Is Cindy Bear’s love for Yogi Bear unrequited because of that pesky interloper Boo Boo? © and ™ 2004 Cartoon Network.

Let me be the first to admit that examining and quantifying what is occurring in a given piece (or indeed an entire season) of animated film is a useful and necessary component in analysis and critique. This can be done in several ways: viewing an animated film as an integrated whole can be as valid as breaking it down into component parts (e.g., background, script or voicework). There are a number of divergent theories to work from, but most theories operate from common base assumptions including these: 1) Animation is a specific form of communication arts that 2) Is inseparable from the culture that produces and consumes it. Most of you who have perused Maureen Furniss’ exemplary book on animation analysis, Art In Motion, will find familiar ground here; these two assumptions help to explain why American otaku, for example, throw themselves into study of Japanese customs and mythology in order to experience a more authentic enjoyment of anime.

Would Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna say “analyze this” to overanalyzing postmodern theorists? Courtesy of Warner Bros. Animation.

There are some theories, however, that take analysis and critique in a different direction. One of the premier theorists of postmodern criticism is Roland Barthes. He might look at animation in terms of semiotics: A text (let’s say, in the form of a Happy Tree Friends cartoon) would be a highly subjective piece of reality since it is constructed of signifiers (objects translated by the viewer’s brain into working definitions called denotatives). The Happy Tree Friends cartoon is thus “constructed” by the viewer just as much as it is by Rhode Montijo and Kenn Navarro.

Thus, all texts and films become a sort of do-it-yourself assembly kit in which you personally deconstruct and construct various meanings out of a given film or text. Your psychic LEGOS (perhaps this is simpler than I thought!) consist of said signifiers, symbols and icons, all translated into individual “brain language.”

As with LEGOS, there are many possible configurations, simple and complex. Complex arrangements commonly contain “codes,” which may be very roughly translated as representations. According to Barthes, all images are “polysemous,” this means that anyone and everyone is free to have a ball interpreting them based on their experience and familiarity with signs, codes and signifiers. A text may be “readerly,” meeting one’s familiar expectations by providing enough context for readers to “fix” signifiers comfortably, or “writerly,” in which the creator throws the reader or viewer a curve in the form of hermeneutic trickery such as “skidding,” in which meaning changes because a single signifier unexpectedly calls upon multiple signifiers, and -- OK, let’s please don’t go there.