British Cartoons Research Articles

Fine art as a factor in the development of modern art animation in the UK

The subject of the study is the specificity of artistic and visual techniques used by the British creators of animated films, using the example of the paintings "Shaun the Sheep" and "Van Gogh. Love, Vincent." The object of research is the artistic animation of Great Britain at the beginning of the XXI century. The article reveals the trends of British animation in recent years by analyzing the elements of the visual series of cartoons created using the expressive means of classical art. The works considered in the article demonstrate the author's approaches of modern British directors in relation to the artistic and figurative solution of cartoons related to various types of fine art, for example, sculpture in plasticine animation and oil painting. The aim is to identify and characterize the visual techniques in British cartoons of the early 21st century. The research methodology presents the greatest difficulty, since it has not been fully developed in relation to the characteristics of the artistic and visual specifics of animated films, but at the same time opens up opportunities for interdisciplinary analysis. The research uses an art historical analysis, in particular a structural study of the plot and compositional features of animation. The novelty of the research is due to the fact that in Russian science the stated problem remains practically unexplored. For the first time, the paintings "Shaun the Sheep" and "Van Gogh. With love, Vincent" are considered from the point of view of means of artistic expression and in terms of meaning formation. Based on the results of the analysis, it is concluded that modern British animation proceeds by creating films in which visual arts are actively involved. This sets a high level of performance of paintings, because it requires the authors to have impeccable command of visual literacy, which allows them to achieve maximum expressiveness of images. It is likely that in the future, reliance on the artistic language of classical art and the manual labor of animators will continue to form as a specific feature of British animation.

A visual history of First World War women and humour identified in contemporary cartoons

ABSTRACT This article discusses the use of cartoon visual depictions of women during the First World War and the humour within them for the viewing public. Extensive historiography of women and war recognizes female contributions to the war effort, and the underlying integrity of motherhood throughout. Nonetheless, how audiences perceive visual representations of women during war do not feature within this literature to the same degree. Evaluation of cartoon humour alongside context of images of women historicizes the content and its impact on respective contemporary audiences. News publications throughout the war provide appropriate visual sources, and most for this study come from the British Cartoon Archive (BCA) at the University of Kent. The article considers three predominant tropes of female cartoon illustration during the war: the young and flighty, the elderly matron and the allegory of combatant nations. Cartoons of these womenvisibly take on new positions in war: helping the war effort or misunderstanding new situations whilst maintaining traditional positions from before the war. Humorous alterations to anticipated stereotypes provide didactic purpose showing the public how to behave, or more specifically how not to with the younger and older depictions. The final group of allegorical personas revisit older national and abstract icons to aid public morale providing relief and hilarity through enemydenegration or support and strength when visualizing home nations. This article argues how humorous cartooning of women in wartime preserved the pre-war status quo of female positions in society to provide comfort and relief to the public despite acknowledged female involvement in the war effort overall.

On the Role of Distinctive Features of British English Sounds in the Cartoon Peppa Pig for Chinese Learners to Conquer Mother Tongue’s Negative Transfer

With the process of globalization and integration, more and more people tend to be bilingual. Undoubtedly, mastering a second language is significant. This thesis aims to explore how to conquer the difficulties in learning British English sounds through analyzing a British cartoon Peppa Pig.Chapter one begins with the research background, significance and purpose of research. The thesis takes the cartoon Peppa Pig as the starting point to demonstrate the role of distinctive features for Chinese learners to conquer negative transfer. The empirical research could be found in Chapter two, because of requiring to know the concrete circumstance of Chinese learners.Through the collection and analysis of data, we can know these problems which Chinese learners exist in the process of learning British English.Based on the comparison of Chinese and British English, Chapter three clarifies the difficulties in learning British English. As for Chinese learners, mastering distinctive features can promote learners to master British English sounds better than stress and rhythm. Chapter four states the role of the distinctive features in helping conquer Chinese negative transfer in the cartoon Peppa Pig. The final chapter is the conclusion of this thesis and involves a new study for Chinese learners to learn British English sounds under the distinctive features.

The Empire of Beasts Then and Now: Political Cartoons and New Trends in Victorian Animal Studies

Victorians were obsessed with animals and used them pervasively in fiction and press as proxies for human races. This article attempts to analyse the animal display as a political commentary in the visual images of Punch or The London Charivari Magazine in the aftermath of the 1857 Mutiny and the growing geopolitical tensions worldwide. In exhibiting and displaying such animals as the lion, the tiger, the crocodile and the bear while dealing with colonial issues, the popular British cartoons acted as complex rhetorical structures that helped to powerfully influence mass opinion and consequently harnessed the public support for the Empire. Non-human animals were not just used for rhetorical purposes: beasts provided their very bodies to fund and fuel imperial projects, carried administrators and armies across and into remote spaces, and instilled fear and fascination in colonized and colonizers alike. While the scholarship recounting this relationship is not new, recent studies built on pioneering environmental and cultural histories (re)introduced many of the salient topics related to the showcasing of animals and imperialism such as conquest, disease, breeding, scientific categorization, animal welfare, vivisection, zoos, hunting, and conservation.

What's Wrong With Synthetic Trees?

A 1774 British cartoon often reproduced in U.S. history textbooks, “The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man” by Philip Dawe, shows revolutionaries forcing tea down the throat of an already tarred and feathered royal tax collector. In the background, additional turncoats dump boxes of tea into the harbor. Yet the artist places less emphasis on the Tea Party than a tree—an American elm—that looms above the mob attack. Engraved upon its bark are the ironic words “Liberty Tree”; its main branch sports a noose. Today, most Americans would connect the image of a tree-bound noose with the history of slavery rather than freedom; few outside academia recall the symbolic importance of the Liberty Tree—once as famous as Plymouth Rock—and its emblematic outgrowths, liberty poles. In collective memory, the Boston Tea Party has supplanted Boston’s Liberty Tree.

British Cartoon Archive

British Cartoon Archive

The British Labour Party, “Parliamentary Socialism” and Thatcherism, 1979–1990: A Visual Perspective

This article examines the British Labour Party's interaction with Thatcherism during the 1980s, harnessing posters from the People's History Museum and cartoons from the British Cartoon Archive that provide a unique insight into a political era dominated by visual communication and media‐generated imagery. The posters and cartoons illuminate the Labour Party's response to the breakdown of the postwar settlement, the crisis of social democracy, the decline of class‐based voting, the erosion of industrial militancy and the pre‐eminence of market forces. Contending that the Labour Party's adoption of a media‐led communications strategy fatally undermined the pursuit of parliamentary socialism, the article concludes that Margaret Thatcher's restructuring created the preconditions for the removal of socialist ideology from mainstream British politics.

Satire graphique et enracinement national : le dessin de presse britannique

À la fin du XXe siècle, l’art du dessin de presse fut tardivement reconnu comme partie intégrante de la culture visuelle britannique. Dans cet article, on le considère comme l’hériter légitime de la satire graphique du XVIIIe siècle, que représentent notamment les œuvres de James Gillray et George Cruikshank. L’analyse de ‘Substance and Shadow’, un dessin de John Leech portant la mention ‘Cartoon n° I’ montre sa pertinence dans le cadre d’une réflexion sur les relations entre art et nation. Par leur longévité, des allégories telles que Britannia et John Bull attestent de la permanence de l’engouement nationaliste dans la satire graphique. Enfin, on soutient qu’à travers les emprunts fréquents à la tradition du XVIIIe siècle, les dessins de presse jettent un pont entre la culture visuelle du présent et les maîtres du passé. Bien que les dessinateurs aient tendance à recourir à l’exaltation patriotique en temps de guerre, ils contribuent à nous faire revisiter des siècles de culture britannique sans chauvinisme manifeste.

The Politics of Medusa: Shelley's Physiognomy of Revolution

political terror, noting the exemplary conservative usage of Medusa in Burke's Reflections and the British cartoons it spawned. During the 1790s the Medusa functioned fetishistically: as a horrific image of castration, she emblematized the establishment's fear of losing its political and social privileges to the fury of women and the unpropertied classes demanding enfranchisement; but, at the same time, by virtue of the condensation and displacement intrinsic to symbolization, her snaky tresses extrude an apotropaic effect-constellating the male organ's petrifaction upon encountering this image-a stiffening that reassured the masculine establishment of its undiminished authority.2 This nineties' emblem, encapsulating the Revolutionary drama of terror and its containment, materializes in Burke (and later in other conservatives such as Hugo, du Camp, and de Tocqueville), providing, in Hertz's words, an instance of right-wing intellectual narcissism ..., the wish ... to produce a representation of a complex political situation which would