HW:30 Citizenship Symposium II

After attending the lectures of Jiwan Ahn, Sander Lee and Mark Timney’s “Animations as Political and Social Constructions” a lecture from the Citizenship Symposium done by Keene State College I learned a great deal of information. Each of the three speakers are faculty here at Keene State College and gave presentations which were developed to educate the audience on the role of animation in society today. Ahn spoke about the role of Anime in society. She described many different ways that Anime is done and provided an explanation for each of the different styles. The purpose of flat style in Anime is designed so that the female body they so often use is not portrayed in an overly sexual manner. This form of Anime is designed to portray the woman’s body as a symbol and not as an arousing sexual object; the body is often accompanied with violence, nature and in provocative clothing if clothed at all. Lee used WWII cartoons to show how animation is used in our society for political and informative information. Lee presented cartoons of Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny working in Nazi Germany for Hitler during the war. In both of the cartoons it was showed that Hitler could be overpowered but other unions such as the United States and the Soviet Union. The cartoons exploited what was happening in the war and what could potentially come out of it. Lee stated the following that I found to be very interesting: “I feel that Bugs identity is an interesting one in terms of the situation. I maintain Bugs has an ethnic identity, an American accent or an image of Brooklyn which is street smart, tough and ethic and his accent and the way he operates identifies him as a representative for the American Melting Pot to the German government.” Timney used South Park and it’s effects on society to speak about at the lecture. He pointed out several ideas about how it is exploitive of our country, our religions, how the show is obscenely vulgar and displays a great deal of sexual content and it also is “satire at its finest.” Overall the lecture was a great way to speak to people about different ways of looking at different types of animation and in different ways while doing it more appropriately.