Hollywood Flatlands

[Dave Monroe]

>From Esther Leslie, Hollywood Flatlands: Animation,
Critical Theory and the Avant-Garde (London and New
York: Verso, 2002), "Preclusion: Experi-mental," pp.
1-32 ...

   "In the 1935 'Expose' of the Arcades Projects,
Walter Benjamin cites Marx's analysis of commodity
fetishism.  According to Benjamin, phantasmagoric
commodity fetishism reaches its apex in the
spectacular technological junkyards of the
nineteenth-century world exhibitions.  Here, claims
Benjamin, it appears as if things have more
personality than their frequently faceless and
nameless makers....  Brecht criticized Benjamin's
animation of the world of things as mysticism, as a
childish attempt to undo the fetishism of commodities
by taking it seriously.  It is, after all, a child's
impulse to awaken life in petrified things.  But
Benjamin is insistent: it is objectively true; things
are not what they used to be.  In industrial
modernity, things sidle onto centre stage.  And once
the thrill of the world exhibitions dulls, cartoons
and the movies are the next screen to flaunt the
super-animation of fetish things." (p. 8)

http://www.versobooks.com/books/klm/l-titles/leslie_hollywood.shtml

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com