Animation film has always suffered from prejudice, especially in the context of Western culture. Thanks to its endearing style of caricature and production focus targeted primarily on the youngest audience, animation film has been labelled as an entertainment for children.
It is an indisputable fact that in the Western world animation film is still considered as minor, at least its mainstream production. Production for television is being treated more liberally, especially when we take into account that animation serials form a considerable part of TV viewing. By this we mean serials such as The Simpsons, Family Guy or the once controversial, South Park, representing programmes on the border of children's and adult entertainment. The perception of an animation film catering for a child ren's audience has been recently "rehabilitated" to a certain extent thanks to a French film, Rennaisance (2006) by Christian Volckman. Nevertheless, a majority of viewers have stuck with the former narrow understanding of animation film.
On the contrary, Japanese anime and manga is understood to be oriented to both children and adult audiences, yet it is also able to strictly separate those two groups. Japanese production has started to spread its infl uence and it has reached Czech viewers who might now be familiar with the popular Studio Ghibli, producing family films by Hayao Miyazakiho. Animated pornography known under the term hentai has been warmly received, even outside the Asian territory. The main divergence dwells in the different attitudes of society as a whole to forms of cartoon (manga) and animation in general. The most significant gap between the Western and Asian animation tradition can be seen in the perception of the body and sexuality in animated films. And thus Japanese Hentai gives the fulfillment of sexual fantasies that are never to be fulfilled in real life, while in the western context animated sex is mostly associated with parody.
The lecture devoted to animation for adults deals with different approaches to the perception of animated film in a variety of contexts. The starting point will present pornography and various kinds of treatment of the body and corporality in this type of film. To what extent does an approach towards an animated pornography differ in the Western and Asian interpretation? Where are the borders between erotic parody and real pornography? Are there any new dimensions of animated sexual fetishism? The lecture will try to answer these questions and illustrate points through particular previews.
Zdeněk Bláha
