“There’s Nothing Quite Like a Real Book”: Stop-Motion Bookishness

Abstract

In an extended reading of the stop-motion animation films such as “The Joy of Books” (2012) by Sean and Lisa Ohlenkamp, Jessica Pressman examines contemporary culture’s obsessive preoccupation with the material book as a form of melancholic fetishism object. Building on her widely recognized concept of “bookishness”, Pressman argues that in times of the book’s supposed obsolescence, popular culture fetishizes the printed book in ways that inspire new ways of seeing, using, and appreciating books, with and through digital technologies.