Animating after the Apocalypse: Apocalyptic Children’s Animation in the West from Peace on Earth (1939) to Adventure Time (2010)

Abstract

Due to recent developments and discoveries with regard to a variety of socio-political, industrial and environmental processes, Western popular culture has once again been permeated by a fixation with apocalyptic narratives and imagery in recent years. The texts that manifest this fascination have ranged from Hollywood blockbusters (Armageddon (1998), Avatar (2009)), to popular literature (The Hunger Games (2008)) and videogame franchises (Fallout, Gears of War). They have also encapsulated a range of animated programmes targeted specifically towards child audiences. The rise of this widespread social interest coincides with significant developments in the industry and cultures of animation production and distribution, most significantly the establishment of niche programming options and the creation of new creator-driven models of animation production in the US and UK. Given these developments, this thesis proposes to investigate the ways in which apocalyptic narratives made for children have manifested in animation since the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema, both reflecting historical social anxieties, and demonstrating in which way their modes of address may reflect upon the social positioning of children and childhood in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. To this end, this study will focus on the political economy and social history of Western apocalyptic children’s animation, as well as noting the transcultural influence this media has shared with Japanese animation —which thanks to its own history, has had an even more prominent relationship with apocalyptic themes. Divided into four chapters, it will focus firstly on the intertwined histories of childhood and apocalyptic children’s animation in the West, and secondly, on the textual analysis of a variety of animated films and programmes centred on apocalyptic themes, including: Peace on Earth (1939), Bambi (1942), The Land Before Time (1988), Samurai Jack (2001-4), and finally, Adventure Time (2010-). Following this procedure, I intend to examine in what way the treatment of the apocalypse in children’s animation can be read as a reflection of the wider Western media’s contemporary ideological frameworks of childhood, and in what way it reconciles the social construction of this group with contemporary humanist and post-human notions that of the apocalypse as a social myth.