710737

book-review2017
ANM0010.1177/1746847717710737AnimationBook review

Book review

animation:

Book review an interdisciplinary journal

2017, Vol. 12(2) 191­–194
© The Author(s) 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1746847717710737
DOI: 10.1177/1746847717710737
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Amy Ratelle
University of Toronto, Canada

Alistair D Swale, Anime Aesthetics: Japanese Animation and the ‘Post-Cinematic’ Imagination, London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015: 167 pp.: ISBN 978 1 137 46334 0, £60 (hbk)

Japanese animation has received a certain amount of scholarly attention, but recent years have seen
an uptick in monographs published on the subject, from Thomas Lamarre’s The Anime Machine: A
Media Theory of Animation (2009) to Jonathan Clements’ Anime: A History (2013), Rayna
Denison’s Anime: A Critical Introduction (2015), and the edited collection Japanese Animation:
East Asian Perspectives (Masao Yokota and Tze-yue G Hu, 2013). Lamarre’s work is notable for
reframing anime as new media, pushing the boundaries of technology and film form. Clements’
and Denison’s works situate Japanese animation historically as a cultural artefact, while Yokota
and Hu’s volume provides crucial context and commentary from Asian scholars and practitioners.
Alistair Swale’s interest, however, is quite different. In Anime Aesthetics: Japanese Animation and
the Post-Cinematic Imagination, he argues for the necessity of generating an aesthetic theory of
animation in the post-cinematic era. To accomplish this, he turns to the philosophy of art of RG
Collingwood and examines anime not as an historical or national entity, but as a series of aesthetic
decisions made by artists and filmmakers and guided by the principles of art.
Collingwood was an English philosopher and historian, widely known for his work on aesthet-
ics and philosophy of history. While An Essay on Philosophical Method (2008[1933]) is perhaps
his most influential work, it is his aesthetic philosophy laid out in The Principles of Art (1968[1938])
that Swale finds to be a potent analytical tool. In this work, Collingwood distinguishes things that
are often called art from ‘art proper’. According to Collingwood, art is fundamentally about expres-
sion and, as such, is engaged with through imagination. Both artist and audience work together to
co-create an emotional state. More simply, by understanding what a work of art is expressing, the
audience feels its emotion and intent, and imagines what the artwork is trying to evoke. The art-
work itself, therefore, constitutes the means by which the audience can understand what the artist
is expressing.
Japanese animation often pushes at the boundaries of traditional cinema. As the form has
become more popular and received increased scholarly attention, Swale argues that ‘there is a need
for a more philosophically consistent and theoretically integrated engagement with animation in
terms of aesthetic philosophy’ (p. 1). To accomplish his goal of ‘regrounding’ anime ‘within a more
specific aesthetic philosophical tradition’ (p. 1), Swale replicates Collingwood’s own structure of
The Principles of Art. Anime Aesthetics is bracketed by a chapter briefly outlining Collingwood’s
theories with extensive commentary on Collingwood and an elegant conclusion that highlights
Japanese anime as an ideal case study to employ Collingwood’s theories to forward a means of
engaging with the post-cinematic animated image that ‘isn’t rooted in either the technology or the
distinct representative affordances of cinematic art’ (p. 141). The individual chapters examine
192 animation: an interdisciplinary journal 12(2)

anime in the contexts of craft, representation, amusement, magic, and finally art – wherein Swale
addresses more fully anime’s contributions not only to animated film in general, but to digital cin-
ema in particular.
Chapter 1, ‘R.G. Collingwood and a Philosophical Methodology of Aesthetics’, introduces
Collingwood’s The Principles of Art as arising from his previous An Essay on Philosophical
Method, foregrounding

the implications of his conception of ‘philosophical’ and ‘empirical’ modes of analysis … to clarify the
subtle distinctions between the act of observing artistic artefacts empirically and the experience of art as
an artist (or someone who ‘appreciates’ that art, or the experience of academics who engage with art
‘philosophically’). (p. 25)

It is the latter ‘philosophical’ engagement by scholars and theorists that informs Swale’s work, as
this volume is clearly intended for an advanced audience. Swale’s own interest in Collingwood’s
philosophy, which he outlines in Chapter 1, has been prompted by a recent ‘resurgence’ (p. 17) of
interest in Collingwood by epistemological thinkers such as Richard Wollheim and David Davies.
Wollheim’s own work overlaps with Collingwood’s, focusing on the role of the mind and emotions
in interpreting visual art. Davies brings a metaphysical approach to literature, film, and the per-
forming arts. According to Swale, Davies in particular takes up Collingwood’s assertions that
imagination is ‘the primary vehicle’ for engaging with artistic expression (p. 17). Davies, congru-
ent with Swale’s own cinematic analysis, argues for the pragmatic relevance of Collingwood’s
philosophies to both the production and experience of art forms.
Chapter 2, ‘Anime as Craft’, engages with the ‘technical theory of art’ – that which can be con-
sidered craft (e.g. carpentry, watch-making, etc.) and cannot thus be considered ‘art proper’ (p. 40).
According to Collingwood, craft ‘always involves a distinction between means and end’, as well
as a distinction between planning and execution’ (p. 40). Moreover, ‘there is a distinction between
raw material and the finished product’ (p. 41). Although there are additional means by which to
distinguish between art and craft outlined in the chapter, Swale’s overall objective is to apply the
technical theory of art to position anime as art proper, and not craft. Swale notes that his assertions
here bring his analysis into ‘direct contradiction’ with Lamarre’s theory of ‘machinic assemblage’
(p. 43), in that Lamarre’s focus on the technologies employed in Japanese animation skirt close to
becoming technological determinism. For Lamarre (2009: xxx), ‘animation at once works with
technology and thinks about technology – and the two processes are inseparable.’ In other words,
the end product of animation (the film), is indivisible from the technological apparatuses, or
objects, used to produce it. The question of ‘how technologies affect thought’ (p. xxxiv) therefore
drives Lamarre’s analysis, but is of little use to Swale, who wishes to recontextualize our under-
standing of how films are produced as works of art.
Swale’s third chapter, ‘Anime as Representation’, addresses Collingwood’s assertions that ‘art
proper … should not be misidentified with representation’, for the reason that ‘imitating or creating
resemblances is itself a species of craft’ (p. 59). Collingwood (and Swale) refer here to portraiture
– for portraits to be considered art, the artist must contribute something intangible beyond a good
likeness that contributes to our understanding of the portrait subject as a person. In this respect,
Swale argues, it is less important that animated film strive towards achieving photorealism than it
strive towards capturing something ephemeral about life or the human condition beyond merely
representing reality. Swale desires here and throughout the book to sidestep discussions of ‘the
real’ in terms of the animated image. As he notes, Collingwood’s principles are ‘indifferent’ to the
‘reality’ or ‘unreality’ of creative art, and in particular, anime (p. 77).
Book review 193

Chapters 4 and 5, ‘Anime as Amusement’ and ‘Anime as Magic’, are situated in the capacity of
art (for Collingwood) to elicit pleasure. Collingwood (and Swale) define amusement and magic as
part of a range of possible responses to the work of art, and how it resonates emotionally with its
audience. Amusement can be differentiated from magic due to the short-lived nature of the emo-
tional response in the moment; magic, on the other hand, deals with more ‘heroic actions’ in the
service of developing a ‘communal consciousness’ (p. 80).
By examining anime in accordance with Collingwood’s principles, Swale argues that, as
anime cannot be categorized as mere craft or representation, and transcends the emotional
framework of amusement and magic, anime must thus be considered ‘art proper’. Swale’s
final chapter, ‘Anime as Art: Digital Cinema and the Anime Aesthetic’, engages with
Collingwood’s theory of imagination, which for Swale ‘provides the key to identifying more
precisely where and how the animated image facilitates the aesthetic experience’ (p. 122).
Swale’s analysis here is situated in the differences in imagination required to engage with live-
action cinema or animation, and pushed further, digital and digitally-enhanced cinema.
Animation – digitally produced or not – necessitates a different type of imaginative engage-
ment from its audience, and this contributes further to our understanding of what post-cine-
matic filmmaking is, and what it means within theories of art. Where Lamarre and others often
situate this understanding of the post-cinematic within the technologies required to produce
digital cinema, Swale asserts that the ‘experience and process of creative expression … is
contingent on animation, not the technology’ used to produce it (p. 129). Swale is therefore
able to neatly sidestep and provide a means by which to move beyond a strictly technological
understanding of or engagement with digital cinema.
While some readers might question the relevance of an early 20th-century philosopher to 21st-
century Japanese animated film, Swale’s innovative re-examination of the medium through
Collingwood’s lens reveals that concerns over the demise of traditional cinema as art can be some-
what laid to rest as the emotional resonance of animation (and digitally produced or enhanced film
in general) remains and, more importantly, allows animation to be considered ‘art’ in the same
ways. While Swale argues convincingly for a mode of analysis that is not explicitly tied to modes
of production but instead is situated in the more metaphysical realm of emotion and imagination,
his focus on ‘canonical’ cinematic works marginalizes the vast body of commercially-produced
television animation and elides the imaginative and emotional engagement of its fan communities
and youth subcultures. Although Swale himself admits in the Introduction that he deliberately
foregrounds prestige cinema over other anime productions, a real test of Collingwood’s theories
would be to apply them more broadly to all Japanese animation. Can non-canonical works simi-
larly be considered art? If not, why not? More simply, is the real threat to cinematic ‘art’ not digital
technologies, but instead bad taste? Such questions are intriguing, and point to potential future
work in the area of anime studies.

References
Clements J (2013) Anime: A History. London: BFI.
Collingwood RG (1968[1938]) The Principles of Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Collingwood RG (2008[1933]) An Essay on Philosophical Method, ed. J Connelly and G D’Oro. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Denison R (2015) Anime: A Critical Introduction. London: Bloomsbury.
Lamarre T (2009). The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Yokota M and Hu TG (eds) Japanese Animation: East Asian Perspectives. Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi.
194 animation: an interdisciplinary journal 12(2)

Author biography
Amy Ratelle is the author of Animality and Children’s Literature and Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). She
received her PhD in Communication and Culture, a joint programme between Ryerson University and York
University, and degrees in Film Studies from Ryerson University (BFA), and Carleton University (MA). Her
research areas include children’s literature and culture, animality studies, animation studies, and critical
media studies. She is currently Research Coordinator for the Semaphore Research Cluster on Mobile and
Pervasive Computing, at the University of Toronto.
Email:amy.ratelle@utoronto.ca