Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Sophie Barbour: My article looks at the film Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse and attempts to analyze it as a “realistic” film. The immediate challenge here is that realism and animation are, by many theories, at odds with one another. How can something be realistic if it looks nothing like reality? Moving away from photorealistic definitions of realism and toward theory that defines realism by how accurately one media type can reproduce another type allows us to look at Spider-verse as “realistic” in that it faithfully reproduces the comic book world. Analyzing the film by looking at its fidelity to comic book aesthetics and conventions allows us to see how, exactly, its groundbreaking animation improves the film’s ability to tell its story. The implications for this are that despite the influx of “live-action” (or, more accurately, photorealistic computer-generated) adaptations of comic book stories, often the most truthful, and most impactful, way to adapt these stories is through animated film.
FM: What research and/or methodologies do you incorporate in your article?
SB: I used an interdisciplinary approach for this article because existing film theory couldn’t quite translate to how I wanted to look at the seemingly opposite ideas of realism and animation. In moving away from Andre Bazin’s photorealistic approach to realism, and Stephen Prince’s photorealistic approach to realism in CGI, I ended up exploring the work of two Japanese media theorists, Ōtsuka Eiji and Azuma Hiroki, as well as Marc Steinberg’s “transmedia” approach to adaptations. The work of these three theorists laid the basis for my close reading of the film as they allowed me to pair Liam Burke’s work on comic book aesthetics in live-action film with the animated film.
FM: Describe the original context for/when writing this article while an undergraduate student.
SB: I wrote this for the first film class I took within the Film Studies major at my school. The class introduced me to broad concepts in film (like realism and formalism), and the final paper tasked me with choosing a film, choosing a broad concept we covered in class, and creating our own thesis upon which to start our paper. The film had just come out when I wrote this, and I couldn’t help but find some way to write about it for school (my usual muse is Mad Max: Fury Road, but Spider-verse won my heart). The only prompt I could twist to my favor was the one that asked us to find a movie that rebelled against the realist/formalist divide, and thus my descent into the madness of animation realism began.
FM: How have your personal experiences shaped and influenced your writing?
SB: I think it would be naive to say my experiences haven’t shaped and influenced my writing. In broad terms, I really trust my instincts on what to write about. The path from idea to finished product is incredibly messy for me, but having that starting point is quite instinctual. I love comic books, I love visual art in all its forms, so the starting point of this paper was just trying to find a way to dig into the visual coolness of this film. I had never seen anything like it before!
FM: What aspects of the writing process were most challenging? Why?
SB: The editing process has been difficult and tenuous. As stated, I wrote this for one of the first film classes I ever took, and suffice it to say my writing skills have improved since then. My ability to wrangle large theoretical ideas from different disciplines is something I take great pride in, but at the time I wrote the first iteration of this paper, I didn’t even know how to research for film papers. I have had to find ways to be truthful to the original paper I wrote while incorporating new theories that better fit what I didn’t quite know how to say before.
FM: What do you enjoy most about your article?
SB: I really enjoy the implication that animated films can be more visually exciting, and better at telling certain stories, than live-action ones. I don’t see the appeal of photorealistic CGI films at all and, if nothing else, it is nice to throw in my two cents about my belief in animated storytelling.
FM: How has the Film Matters editorial and publication process impacted the development/evolution of your article?
SB: Well, I certainly did not start with the finished article. Being given a chance to reevaluate this paper allowed me to dive into transmedia theory, something that was not present in my original school paper. I have kept notes since writing this paper the first time around of what I would do differently given the chance to rewrite it, and this process allowed me to A) clear my ever-piling notes on this film, and B) do justice to the ideas that I had before I had the tools to talk about them.
FM: What audience do you hope to reach with your Film Matters article and/or what impact do you hope it has on the field of film studies?
SB: I hope anyone with an interest in boundary-pushing films and animated films can enjoy this article. I would love to see more films that push animation, and transpose elements of other art/narrative forms, to the screen. Animation is such a wonderful and unique form of film, and I think there is a bright future where creative storytellers capitalize on it to tell all sorts of stories in ways we haven’t seen before.
FM: How has your department and/or institution supported your work in film and media?
SB: My department has pushed me to engage with films and theories I never would have even seen without their help. While I would have seen Spider-verse regardless of being a Film major, it is the totality of my classes from all different disciplines of film and media that allows me to enjoy the film to the extent that I do. My ability to research and parse through dense ideas is a product of the work my professors have asked of me, and aided me with.
FM: How has your faculty mentor fostered your advancement as a film scholar?
SB: My mentor was the first film professor I ever took classes from. We weren’t allowed to use our phones or laptops in class, so it was very apparent who did the prep work for each class. This alone pushed me to be a better student, to retain the information we studied better, and to find joy in picking apart the history of film as an academic field. My mentor’s excitement about films, contemporary and otherwise, was infectious, and I can’t thank her enough for encouraging me to have faith in this paper.
FM: What advice do you have for undergraduate film and media scholars?
SB: Find the joy in what you do. My passion for film (and media more broadly) is (un)fortunately untamable at times. When the desire to dig into a given idea hits, I’m at its whim. But it is exactly that excitement and joy that make the often painful process of finding ways to piece big ideas together like a puzzle worth it.
FM: What are your future plans?
SB: I plan to pursue a Master of Library and Information Science degree. While I don’t have plans (currently) to work in the film industry, my passion for film continues to shape me. With the shift away from physical copies of films and TV shows, I’m interested in how library and archival services will continue to preserve and widen access to otherwise unavailable, or disappearing, audiovisual materials in the future.
Author Biography
Sophie Barbour is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University where she majored in both English and Film Studies. She is particularly interested in films that break the mold of what we expect from cinematic works.
