LAUAN501 - Study Task 6 - Draft Essay

Clearly state the overarching research question of the project. This should be formulated as an answerable question or assertion.

Introduction (250 - 300 words approx) 

My proto question
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'How are Historical and Contemporary British politics represented through animation and cartoons?'

I researched through British media, film, and video for political themed animated shows, cartoons and publications for political context. Finding material that could be related to the theme and question, form historical to contemporary political issues in society. I found that most of the animated political material had been centred around the political controversy of World War 2 and post war.

This is an important area to study in my opinion, because it will benefit my political understanding of techniques and processes in animation. Most historical animation was majorly influenced by war and political statements, explaining to the public through symbolic and simplistic cartoons, educating the generations on corruption and its effects in politics through regimes and control over society. Using many diverse and different techniques to translate the message on war and politics, featuring symbolism, patriotic, and graphic expressionist imagery. But mostly surrealism because it carries more shock value in the visuals and could convey more emotion in the audience through relative imagery and concepts of suffering.

Texts that relate to modern political issues about consumerism and its control over society, we see fit to fall into a system of constant manipulation and influence from the higher ruling powers in politics and business, we are subject to our social patterns and processes of the masses.

Having defeated a strong evil historically, the fear remaining that it takes different more contempt forms, portrayed in our minds of our society today. Changing, moulding, controlling for a movement in politics. 

Symbolism and motto's shown such as the Hammerskins, two claw hammers crossed, which based on a fictitious nazi organisation depicted in the 1982 film Pink Floyd - The Wall and animated in the music film.

In relation to 'Animal Farm' from 1954, I have researched about the political imagery, characters and what message they expressed, for example, awareness through satire about the corruption in dictatorship as Napoleon the pig as the main protagonist imitating, Stalins dictatorship, also notably similar of the Nazi communist party in Germany, controlling, manipulating and executing of the population of Europe for control.

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Main Body 1: Context & Themes (850 words approx) 
This section will evidence the breadth and depth of your background research  whilst also demonstrating your own independent critical understanding of the contexts (be they aesthetic, cultural, historical, technological, social, political or other) contexts relevant to your chosen topic and, indeed, your subject discipline.

Use the opinions of your Theorists and texts to construct your argument.

• Evidence that you are aware of the key theoretical sources within your chosen topic.
• Evidence an awareness of all the key contextual information within your chosen topic.
• Try to use reliable sources at all times.
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• Evidence that you can triangulate between all chosen sources - linking together the points of your texts and theorists. 
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• You should avoid writing in a linear or chronological fashion.
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• Use Harvard Referencing throughout. 
• Try to use a mixture of paraphrasing, author/date citations, and short quotes (try to avoid long quotes).

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My background research is based on the oppressive influence and control politics can have over society. Through historical social reform in the education system, the control of community through consumerism today, and the inner workings of propaganda throughout time.
I have found evidence through various movements in animation and in texts based on historical and contemporary political events, mostly showing a trend based after the rise of corrupt regimes and communism during and after World War 2.
The education of community on the moral values in British animation and politics, I have found, expresses the true nature of art and design. Carrying a message that can be a reminder of our courage and belief in the ability to express ourselves as individuals without oppression, with the freedoms of the ability to think and do as we please. Researching and understanding of the oppressive power and control political leaders can have, taking advantage or influencing a community for their own gain, be it consumerism or oppressing throughout history.


Researching the media used and why, of different forms and movements to portray strong illustrated and animated images for awareness on political purpose. For a visual perspective on a subjective and oppressive society through story of experience, conveying a message to educate, to warn, and/or shock a society about the horrors endured, the endeavours taken, but also the reform post war and the affect on society. The evidence I have gathered through reading and understanding imagery from (citation check) 'Gerald Scarfe, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010 book The Making of Pink Floyd, The Wall, and Pink Floyd music videos themselves based around a character 'Pink'. For a contextual awareness on the media techniques used and researching the development of concepts and storyline throughout.


The Wall, 2002, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, This article is about the Pink Floyd album (online). Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall. 'The Wall is a rock opera that explores abandonment and isolation, symbolised by a metaphorical wall. The songs create an approximate storyline of events in the life of the protagonist, Pink, a character based on Syd Barrett as well as Roger Waters, whose father was killed during the Second World War. Pink's father also dies in a war, which is where Pink starts to build a metaphorical "wall" around him. Pink is oppressed by his overprotective mother and tormented at school by tyrannical, abusive teachers.'

The art concepts and storyline based are researched from Pink Floyd the Wall, summed up in this story form this online website article, A documentation of expression in unnerving and irrational scenes with strange creatures, seemingly formed from imagination or based from objects of war. Telling a story with these creatures, carrying strong meanings and symbolism of icons and idols of oppression in the minds of those who experienced them. Subjective, tormenting, and dark figures representing a restrict hold on young minds, binding and forming them into objects of war and of a consumerist society, they are metaphoric tools of political control on society.

Illustrated through concepts with strong bleeding media, such as ink and paint combined with dark detailed drawings with ink and pencil. Outlining figures and shapes influenced of a surrealist art movement and painting techniques describing imagination and allowing the unconscious to express itself dramatically visually and lyrically. This symbolic art style has similarities related in the historical arts of war, emphasising the compassion for the suffering, devastated landscapes and ideology through abstract and surrealism themes. (more citation for points?)
The Dadaist movement, for example, expressing disgust with the war in the post war period. A similar style communicating a loss of faith in culture and expressing absurdity, nonsense, surrealism and nightmares, above all the failure of logic and rationalism within political understanding, meaning for community and sanity. As a solider would experience the opposite of political messages and detest the big prowess of war such as the industry or modern technology, and expressing modernists styles of dramatic distortions and symbolic meanings of instead destruction and the horrors of war.

Jacques Ellul - Author of the technological society, 1965, PROPAGANDA - The formations of men's attitudes, East Lansing Michigan, Knopf, pages 38-39.
"In this way propaganda can be creative. And it is in complete control of its creations; the passions or prejudices that it instills in a man serve to strengthen its hold on him and thus make him do what he would never have done otherwise."

(pink Floyd the wall, historical animation example) - delete note
Edward L. Bernays, 1928, Propaganda, California, H. Liveright, Page 37-38
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.”





The formation of trends and the attitudes of the people in society are governed by the authority of power, they are responsible for the images we see, the materialistic goods we poses and the consumerism of items and goods that are considered of high value and meaning. “What Shall We Do Now?” Pink Floyd, Roger Waters 1979 music video. Showing a decay into greed, Pink experiences a need to fill an imagined hole in his being with materialistic things, following society in trends of invalidating community and defining a persons being by what materialistic items they posses.

Disproving and judging of a consumer culture run rampant as well as an attack against the notion that a person should be defined by what he owns and what social trends he hollowly maintains. Pink wondering how he should fill the final gaps in his wall, a number of modern day vices and other things that keep us from truly connecting with others and ourselves are listed.'







The implication that society bases its self worth and identity on the external, he or she is never satisfied, but constantly panged by roaring “waves of hunger” for “more and more applause” (that is, more and more acceptance). While we think such things make us stand out in a “sea of faces,” mistakenly believing that we are asserting our individuality through our fancy cars, designer clothes, and workaholic lives, we are in actuality blending in with the rest of the masses who are told to define themselves by these very same social yardsticks. True to the undercurrent of previous songs like “Another Brick in the Wall, Part II,” this attempt at individuality (in this case, materialistic/consumerist individuality) is only achieved through conformity to commercialized social norms. Abandoning your personal idea of self for the one that a collective media says you should be only leads to further dissatisfaction, cycling back into newfound obsessions, new trends, and new, pointless minutiae to govern your life and define who you are.'




(consumerism in Pink Floyd)
Juliet B. Schor, 2000, The Consumer Society Reader, New York, New Press, Pages 190-191.
“Consumption is a social relationship, the dominant relationship in our society—one that makes it harder and harder for people to hold together, to create community.”

Juliet B. Schor, 2000, The Consumer Society Reader, New York, New Press, page 59.

"It is from the (theoretically isolatable) moment when the exchange is no longer purely transitive, when the object (the material of exchange) is immediately presented as such, that it is reified into a sign."

"The sign object is neither given nor exchanged: it is appropriated, withheld and manipulated by individual subjects as a sign, that is, as coded difference."


“Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends. Any other assessment of the situation is mere idealism.”








What I have gathered from this text is that products or, material, is signified as a currency for the globalist government regime and this is a metaphoric currency formed form capitalism for mass production for a consumer driven society, valuing.!!!!

Politics in consumerism, as a means of control over a society
A social and economic order and ideology that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in mass production, planned obsolescence and advertising to increase consumer spending.
(quotes, page 59, 'the ideological genesis of needs', 'From Symbolic Exchange To Sign Value. 'The Consumer Society' - READER, Edited by Juliet B. Schor and Douglas B. Holt.)"The sign object is neither given nor exchanged: it is appropriated, withheld and manipulated by individual subjects as a sign, that is, as coded difference."

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Harvard Ref Guide:
1. Name of the author(s)
2. Year published
3. Title
4. City published
5. Publisher
6. Pages used

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(cut reserved text)

Emphasising in some techniques a limit of paint as a medium to express the horrible sensations and experiences in war.

Vulnerable to manipulation as a society, the economy in our age, controls the population and feeds them material goods, exchanging everything for personal gain, but overall becoming a lesser being, a victim of consumerism and it's influence on community, destroying anything good and diminishing moral values.

... Most importantly, the steps taken to avoid such a controversy in a political society, such as the nazi regime.

Themes, concepts, and ideals communicated in British politics through animation and cartoons in relation to economics, propaganda, and socialism. Concepts/Research:

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Main Body 2: Case Studies of Practice (850 words approx) 

In this section you will apply your theoretical research, models of thought, concepts, ideas to examples you have collected of art practice, objects, phenomena, events (things you feel exemplify your research theme). This is called a Case Study approach – the aim is to show how individual works can be held as exemplars of a wider cultural tendency, problem, attitude, prejudice, and so forth. This approach is also useful as it allows you to evidence skills in visual analysis, which is good evidence for most of the module ILO’s, but easier for some visual arts students than textual analysis.

• You can choose a number of works by the same practitioner, or different works by different practitioners. However, you must explicitly explain the relevance of all of the works cited to your central research question or questions, and your chosen research methods (practical and textual).
• Descriptive Analysis: describe the image / example focussing on details you feel are important. This will help with your later interpretation.
• Application of theoretical research and contextual information to back up your interpretations of your chosen works, use quotes / citations to back up your own ideas.
• Use Harvard Referencing throughout. 
• Try to use a mixture of paraphrasing, author/date citations, and short quotes (try to avoid long quotes).

Jacques Ellul - Author of the technological society, 1965, PROPAGANDA - The formations of men's attitudes, East Lansing Michigan, Knopf, pages 38-39.
“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organised”
(radiohead Burn the witch, contemporary animation example) - delete note.

Politically, the process of which the antagonist oppresses the protagonist and how they are manipulated and used against their will as a society under a controversial government, as seen in the animated 1954 film Animal Farm.

The suffering and injustice, based on from a historical point of view. An example of political uproar and betrayal, the Russian Revolution and aftermath of the tyrannical figure of Joseph Stalin's greed through communism and manipulation of society. Orwell substitutes animals for humans, so the big concepts of communism are shown on the farm. Communism is meant to be a society where all people are equal, yet the revolution of the Russians results in certain people having more power over others, but those people are the same kind of tyrants. 

George Orwell's Animal Farm uses satire to show the political ideology and the misuse of power in communistic society, making the setting on a farm and the characters animals. Orwell, details corruption of political ideals and the abuse of power which occur in human societies. 

The main characters are animals but their failings are all too recognisably human. They begin with an attempt to form a new society, separated from the tyranny of humans and established on the rule of equality and freedom for everyone. Then the pigs reign over the community bringing about more rules that indistinct them form the over arching equality.

These similarities under Stalins dictatorship and seen in nazi Germany when communism birthed an evil of a government into regime, controlling, manipulating and executing the population for control.

The principles of culture and the acceptable norm against any indifference in society, from a political aspect, this film shows how socially, communities can be oppressed from cultural regulations and/or a corrupt regime. The political themes are based of exile, survival, heroism, leadership, political responsibility, and the 'making of a hero and a community' under oppression from a regime amongst a community.

Conveying about society and community reacting against the political state of mind and creating a demonstration of each, of the most controversial aspects of politics such as capital punishment, bias, unfair law and order, and corrupt government trails for justice. 

― Juliet B. Schor, The Consumer Society Reader

Consumerism is a luxury but it influences the minds of the poor and subjective population to follow society in a controllable trend, in some cases benefiting the government in economic long term spending trends, advertisement and, more recently, selling our private data.
Advertisement is a large contribution to influencing the poor and subjective, especially the middle class, spending more and consuming products or 'objects' that they would otherwise not need, without realising it, they are 'exchanging' with a system for seocialism.

The Consumer Society Reader, isn't exactly what I am looking for and doesn't quite fit, but I'm using it because there are some relevancy in the concepts in which the Reader describes, as examples of political or business capitalism over people, classes, and/or positions in society.