Work in Motion: Labour and Aesthetic Production in the Animated Film Industry
type: CreativeWork
description: Diagramming the intersection between the representation of work and the work of representation, this thesis explores how animation has historically mediated technological transformations in film production through its self-reflexive engagement with labour. I track the entanglement between animated images and image production through three key inflection points in animation history: beginning with early animation’s pre-industrial roots; continuing through animation’s industrial rationalisation; and concluding with a discussion of digital animation. Contrary to claims that animation’s self-reflexive address is unique to early animation, I argue that early animation’s turn towards self-reflexivity does not vanish with the disappearance of the animator from the frame. Rather, animation showcases an ongoing preoccupation with labour. It works out tensions between autonomy and automation; movement and mechanisation; labour and alienation at key points throughout its history, especially when the work of animation is transformed by its formalisation, rationalisation, and digitalisation as a medium. This thesis is organised into three chapters. Chapter One takes up cinematic reflexivity and self-figuration to critique *Gertie the Dinosaur* (1914 Winsor McCay) through the lens of the operational aesthetic, underscoring how this aesthetic mode poses limits to theories of cinematic disclosure and problematises representations of work in early animation. Taking up the film as a cinematic treatise on the labour of animation, this chapter argues that the film’s live-action prologue disregards the role photography played in automating the reproduction of Gertie’s animated imagery, electing to prioritise the manual labours of animation as a handicraft. Chapter Two builds on Siegfried Kracauer’s theory of the mass ornament to contemplate masses, multitudes, and crowds for film. It decodes the mass ornament in the musical choreographies of Busby Berkeley; addresses its resonances with…
abstract: Diagramming the intersection between the representation of work and the work of representation, this thesis explores how animation has historically mediated technological transformations in film production through its self-reflexive engagement with labour. I track the entanglement between animated images and image production through three key inflection points in animation history: beginning with early animation’s pre-industrial roots; continuing through animation’s industrial rationalisation; and concluding with a discussion of digital animation. Contrary to claims that animation’s self-reflexive address is unique to early animation, I argue that early animation’s turn towards self-reflexivity does not vanish with the disappearance of the animator from the frame. Rather, animation showcases an ongoing preoccupation with labour. It works out tensions between autonomy and automation; movement and mechanisation; labour and alienation at key points throughout its history, especially when the work of animation is transformed by its formalisation, rationalisation, and digitalisation as a medium. This thesis is organised into three chapters. Chapter One takes up cinematic reflexivity and self-figuration to critique *Gertie the Dinosaur* (1914 Winsor McCay) through the lens of the operational aesthetic, underscoring how this aesthetic mode poses limits to theories of cinematic disclosure and problematises representations of work in early animation. Taking up the film as a cinematic treatise on the labour of animation, this chapter argues that the film’s live-action prologue disregards the role photography played in automating the reproduction of Gertie’s animated imagery, electing to prioritise the manual labours of animation as a handicraft. Chapter Two builds on Siegfried Kracauer’s theory of the mass ornament to contemplate masses, multitudes, and crowds for film. It decodes the mass ornament in the musical choreographies of Busby Berkeley; addresses its resonances with…
author: Morgan, Carleigh
language: eng
keywords: animation, automation, cinematic labour, computer animation, crowd simulation, film history, film production, political economy, post-Fordism, representation, self-reflexivity
license: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/20b4b540-23da-4d3c-8839-93b8f1716ffb/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2022-04-26
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:54Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.99789