Animated Recollection and Spectatorial Experience in Waltz with Bashir

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which Waltz with Bashir (2008), Ari Folman’s animated war memoir, combines a commentary on memory with a moral stance on war. The authors argue that the film exemplifies the capacity of animated documentaries not only to show what is otherwise difficult or impossible to represent in non-animated documentaries, but to serve as a vehicle for fostering new relationships between the viewer and the documentary text. In this vein, the authors argue that Waltz with Bashir synthetically produces a rich, consistent, and thus trustworthy sense of reality for its viewers not despite but because of its unique aesthetic choices – its innovative animation techniques and mixing of reality with fantasy. Accordingly, the authors weave together analyses of the film’s content and form with accounts of their reception, discuss how the film evokes certain somatic responses with individuals, and consider the political significance these responses may engender.

Animating the subjugated past: digital greeting cards as a form of counter-memory

“…The majority of such elements (e.g. flame, food, fauna) were particularly common on the E-cards with negative/mixed sentiment; this observation can indicate that these elements were initially included because of their potential as visual metaphors, which is another frequent function of animation (Landesman and Bendor, 2011).…”

“…Such research is essential for clarifying the increasingly important role of user-generated digital products for cultural remembrance and scrutinizing the evolving ways of subjugation and resistance of historical knowledge worldwide. A number of studies (Landesman and Bendor, 2011;Walden, 2014) discuss the role of animation as a means of mnemonic self-expression. These studies, however, tend to focus on animated artwork such as movies, whereas the use of web-based animation remains understudied.…”

“…A number of studies (Landesman and Bendor, 2011;Walden, 2014) discuss the role of animation as a means of mnemonic self-expression. These studies, however, tend to focus on animated artwork such as movies, whereas the use of web-based animation remains understudied.…”

Music, Memory and Narrative: The Art of Telling in Tale of Tales

“…All four animations present ‘complex non-linear stories’ – as Moritz (1997: 46) puts it, these films ‘posit an “interactive” system, in which the purposefully convoluted narrative structure must be unravelled by the viewer’. At the same time, ‘the intricate artistry of all four filmmakers does appeal as strongly to the emotions as to the reason of the viewer, which enhances our sympathy for the characters and makes the films transcend the narrower political issues that they originally protested.’ That potential for ambiguity, slippage, and emotional and narrative engagement in the experience of the animated film is stressed by Landesman and Bendor (2011) in their account of the ways in which Ari Folman’s (2008) war memoir Waltz with Bashir straddles the worlds of documentary and animation, gaining its power from the ability of the animated medium to present different levels of fact and ‘facticality’ that deflect claims to ‘absolute truth’ by representing instead the reconstructed truths of memory. In effect, animation, whether created as oblique critique of societal repression or as an act of reparation and self-realization embodies ambiguity that inheres in its ability to represent the outer reaches of the imaginable as though they were the real – and thereby to transform an audience’s sense of how that ‘real’ may be re-imagined, and, perhaps, re-engineered.…”

Karl Marx in the World Interior of Animation: Critical Reflections on Marx Returns and Marx Reloaded

“… 14. In a previous issue of animation , Landesman and Bendor (2011) provide an interesting account of Waltz with Bashir in terms of the dynamic construction and phenomenology of memory. …”