Disability in Animation

What is Crip Animation and how does it challenge ableist perceptions?

On this episode of The Pulse with Joeita Gupta, Joeita welcomes Slava Greenberg. The two discuss how animation can subvert norms and challenge ableist perceptions, inviting audiences to rethink their understanding of disability. Slava Greenberg, the author of 'Animated Film and Disability: Cripping Spectatorship', explains that cripping spectatorship involves reimagining film theory and spectatorship to include all senses and perspectives, not just vision. They also explore the value of blinding and deafening the spectator in films to challenge the primacy of vision and create a more inclusive cinematic experience. The conversation touches on the intersections of trans and disabled experiences and the potential for animation to evoke transformative and imaginative futures. Overall, the discussion highlights the importance of crip animation in creating a disability-inclusive world.

Link to Slava’s book: “Animated Film and Disability: Gripping Spectatorship” - https://amzn.to/3EI3Ase

Episode Highlights

“Spectatorship” in Film Theory (2:28)

What does “Cripping Spectatorship” mean? (5:00)

How experience of being trans and disabled led Slava to animation (9:09)

“Blinding and Deafening the Spectator” in cinema (11:17)

Value of shifting the gaze away from able-bodied perspective in filmmaking (17:00)

Slava reads excerpt from his book 'Animated Film and Disability: Cripping Spectatorship' (23:18)

About Slava Greenberg

Slava Greenberg is an Assistant Professor of Film in the Department of Media Studies at University of Amsterdam's Faculty of Humanities and Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. Previously, he served as a Casden Institute postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts and Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies. Greenberg's research and practice, grounded in disability studies (particularly Crip theory and Mad studies), transgender studies, and feminist film theory, concern the potential of emerging media forms to produce embodied transformative experiences for audiences.

Greenberg is the author of Animated Film and Disability: Cripping Spectatorship (Indiana University Press, 2023). His articles have been published in journals such as Film Quarterly, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Animation, The Moving Image, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Review of Disability Studies, and Jewish Film and New Media. He regularly contributes to various field-defining anthologies, including those on disability and documentary, accent studies, queer television studies, and new media. Currently, he is writing his second book, Gender Dysphoria: An Unauthorized Biography, which examines the trans-crip histories and cultures of dysphoria from the Reed Erickson papers to contemporary pop representations.

Reference:

https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/g/r/s.greenberg/s.greenberg.html?cb#Biography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_gaze

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