ABSTRACT

As Andy Medhurst has remarked: ‘Comedy is never only textual – it is performed, enacted, an event, a transaction, lived out in a shared moment by its producers and consumers’ (Medhurst 2007: 4). In the context of this discussion, I will be exploring how this particular and complex nexus of experience is represented throughout the history of British animation. I intend to engage with this, firstly, through an address of its antecedents in other art forms, thereafter, in four core ‘periods’ of British animated film production. This will chart how it determined its form and function; played out its own tensions between tradition and modernity; engaged with the commercial cinema sector and the political economy; enjoyed its place within the counterculture; confronted deep-rooted anxiety within the British temperament; and ultimately evolved into what might be viewed as an ‘anti-social’ and subversive form.