Book review: Pixar and the Aesthetic Imagination: Animation, Storytelling, and Digital Culture

Abstract

"In Pixar and the Aesthetic Imagination, Eric Herhuth draws upon film theory, animation theory, and philosophy to examine modes of animation storytelling that address aesthetic experience within contexts of technological, environmental, and socio-cultural change. Since producing the first fully computer-animated feature film, Pixar Animation Studios has been a creative force in digital culture and popular entertainment. But more specifically, its depictions of uncanny toys, technologically sublime worlds, fantastic characters, and sensorial intensities explore aesthetic experience and its relation to developments in global media, creative capitalism, and consumer culture. This investigation considers Pixar's artificial worlds and transformational stories as opportunities for thinking through aesthetics as a contested domain committed to newness and innovation, as well as criticism and pluralistic thought"--Provided by publisher. Aesthetic storytelling: a tradition and theory of animation -- The uncanny integrity of digital commodities (Toy story) -- From the technological to the postmodern sublime (Monsters, Inc.) -- The exceptional dialectic of the fantastic and the mundane (The Incredibles) -- Disruptive sensation and the politics of the new (Ratatouille).