combined into an overall fraternizing of codes and references in films that often would employ animation visual effects.

Cyrus Manasseh is a guitarist, philosopher and musicologist. He teaches in universities and privately as a higher education consultant. Prof. Cyrus Manasseh PhD is also a Freelance Researcher and author of the books 'The Lead Guitarist'; 'The Island Library'; and 'The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum 1968-90'. He is an international scholar and has presented his ideas in a number of countries. He is author of numerous essays and scientific articles in the field of art history, film, music. architecture, video, museums, evolving media and theatre-drama. His published essays and articles include: 'The Words of Gandhi and How the Libertarian Collectivist Anti-individualistic Post-Modern Turn has Shaped our World,' 'Against Roland Barthes. Why Ibsen's "A Doll's House" is Not a Feminist Text, but a Humanist one,' 'Revising Animation Genres: Jan Svankmajer, Tim Burton and James Cameron and the Study of Myth,' 'Cinema and Mass Media in Modernity. Walter Benjamin and the Reproducible Image,' 'The Problem with the Influence of the Moving Image in Society Today, the Alter-Modern and the Disappearance of a Focus on the Internal', The Art Museum in the 19th Century J. J. Winckelmann's Influence on the Establishing of the Classical Paradigm of the Art Museum; Art without the Aesthetic? Defining Conceptual & Post-Conceptual Practices'; 'Art, Language & Machines: Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia & Raymond Roussel' and many others. He has presented his research at international academic forums in London, Sydney, Perth, Venice, Prague and Harvard where he was session chair and has lectured and has taught extensively in Italian, Irish and Australian Universities and Colleges. He was a finalist for the International Award for Excellence in the Constructed Environment Journal Writers Award Annual Prize for the academic essay 'An Inquiry into the Design and the Aesthetics of the Venice Biennale Pavilions and Film'. He is particularly focused on the problematic of post-modernism for culture and society. His novels 'The Lead Guitarist' and 'The Island Library' are currently available.