'I'm Not a Real Boy, I'm a Puppet': Computer-Animated Films and Anthropomorphic Subjectivity

Abstract

This article rethinks anthropomorphic representation and animated animality within the context of the contemporary digital era and, more precisely, against the rise of the computer-animated feature film. By interrogating the fractured identity of the anthropomorph as a necessarily hybrid figuration, it suggests how popular computer-animated films have rejected ánthrōpos and instead exploited the non-human morphē element to manipulate virtual space through anthropomorphic subjectivity. The anthropomorph is here refined into a more prescriptive and functional agent, absorbing viewers into a spectatorial game that sharpens their awareness of the digital realm. Films such as Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007) and Bee Movie (Simon J Smith and Steve Hickner, 2007) are offered as case studies that reflect the shift towards the form or morphē element, one that is registered through a particular mode of subjectified address. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's notion of 'gaseous perception' to elucidate this delivery of enlivened space, this article argues that the computer-animated film is implicated in a hierarchical switch away from humanlike behaviour to embrace the possibilities of the anthropomorph's non-human morphē identity, thereby upturning the received narrative of how anthropomorphism has been conceptualized among critical studies of animation.