Water Spells: New Materialist Theoretical Insights from Animated Fantasy and Science Fiction

André Vasques Vital

doi:10.32991/2237-2717.2022v12i1.p246-269

Autores/as

André Vasques Vital Universidade Evangélica de Goiás https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6959-3196

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32991/2237-2717.2022v12i1.p246-269

Palabras clave:

animation, science fiction, fantasy, history of waters

Resumen

This essay analyses how water elementals in fantasy and science fiction animations created in the last decade suggest an aquatic materiality that raises alternative ways of thinking about a History of Waters. The analysis is conducted based on three characters from award-winning animations that embody, respectively, water in liquid, solid, and gaseous states: Lapis Lazuli (Steven Universe, 2013–2020), Elsa of Arendelle (Frozen 1, 2013 and Frozen 2, 2020), and Masami Yoshida (The Amazing World of Gumball, 2011–2019). The initial assumption is that animations in the fantasy and science fiction genres, in addition to being based on the historical circumstances of their time and even incorporating theories of history, allow the production of new possibilities of thinking historically. The three characters enable us to explore alternatives for a history that incorporates the contingent identity of waters that challenge certainties, permanence, and the traditional notion of historical agency while highlighting the evental and ambivalent nature of time.

Citas

Alaimo, Stacy. “The Naked Word: The Trans-corporeal Ethics of the Protesting Body.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 20, no.1 (2010): 15–36.

Alpers, Benjamin. “Science Fiction and History.” S-USIH: Society for U.S. Intelectual History (Blog). May 15, 2015. https://s-usih.org/2015/05/science-fiction-and-history/

Bachelard, Gaston. A Água e os Sonhos: Ensaio sobre a Imaginação da Matéria, Translated by Antônio de Pádua Danesi. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1997.

Bennett, Jane. “The Elements.” Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 4, (2013): 105-111.

Bennett, Jane. “Systems and Things: A Response to Graham Harman and Timothy Morton.” New Literary History 43, no. 2 (2012): 225-233.

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.

Brown, Bill. “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (2001): 1-22.

Cavna, Michael. “‘Steven Universe’ Creator Rebecca Sugar is a Cartoon Network Trailblazer.” The Washington Post. November 1, 2013. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/steven-universe-creator-rebecca-sugar-is-an-idealistic-trailblazer/2013/11/01/fe622da2-4338-11e3-a751-f032898f2dbc_story.html

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry 35, (2009): 187-222.

Dunn, Eli. “Steven Universe, Fusion Magic, and the Queer Cartoon Carnivalesque.” Gender Forum: An Internet Journal of Gender Studies 56 (2016): 44–57.

Geraghty, Lincoln. “Introduction: Future Visions,” In Channeling the Future: Essays on Science Fiction and Fantasy Television, ed. Lincoln Geraghty, vii-xviii. Maryland/ Toronto and Plymonth: The Scarecrow Press Inc. 2009.

Haiven, Max. “The Dammed of the Earth: Reading the Mega-Dam for the Political Unconscious of Globalization.” In Thinking with water, ed. Cecilia Chen, Janine MacLeod, and Astrida Neimanis, 213-231. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.

Hunt, Peter. “Introduction: Fantasy and Alternative worlds.” In Alternative Worlds in Fantasy Fiction, ed. Peter Hunt and Millicent Lenz, 1-40. London: Continuum, 2001.

Jasso, Gerardo Morales and Leonardo Ernesto Márquez Mireles. “Ser y Deber Ser de la Historia Ambiental. ¿Pasar de la Dispersión Paradigmática a la Revolución Científica y la Decolonización?” Letras Históricas 23 (2020): 247-275.

Jensen, Casper Bruun. “Can the Mekong Speak? On Hydropower, Models and ‘Thing-Power’.” In Electrifying Anthropology: Exploring Electrical Practices and Infrastructures, ed. Simone B. Abram and T. Yarrow, 121-138. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.

Kolozova, Katerina.“The Artifact of Non-Humanity: A Materialist Account of the Signifying Automaton and its Physical Support in a Fantasized Unity.” Philosophy Today 65, no. 2 (2021): 359-374.

Kolozova, Katerina. Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals: A Non-Marxist Critique of Capital, Philosophy and Patriarchy. New York: Bloomsbury, 2019.

Kolozova, Katerina. Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststructuralist Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.

Lancioni, Judith. “The Future as Past Perfect: Appropriation of History in the Star Trek series.” In Space and Time: Essays on Visions of History in Science Fiction and Fantasy Television, ed. David C. Wright Jr and Allan W. Austin, 131-155. Jefferson N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2010.

Latour, Bruno. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge: Havard University Press, 1999.

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993.

MacLeod, Ken. The Star Fraction Book One: The Fall Revolution Series. London: Little, Brown Book Group, 1996.

Edgeworth, Matt and Jeff Benjamin. “What is a River? The Chicago River as Hyper-object.” In Rivers of the Anthropocene, ed. Jason Kelly, et al., 162-175. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2017.

Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980.

Napier, Susan J. Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.

Nash, Linda. “The Agency of Nature or the Nature of Agency?,” Environmental History 10, no. 1 (2005): 67-69.

Neimanis, Astrida. Bodies of Water. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.

Shaviro, Steven. Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze and Aesthetics. Massachussets: The MIT University Press, 2009.

Spiegel, Jennifer Beth. “Subterranean Flows: Water Contamination and the Politics of Visibility After the Bhopal Disaster.” In Thinking with water, ed. Cecilia Chen, Janine MacLeod, and Astrida Neimanis, 84-103. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.

Streiff, Madeline and Lauren Dundes, “Frozen in Time: How Disney Gender-Stereotypes Its Most Powerful Princess,” Social Sciences 6, no. 38 (2017): 1-10.

Talbayev, Edwige Tamalet. “Seawater.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 21, no. 2 (2021): 207-217.

Tamm, Marek and Peter Burke (ed.). Debating New Approaches to History. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

Vital, André Vasques. “Water, Gender, and Modern Science in the Steven Universe Animation.” Feminist Media Studies 20, no. 8 (2019): 1144-1158.

Vital, André Vasques. “Lapis Lazuli. Politics and Aqueous Contingency in the Animation Steven Universe.” Series – International Journal of TV Serial Narratives 4, no. 1 (2018): 51–62.

Wells, Paul. Understanding Animation. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

Westfhal, Gary. Science Fiction, Children's Literature, and Popular Culture: Coming of Age in Fantasyland. Westport/Connecticut, and London: Greenwood Press, 2000.

Williams, Donald Cary. “On the Elements of Being.” Review of Metaphysics: Contemporary Readings 7 (1953): 3-18/ 171-192.

Whitehead, Alfred N. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. New York: The Free Press, 1978.

Whitehead, Alfred N. Concept of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964 [1920].

Whitley, David. The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008.

Wright Jr, David C.“Constructing a Grand Historical Narrative: Struggles Through Time on Highlander: The Series,” In Space and Time: Essays on Visions of History in Science Fiction and Fantasy Television, ed. David C. Wright Jr, and Allan W. Austin, 116-130. Jefferson N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2010.

Yates, Julian. “Cloud/Land: An Onto-Story.” Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 4, no. 1 (2013): 42–54.