Moved by stop-motion: the Brothers Quay

It was my goal this term to post things I've been teaching in my Animation class, as a way of getting back into writing about anime. But now I find it's the works I put on the syllabus that are just slightly out of my range that excite me most. I feel like I'm kind of phoning it in on anime, honestly, since I know the material I'm teaching so well already. But when it comes to things I haven't touched for a while, like the avant-garde stop-motion short films of the Brothers Quay...well, it's fascinating!

To get the class talking about stop-motion, I had them read an article by Suzanne Buchan called "Animation Spectatorship: The Quay Brothers' Animated Worlds" (which conveniently enough you can access in the online journal EnterText). Buchan's aim is to describe how we can experience animation as a world, a haptic, embodied place, in which we "allow ourselves that most pleasurable experience of being moved, intellectually, affectively and emotionally, by what unfolds on screen" (98). It reminded me of my first startling emotional reaction to the Quay's films back in 2009 or '10. I wasn't able to fully articulate it in class, but I will post here some notes I wrote then about being moved by stop-motion.

( The Quays' Uncanny World )