Tag: HAR: Leisure
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Garfield. Dir. Peter Hewitt. 20th Century Fox. 2004.
This 2004 family comedy revolves around Garfield, a lazy, lasagna-loving cat who has the perfect life with his owner, Jon. Accustomed to luxury treatment, lavish meals and relying on his quick wit to get his way, the film opens on Garfield’s extravagant morning routine and his devious antics around the cul-de-sac. Unsurprisingly, Garfield is at…
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Sing. Dir. Garth Jennings. Illumination Entertainment. 2016
Illumination Entertainment’s Sing is a computer animated film that follows a group of anthropomorphic animals taking part in a singing competition that interferes in the contestants’ privates lives, representing society and human struggles through them. In this scene, the money heist, gorillas perform mundane human tasks like singing and driving. Johnny is a large and…
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Spirited Away. Dir Hayao Miyazaki. Toho Company Ltd. 2001.
Miyazaki’s 2001 Spirited Away, blurs the binary of human, animal, mythology, and spirit. Each character has its own version of this intersectionality, creating different presentations of ontology that in turn create varying perceptions. The film encourages us to reflect on how our own perceptions of fear in cinematic animal species are moulded through the presentation…
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Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Dir. Raja Gosnell. Walt Disney Pictures. 2008.
In Beverly Hills Chihuahua, the superiority and entitlement of animals are used as tropes to represent Chloe the chihuahua and her furry friends’ authority over Rachel, Chloe’s dogsitter. This is captured within the pool party scene through the decision to construct dominant representations of the dogs and represent Rachel, the human, as an inferior servant…
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Rio. Dir. by Carlos Saldanha. Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Animation. 2011.
Opening with the vibrant celebration of colours and exotic sounds of the Brazilian rainforest, our focus is drawn to a nervous exotic baby macaw bird called Blu who plucks up the courage to attempt his maiden flight. Predictably he tumbles towards the ground, making a soft spongy safe landing, before commotion strikes and an attack…
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Corpse Bride. Tim Burton. Warner Brothers. 2005.
‘In the act of othering, what is projected onto the other is all that must be refused in constructing the identity of the self’[1]. Consequently, establishing a human/animal binary often leads to a hierarchical relationship, highlighting the difference between human and non-human ‘other’. Such binary differences are reminiscent of common tropes in gothic literature, with…
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Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!. Dir. By. Peter Lord. Columbia Pictures. 2012.
Aardman never shy away from the ludicrous. So when a crew of incompetent pirates endeavour for protagonist The Pirate Captain to win the Pirate of the Year Award by relying on the commercial value of his prized dodo companion Polly (who should have been extinct for 150 years and is believed to be a parrot)…
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Surf’s Up. Dir. Ash Brannon & Chris Buck. Columbia Pictures. 2007.
Released in 2007, during the surge of penguin movies, Surf’s Up is a unique animated mockumentary exploring how penguins are the ‘real’ inventors of the worldwide sport, surfing. A documentary crew (ironically, Brannon and Buck cast themselves) follow the journey of Cody Maverick (Shia LaBeouf), a Rockhopper penguin from Antarctica who dreams of becoming a…
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Ferdinand. Dir. Carlos Saldanha. 20th Century Studios. 2017.
Part of the core ethics depicted within Saldanha’s Ferdinand (2017) is that the exploitation of animals, whether bullfighting or meat production, is unacceptable. However, the opening scene of this film depicts the bulls as having the agency to use their power to choose to fight and vie for the attention of the matador. By representing…