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dc.contributor.authorFlaig, Paul
dc.date.accessioned2017-09-13T12:30:10Z
dc.date.available2017-09-13T12:30:10Z
dc.date.issued2016-03-01
dc.identifier251029190
dc.identifier0eeba26e-ab47-4858-a7a6-51381df3971f
dc.identifier84959040521
dc.identifier.citationFlaig , P 2016 , ' Slapstick after Fordism : WALL-E , automatism and Pixar’s fun factory ' , Animation , vol. 11 , no. 1 , pp. 59-74 . https://doi.org/10.1177/1746847715625017en
dc.identifier.issn1746-8477
dc.identifier.otherRIS: urn:04C2458F7120C22AB717E2C651C01D4D
dc.identifier.otherORCID: /0000-0003-4608-2091/work/80620732
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10023/11652
dc.description.abstractIn its history, production, plots and gestures, slapstick comedy was tied to the rise of modern labor in terms of both Taylorist theory and Fordist practice. Comic heroes ranging from live action comedians Chaplin or Keaton to animated animals Felix or Mickey worked against work through the playful excesses of their obediences and transgressions within an increasingly rationalized, industrial world. The digital animation studio Pixar summoned slapstick and its specifically Fordist resonances in its 2008 feature, WALL-E, yet offered a twist in humanizing a figure of perfected Fordism itself with its title character, a robot repetitively working in a post-apocalyptic earth devoid of human life. Explicitly modeled after Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd, WALL-E contrasts with the film’s humans, who are entirely liberated from labor through automation in a satirical reflection of both post-Fordist accounts of the ‘end of work’ as well as broader critiques of a distracting digital culture. This article focuses on the film’s revitalization of slapstick traditions within the context of recent debates about post-Fordism, the future of automated labor and the transformation of working human bodies. Just as slapstick’s relationship to modern labor touched on the playful mode of its cinematic production as well as their form as indexical montage so too does Pixar’s corporate reputation as ‘Creativity, Inc’ suggest a complex relationship between its slapstick hero and the digital labor animating his movement. The same will be argued of Pixar’s vaunted techniques with both digital image-making and commodity generation, both of which suggest a nostalgic animation of slapstick’s antinomies as much as a disavowal of the post-Fordist production of which Pixar is vanguard.
dc.format.extent16
dc.format.extent548641
dc.language.isoeng
dc.relation.ispartofAnimationen
dc.subjectAutomatismen
dc.subjectComedyen
dc.subjectDigitalen
dc.subjectFordismen
dc.subjectIndexicalen
dc.subjectLabouren
dc.subjectPixaren
dc.subjectPost-Fordismen
dc.subjectSlap-sticken
dc.subjectPN1993 Motion Picturesen
dc.subjectBDCen
dc.subjectR2Cen
dc.subject.lccPN1993en
dc.titleSlapstick after Fordism : WALL-E, automatism and Pixar’s fun factoryen
dc.typeJournal articleen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Film Studiesen
dc.identifier.doi10.1177/1746847715625017
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden


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